to kill a mocking bird?

Question

in to kill a mockingbird what was the importance of the Scottsboro Trial in the 1930's? What crime were the men accused of? What was the outcome of the trial?

Answer 1

"The case of the Scottsboro Boys arose in Scottsboro, Alabama during the 1930s, when nine black youths, ranging in age from twelve to nineteen, were accused of raping two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, one of whom would later recant.
The four trials, in which the youths were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries despite the weak and contradictory testimonies of the witnesses, are regarded as one of the worst travesties of justice perpetrated against blacks in the post-Reconstruction South.
The case quickly became an international cause célèbre and the boys were represented by the American Communist Party's legal defense organization. The death sentences, originally scheduled to be carried out quickly, were postponed pending appeals that took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the sentences were overturned. Despite the fact that one of the women later denied being raped, the retrials resulted in convictions. All of the defendants were eventually acquitted, paroled, or pardoned (besides one who escaped), some after serving years in prison.
While it has sometimes been thought that he case later inspired Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning To Kill a Mockingbird, she denies this, claiming it was a far less sensational case that moved her to write the novel.
After the nine youths were accused of raping the two white women, a lynch mob gathered around the jail, prepared to storm and kill the youths. Given the situation, the governor of Alabama, Benjamin M. Miller, was forced to call in the National Guard to protect the jail. Authorities pleaded against mob violence by promising speedy trials and executions. On March 30, the so-called Scottsboro Boys were indicted by a Grand Jury. In April, all were convicted and sentenced to death, except for one 13 year old, who was sentenced to life in prison. The NAACP and the International Labor Defense (legal arm of the Communist Party USA) both wanted to handle the defense and struggled to gain and retain the support of the boys and their parents; the ILD eventually won that battle and the NAACP dropped out of the case in January, 1932. The case quickly became widely known, with rallies held in northern U.S. cities, international press coverage and thousands of letters written in support of the defendants.
The Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven of the boys who were on death row in March, 1932 (the eighth was determined to have been a juvenile), but in November the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Powell v. Alabama, reversed the convictions and ordered new trials based on the fact that the Boys didn't have proper representation. The first time they were tried, their parents scraped together $60 for a real-estate lawyer who urged them to plead guilty (no southern lawyer would try the case).
The ILD hired Samuel Leibowitz, a noted attorney from New York who was widely known for winning the vast majority of his criminal cases, to defend the Scottsboro Boys at the new trials, held in nearby Decatur. However, this would backfire on the boys as the whites from the south viewed Leibowitz as a total foreigner, a northerner, a communist, one that is representing blacks, as well as a Jew. This time one of the accusers, Ruby Bates, after disappearing for a time to escape from the pressure and the media attention, returned to testify in court and recanted her earlier testimony, now stating that she and Price had lied about being raped because they were afraid that, since they were found on a train with other homeless men where one party of homeless men was violently removed, and since they were homeless themselves, they might be charged with some offense. Jury members again voted for conviction, having apparently believed the prosecution's suggestion that Bates was now lying and had changed her testimony only because the defense had paid her to do so. The attorney of the prosecution, Attorney General (of Alabama) Knight attacked Bates, calling to attention her new clothes and accessories, and Bates could only answer that the Communists had supplied her with everything.
Eventually, Leibowitz with a motion to retry the sentences based on the fact that the juries were all white, such that the Boys weren't able to have a fair trial, was seconded by the Supreme Court of the United States, making it the fourth time that the Boys were to be tried. However this time, Leibowitz reluctantly recognized that the South viewed him as an encroacher upon their space, and following the conditions of the South, allowed a white southern lawyer to take over the defense. Shortly after Lebowitz let someone else take over, himself falling back to be the assistant attorney, the Boys sentences were sealed.


A marker commemorating the trial
In July, 1937, Clarence Norris was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to death, Andy Wright was convicted of rape and sentenced to 99 years, and Charlie Weems was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Ozie Powell pleaded guilty to assaulting the sheriff and was sentenced to 20 years. Four of the boys were released after all charges against them were dropped: Roy Wright and Eugene Williams who had been twelve and thirteen at the time of the alleged crime; Olen Montgomery, who was nearly blind and had been found alone in a car at the end of the train; and Willie Roberson, who when accused was suffering from syphilis.
Later, Governor of Alabama Bibb Graves reduced Clarence Norris' death sentence to life in prison. Norris was later pardoned by Governor George Wallace. All of the Scottsboro Boys were eventually paroled, freed or pardoned, except for Haywood Patterson, who had been tried and convicted of rape and sentenced to the death penalty. He escaped north to Detroit, Michigan. When he was arrested more than 20 years later by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1950s, Governor of Michigan G. Mennen Williams would not allow him to be extradited back to Alabama."

Please go to link 2 for some comparisons between the book and the trial.

A sample:
Scottsboro Trials - The Novel's Setting in the 1930s

There are many parallels between the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird and one of the most notorious series of trials in the nation's history ‚ the Scottsboro Trials. On March 25, 1931, a freight train was stopped in Paint Rock, a tiny community in Northern Alabama, and nine young African American men who had been riding the rails were arrested. As two white women - one underage - descended from the freight cars, they accused the men of raping them on the train. Within a month the first man was found guilty and sentenced to death. There followed a series of sensational trials condemning the other men solely on the testimony of the older woman, a known prostitute, who was attempting to avoid prosecution under the Mann Act, prohibiting taking a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, like prostitution.
Although none of the accused were executed, a number remained on death row for many years. The case was not settled until 1976 with the pardon of the last of the Scottsboro defendants.

Thanks to Dr. Johnson, there is an extensive archive of the Scottsborro Trail in the Historical Archives of this website.

See "Historical Context: The Scottsboro Trials," from Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents by Claudia Durst Johnson, pp. 15 - 81.

Some of the parallels between the Scottsboro trials and the trial of Tom Robinson are shown in the chart below (go to link 2, please)

Answer 2

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