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"Scottsboro Boys" composed by Huddy Ledbetter

No crime in the exceedingly rascist history of the U.S.A. -- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931.  Over the course of the next two decades, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives and produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left...

The case stems from a crime that occurred in 1931. Nine African Americans, Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Andy and Roy Wright, Eugene Williams, were accused of raping two white women in a freight car while passing through the state of Alabama. The group was commonly known as the Scottsborough Boys. They were on the train when two white men picked a fight and lost. Originally both girls claimed that they were raped by the Scottsborough Boys but later one of them retracted the claim. All of them, but Roy Wright, were sentenced to death in series of one day trials. The defendants were only given access to their lawyers immediately before the trial and little or no defense strategy was planned. The ruling was appealed on the grounds that group was not provided adequate legal counsel. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled 6-to-1 that the trial was fair (the strongly dissenting opinion was from the Chief Justice Anderson) and it was appealed to the Supreme Court.

(for a full account of the controversial trial visit http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm)

Download a glimpse of Slim & Baz performing Leadbelly's tribute (798kb) : Scottsboro Boys.mp3

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