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Racial discrimination in the justice system
Puritans/salem witch trials
Racial discrimination in the justice system
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In certain events people are accused of things that may or may not be true. That is the case in the salem witch trials and the Scottsboro boys case. In the Scottsboro boys case they are accused of raping 2 white girls but, in the Salem witch trials people are accused of worshipping the devil. The scottsboro boys were nine young men who were blamed for raping two innocent white girls on a train. (Scottsboro boys Trials). The boys were sent to court on 1937 in the court.( the Scottsboro boys trial) The jury was full of white men because the blacks were kept away.(scottsboro boys trial) The boys were found innocent in the court and for the last defendant It took a total of 20 years for him to be released.(scottsboro
Before jumping into the comparisons, the story of the Scottsboro Trials is needed to know what is being compared.
While segregation of the races between Blacks and Whites, de facto race discrimination, had been widespread across the United States by the 1930s, nine African-American Scottsboro Boys whose names are Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems, Willie Robeson, Olen Montgomery, Roy and Andy Wright, Clarence Norris and Heywood Paterson were accused of raping two young white women named Victoria Price and Ruby Bates in Alabama in 1931. Along with the dominant influences of the Scottsboro cases on American civil rights history, the landmark case has substantial impacts on the U.S. Constitution primarily in that U.S. Supreme Court ascertained a defendant’s right to effective counsel.
On March 25, 1931 nine African American youths were falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of two white girls. Over the next six consecutive years, trials were held to attempt to prove the innocence of these nine young men. The court battles ranged from the U.S Supreme court to the Scottsboro county court with almost every decision the same---guilty. Finally, with the proceedings draining Alabama financially and politically, four of the boys ...
The McCarthy Era, people blamed communists, The Witch Trials Era, people blamed the innocent people on being witches, and in the current day situation, people blamed muslims on being terrorists. People like to rely on assumption thinking mainly because its easy to blame someone for something rather than, base it on facts. Works Cited
The play described Betty as a young girl, nine years of age, who began showing symptoms around the same time as her cousin Abigail Williams. Betty accused many people, and testified against them in multiple court cases. From the evidence that the Witch Trials shows, Betty was most likely pretending to be possessed in order to gain attention, or rebel from the strict lifestyle the Puritans followed. “She could not concentrate at prayer time and barked like a dog when her father would rebuke her. She screamed wildly when she heard the ‘Our Father’ prayer and once hurled a Bible across the room” (Walsh).
This form of accusing holds zero form of justice. The accusers weren’t even able to explain what happened themselves, so instead of worrying about t...
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
similarity to the Salem witch trials. The McCarthy hearings are trials in which Senator Joe McCarthy accuses government employees of being Communists. He exaggerates and exploits the evidence and ruins many reputations just as the girls do in the Salem witch trials. The accused, in both cases, are used as scapegoats for society’s problems and the only way to escape direct punishment is to admit to guilt.
Salem Witch Craft In 1962 the penalty for witchcraft was to be hung or smashed. There was a big outburst of witchcraft and spells that were going around among the people of Massachusetts in 1962. Some of the women of Salem began the witchcraft, many people started to catch on and follow them. A lot of these people were hung up to what the Bible said about the wrongs of witchcraft.
Inspired by the Red Scare, which was fuled by use of the either-or ( black and white) fallacy of thinking, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible depicts the village of Salem undergoing its own period of black and white thinking along with the suspicion and hysteria which followed. Miller exploits the literary element of setting to support the portrayal of the effects of black and white thinking in Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee were both accused with the murder of two gas station attendants. The police had beaten a confession out of Lee and Pitts, and after their false confession the police arrested them and took them to jail. “Their conviction was swift and they were beaten by their interrogators” (floridainnocent).They had asked for a mercy trial, they were then sent to a courtroom with a jury full of white men. Willie Mae Lee, was one of the only “eyewitnesses” to the crime that happened on that night. She had been threatened that if she had not told what she had seen on July 31 of 1963 they would punish her. Pitts and Lee were accused that they were the were the killers because of their skin color. They had gotten sentenced to a death
Based on document B, it has been proven that the main gender group of accusers were women. Also, these documents say the main age group was from 16-20 years of age. Most people in this town got very little attention. I am confident that these young women were
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the summer and into the fall of the year 1692, and during this dark time of American history, over 200 people had been accused of witchcraft and put in jail. Twenty of these accused were executed; nineteen of them were found guilty and were put to death by hanging. One refused to plead guilty, so the villagers tortured him by pressing him with large stones until he died. The Salem Witch Trials was an infamous, scary time period in American history that exhibited the amount of fear people had of the devil and the supernatural; the people of this time period accused, arrested, and executed many innocent people because of this fear, and there are several theories as to why the trials happened (Brooks).
There are some events in history that put the human race to shame; however, these occasions can change our future forever. Society cannot deny that social injustices occur almost every day, maybe even more than once. One large blemish in our history, the Salem Witch Trials, alienated a certain group in our society. These trials were an unfortunate combination of economic conditions, a flock’s strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies.
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.