History Research Paper: Trials of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s

History Research Paper: Trials of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s
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Trials of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s
Racism is a term that is not new to the people and the courts of US. The whites are against the courts are not fair at all when handling the cases involving the blacks and the whites. In fact, it reached a point where the blacks were being literarily targeted by the courts, and it almost became a norm that the blacks were never to receive a fair hearing (MacDonald, 2014). Various people struggled to avert these incidences and a struggle that even involved loss of lives. From schools to churches to workplace, the blacks had no say, and they struggled to exist. A case is told of Scottsboro Boys whose issue attracted a lot of attention to the public, and it remains in history books that it was one of the major anti-racism campaigns. Antiracism includes actions, beliefs, policies and movements developed or adopted to oppose racism (Smith, 2014). Generally, antiracism is meant to create an egalitarian society where people are not discriminated against based on their race. Antiracism, by its nature, acts to promote the notion that racism in a given society is both harmful and socially insidious, and that specific changes in political, social and economic life are needed to eradicate it (Klein, 2014). This paper examines the ‘Trials of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s’ to bring into view some of the major struggles to save the African-Americans from racism and depression. It will use primary as well as secondary sources like peer-reviewed journals, books, and personal accounts relevant to this area of discussion.
The fight to free Scottsboro Boys is noted to be one of the most influential anti-racist struggles in the 1930s and 1940s (Spohn, 2015). It did expose the extreme racism of the American “justice” southern style. This struggle also led to the initiation of massive solidarity movement by the Communist Party. There were straightforward facts in this case. Nine Black youths whose ages were ranging between 13 and 21, on March 25, 1931, jumped into a freight train in Alabama as they sought for work. Upon losing the whites presented their complaints to the stationmaster leading to the arrest of the nine blacks.
The nine blacks were first charged with only fight related offenses (Klein, 2014). The most surprising occurrence is that when the local authorities came to discover that the train also had two white women on board, rape charges were added in the cases of these black men. Even with no real evidence to support the claim of gang rape by these blacks, the hysterical atmosphere created by the whole case ensured the conviction of the boys (Klein, 2014). It is at this time that crowds got up and surrounded the jail prompting the invitation of the National Guard to avert lynching. Two weeks after the incident, the whole trial process had been completed and sentencing passed. The Scottsboro Boys got indicted, tried, found guilty and slapped with a death sentence.
The CP, upon receiving the news of indictment dispensed its legal defense wing from the International Labor Defense (ILD) to reach the defendants and their families so that they could arrange protest actions (Kinshasa, 2014). The Central Committee of the party ordered for nationwide protest actions when death sentences for eight of the nine boys were handed down, and the ILD lawyers took up the appeals case at their own cost. The defendants signed up an agreement that gave the ILD a full control over the case on April 20, which came just about a month after the indictment (Kinshasa, 2014). The party in this way got engaged in a direct conflict with NAACP, a liberal body, which was initially clear of the matter as a whole. The association claimed that they never wanted to identify themselves with a gang of rapists unless they were certain that the boys were innocent beyond any reasonable doubt or unless they were very sure that the constitutional rights of the boys were abridged (Kinshasa, 2014). The NAACP could never imagine the communists getting involved in the case one convictions hand been handed and competed in its totality.
What ensued can be termed as a battle of defendants. At some point, the NAACP lawyers managed to convince the defendants to walk out of their agreements with the communists, which they did (Douglas, 2014). The boys, however, were later on convinced by their parents to reinstate the agreement following their interaction with the CP lawyers. This debate was all about the most appropriate strategy to employ in the case that was about civil rights in the south. The argument of the NAACP leaders was that the campaign was only meant to guarantee a fair trial for the youths that could comfortably be achieved by the local attorneys and not necessarily involve the public protests that were experienced (Klein, 2014). The CP maintained their s...