In 1931 a group of homeless young black teenagers were riding a train going from town to town in search of work. While riding a train, that would stop in Scottsboro after the fight, the young men engaged in a fight with a group of young white men on a train. After said fight, while the police were investigating the fight, two young white women, that were riding the train illegally, claimed that the group of 9 black teenagers had raped them. This dynamic of two young white women accusing 9 homeless young black teens in Alabama in the 1930s, unsurprisingly, was not dealt with constitutionally as the immediate public reception and the deeply rooted racist treatments of blacks within the state resulted in a one day trial and 8 of the 9 young men
…show more content…
Fortunately for the Scottsboro boys, the Communist Party, which had taken an interest in both ending the attacks on victimized blacks and recruiting blacks into their party, did take an immediate interest in their case and afforded the young men a lawyer that had the cases tried three times in attempts to gain a fair trial, the first two trials were overturned and the third was allowed to stand. Once the Communist Party had sufficiently defended the boys’ the NAACP could now see the case as viable and attempted to step in over the Communist Party, but, were nudged out by the Communist Party’s legal wing. This push from the Communist Party saved the young men’s lives; however, 5 of them were still convicted and sentenced to prison. This fight went on for years and was described, by many, as The white people of Alabama vs. The rest of the world. Eventually in 1937, a defense attorney got almost all of the young men out of prison in a plea deal that placed them all under parole. Unfortunately, the last of the Scottsboro boys was not released for 13 years for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit. The most troubling part of these egregious wrongdoings of these young men was the acceptance that the public jurors had of the unproven guilt of these young men as they seemed to care nothing of evidence and only of race and
Fortunately for the Scottsboro boys, the Communist Party, which had taken an interest in both ending the attacks on victimized blacks and recruiting blacks into their party, did take an immediate interest in their case and afforded the young men a lawyer that had the cases tried three times in attempts to gain a fair trial, the first two trials were overturned and the third was allowed to stand. Once the Communist Party had sufficiently defended the boys’ the NAACP could now see the case as viable and attempted to step in over the Communist Party, but, were nudged out by the Communist Party’s legal wing. This push from the Communist Party saved the young men’s lives; however, 5 of them were still convicted and sentenced to prison. This fight went on for years and was described, by many, as The white people of Alabama vs. The rest of the world. Eventually in 1937, a defense attorney got almost all of the young men out of prison in a plea deal that placed them all under parole. Unfortunately, the last of the Scottsboro boys was not released for 13 years for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit. The most troubling part of these egregious wrongdoings of these young men was the acceptance that the public jurors had of the unproven guilt of these young men as they seemed to care nothing of evidence and only of race and