Scottsboro Boys Trial Essay

The Scottsboro Boys saga was a travesty at the time and remains an indelible mark on America’s social, cultural and judicial history. Their plight became a symbol of the oppression faced by black Americans in an America where white supremacy reigned as an accepted fact of life. Now something of folkloric proportion, this example of pervading southern prejudice and gross injustice captures a moment in America’s law and order environment. The Scottsboro Boys trials to this day highlight the climate of enduring racism socially, culturally and embedded in the legal system. Equally, the case shows the uneven application of the law and to some extent, a changing law and order environment.

The Scottsboro Boys trial highlighted the entrenched racism

One can’t forget that the Scottsboro boys trials took years to come to a frankly unsatisfactory conclusion. Seven of the nine boys were in jail for six years without seeing a courtroom. This immediately brings to light a lack of due process and subsequently, a complete disregard for the 14th Amendment. “The less said about sectionalism and prejudice the better.” The trials highlighted issues of sectionalism in the legal system, perhaps most clearly seen in the tension between prosecution and defence, “now the question in this case is: ‘Is justice going to be bought and sold in Alabama with Jew money from New York?’” . Bringing to the forefront the tensions between North and South in antebellum Alabama, this sectionalism was seen mainly through anti-Semitic remarks. The Norris v. Alabama case stressed the difficulties with the American legal system, in that the Supreme Court could not enforce laws and protect rights on a state level, it also meant many saw Leibowitz as trying to confront the southern way of life,

“to many local observers it was one thing to defend rapists – that after all, is part of the American justice system – but it was another, unforgiveable thing to come to Alabama and attack their social order and way of