Scottsboro Boys: 9 Falsely Accused Black Teens and An Eight-Decade-Late Pardon
In a racist world, not everyone is innocent until proven guilty
If there is one landmark case in the American judicial system that screams injustice of a racial kind, it has to be the Scottsboro Boys Trials. The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. The trials and numerous retrials over decades have sparked discussions, uproar, and debates around the failures of the judicial system. All this while, most of these nine men, faced inhumanely harsh conditions in the Alabama prison system.
The Original Incident
During the time when America was going through the difficulties of the Great Depression, nine black teens were hitching a ride aboard a freight train, as was common for youths in the era to travel in search of jobs. It was March 25, 1931, when a fight broke in the freight train, and resulted in the arrest of the nine black youths, by the police, on a minor charge. However, the minor charge soon escalated into a charge of rape of two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, on further questioning by the police.
