Scottsboro Boys

Nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931, whose prosecutions exposed racial injustice in the criminal courts and became a landmark civil rights case.

Scottsboro trials: The Alabama court proceedings in 1931 and 1933 that tried the nine defendants, producing convictions and death sentences for most. These proceedings converted the accusation into convictions through hurried, racially biased trials.
Southern racial segregation: The system of laws and customs enforcing racial separation and subordination across the American South. Segregation shaped the assumptions and institutions surrounding the accusation and trials.
Samuel Leibowitz: A New York criminal defense lawyer who represented the Scottsboro defendants in later trials. His defense work challenged the prosecution’s evidence and Alabama’s courtroom practices.
Right to counsel: The legal right of a person accused of a crime to receive assistance from a lawyer. Powell v. Alabama made effective counsel in capital cases a constitutional protection.
Powell v. Alabama: A 1932 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that Alabama had denied the defendants effective assistance of counsel in a capital case. The ruling overturned the first convictions and established a constitutional limit on state trials.
Chattanooga freight train incident: A 1931 confrontation aboard a freight train near Chattanooga that led to the arrest of the nine teenagers and two women. This encounter triggered the arrests and accusations that became the case.
Clarence Norris: The oldest of the nine defendants, whose conviction and death sentence became central to the case’s long aftermath. His eventual pardon made the decades-long consequences of the case especially visible.
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: A constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 that guarantees citizenship, due process, and equal protection under law. The Supreme Court relied on its protections to address counsel and racial jury exclusion.
Norris v. Alabama: A 1935 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding that Alabama systematically excluded Black people from jury service in the defendants’ trials. The Court overturned later convictions because racial exclusion from juries violated equal protection.
Paint Rock, Alabama: A small Alabama community near where authorities arrested the teenagers after the freight-train incident. The arrests there brought the defendants into Alabama’s courts.

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