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

deep in the American south. The nature of the alleged crimes, the conduct of the trial and the demeanour of the prosecution and defence all speak in volumes about the nature of racism in the given context. The nature of the crime, the alleged rape of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates by nine coloured youths speaks volumes towards the existing understandings at the time that “black men are rapists” . Broadly speaking, at the time rape was understood to be an attack on a chaste white woman by a male stranger, assumed to be black. This was part of a broader narrative that painted black men to be animals with a savage nature that naturally inclined them to rape white women, often used to justify extra-legal violence like lynching. The Scottsboro Boys trials did however, manage to begin the process of unlinking race and rape and debunk the stereotypes that portrayed black men as sexual predators. As such, the very nature of the alleged crime paints of a portrait of the racism at the time, “many Americans believed that racism, rather than rape, had condemned the defendants.” The trial itself was coloured with racism on the parts of the jury and more specifically, the prosecution.
“Mr Leibowitz: I have treated his witness with much more courtesy and with much more decency than he is showing this negro on the stand; he is running at him and shouting and pointing his finger at him, trying to embarrass him; he is only an illiterate negro, give him a chance. I treated your witness with the utmost courtesy.
General Knight: I am not ashamed of the way I am examining this witness.”
As it were, it seems that the Scottsboro Boys were guilty before proven innocent, an attitude closely tied to the colour of their skin. Despite the plea, “I do not want a verdict based on racial prejudice or a religious creed. I want a verdict based on the merits of this case.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, a guilty verdict was returned. As Leibowitz stated,
“If you ever saw those creatures, those bigots whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes popped out at you like frogs, whose chins dripped tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it.”
This ultimately sealed the understanding that racism was an uncontested part of life in the American south. These black youths did not stand trial to a jury of their peers, but instead a sea of white southern ‘gentlemen’.

The Scottsboro Boys trials highlighted the issues with the legal system in America at the time, but can also be read now to note a changing law and order environment.

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

life.”
As mentioned previously, racism was deeply embedded in the courtroom, “it never occurred to him [that prejudice] could have knocked, introduced itself, and then walked right in the front door [of the courtroom].” That being said, elements of the Scottsboro Boys trial notes a shift in the law and order environment. Judge Horton was a “Southern Gentleman with strong ties to the confederacy,” yet he was “an active proponent of fairness in the context of the law, as well as a staunch opponent of lynching and popular justice.” In his summation,
“Any man or group of men that attempts to take charge outside of the law, are not only disobedient to the law, but are citizens unworthy of the protection of the State of Alabama, and unworthy of the citizenship which they enjoy. I say this much, that the man who would engage in anything that would cause the death of any of these prisoners is not only a murderer, but a cowardly murderer.”
Makes clear that extra-legal violence would have no home here, noting an important shift away from popular justice and to faith in the legal system.

The Scottsboro Boys trials were one of the most important legal proceedings in 20th century America. A saga that produced trials, convictions, reversals and retrials for an alleged rape that was ultimately confirmed, did not happen. These boys were arrested, faced trial and convicted not based on fact, but on the colour of their skin. The trials highlight the racial environment at the time, as well as the challenges of the legal system and its potential to change. The Scottsboro trials were in fact, a tragedy and miscarriage of justice in its truest form, and a reflection of the culture and social norms in Alabama at the time.