Preview

Book Review of Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1526 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Book Review of Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial
No crime in American history, produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did the case of the Scottsboro boys. In Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial, James A. Miller explores how the famous case of 1931, in which nine young black men were accused of raping two white women on a freight train, continues to resonate throughout American culture after nearly 80 years. In this novel, Miller focuses primarily upon the ways in which the "Scottsboro Narrative" has been told and retold over the years. Remembering Scottsboro covers a range of illustrations from journals to literary pieces to dramatic re-enactments and even films. The first chapter, titled "Framing the Scottsboro Boys," looks at the Communist Party (CP) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fight for control of the legal rights to free the defendants. Miller demonstrates that the CP and its legal affiliate, the International Labor Defense (ILD) mounted a brilliant defense that constantly forced the state of Alabama to back down from its attempts to execute the defendants. This brought the political economy of Jim Crow to widespread attention. Several subsequent chapters address the representation of Scottsboro by a range of 1930s creative artists. Miller examines closely Langston Hughes's avant-garde "mass chant," Scottsboro Limited, with its prominent featuring of the "New Red Negro". People like: Muriel Rukeyser, Herman J. D. Carter, Kay Boyle, Nancy Cunard, Mary Heaton Vorse, John Hammond and Louise Patterson, hoped to start social justice movements by bringing to light the atrocities that the Scottsboro boys endured. They did this through poetry and essay writing that were based on visits to Alabama and the rest of Southern US. John Wexley's They Shall Not Die and Paul Peters Stevedore brought the case to the stage by working from the base of the Scottsboro case. The Scottsboro Narrative supplied some of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Scottsboro boys were nine young men who jumped on a train that was heading out west. “They jumped on the train in search for government work in Memphis, Tennessee” (“Scottsboro Boys” Crime). After getting into a fight with a group of white boys, they got thrown off at the nearest train station. Thinking that the little fight was going to be no big deal, that wasn’t the only thing they were going to get in trouble for. “The assault charges they faced quickly grew much more serious when two female rail-riders, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, accused the black youths of raping them” (“Scottsboro Boys” Encyclopedia). When the girls were questioned by the police, they claimed that the boys had raped them, which was the most serious offense imaginable during the time of the Jim Crow Laws. The International Labor Defense called Leibowitz to defend the boys in their second trial. A lot of people questioned Leibowitz’s decision to take the case and he quickly received many death threats. “He was assigned five uniformed members of the national guard to protect him” (“Scottsboro Boys” Crime). The boys were put in jail for two years until their second trials. Ruby bates came back and completely changed her story. “She testified that she and Victoria Price had made up the rape story to avoid arrest themselves” (“Scottsboro Boys” Crime). Eventually, all the boys escaped from jail or had been set free.…

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By the 1950’s Birmingham, Alabama had represented the best of the new south, but became determined to maintain old racial ways. Political leaders maintained white supremacy with a ferocious combination of arrests, harassment, and violence among black…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The accusations made in the Scottsboro case by Victoria Price and Ruby Bates charged nine black boys with rape and assault. This is also true of the accusations made by Mayella Ewell and her father in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The situations presented are different, however. In the Scottsboro case, the girls said that the accused boys met them while hoboeing on a train car in Alabama. After fighting with and eventually discarding of a group of white boys, the girls stated that the black boys proceeded to rape them on the train car. Ruby Bates was a bit uneven in her accusations and seemed to be going along with whatever Price told the police. This is similar to what happened with Mayella Ewell in the book. After giving an unconvincing story about how Tom Robinson attacked her when she was home alone, it seemed obvious that Mayella was only trying to follow a story given to her, most likely, by her father. In both cases, the accusations are false, though the stories in the cases were believed at the time of the trials.…

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Cited: Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.…

    • 957 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The story of the Scottsboro boys is very similar to the case of Tom Robinson in the story To Kill a Mocking Bird. In The Scottsboro trials, nine boys were accused of assaulting two young girls. Six of those boys were accused of raping the two girls, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price.…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Martin Luther King Jr.'s brilliant dissertation, 'Letter from Birmingham Jail', details injustice, segregation, and inequality in Birmingham, Alabama, 'probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States' (6.344). King's argumentative passages persuade the reader, and add credibility to his vehement and vivid discourse. Schemes and tropes are among the oratorical devices which King uses to communicate with his audience, and stir emotional response. The numerous figures of speech augment the clarity, liveliness, and passion of King's rhetoric.…

    • 670 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Price claimed she was raped by six of the young men, while Bates claimed the other three raped her. The nine men, from Chattanooga and different parts of Georgia, ranged in age from 12 to 20. They were roped together and taken to the Jackson County Jail in Scottsboro, Alabama. That night, a mob gathered outside the jail, but the governor sent in the National Guard to protect the young men, later known as the Scottsboro Boys.…

    • 1441 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ruby Bates and Victoria Price were the names of the girls. Both were considered to be prostitutes. This case was first heard in Scottsboro, Alabama. These boys were then known as the Scottsboro boys. Even though there was medical evidence that proved these boys had not raped the women. All but one of the boys were convicted of rape and sentenced to death (Bagwell “Scottsboro boys”).…

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The most prevalent theme in this book is clearly pointed out all through out the book. Racial prejudice of not just the town’s men, but also of President Roosevelt is made evident through Weaver’s writings. Despite serving in the U.S. Military the men of the 25th were denied the right of a trial. They had no way to defend themselves against their accusations. The people of Brownsville despised the fact that a black regiment was coming to town long before the men got there. This prejudice seemingly led to the framing of the 25th in order to remove their unwanted…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During 1963 and 1964 the Ku Klux Klan was unleashing a rage of hatred across the state of Mississippi. The blacks answered with the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The Mississippi Freedom Summer marked a turning point in the national acknowledgement of the despair going on with the civil rights movement. Many civil rights activists in Mississippi were opposed to certain decisions that should have been made during this time in 1964. Many were conflicting on their thoughts about the white college northerners coming down to help gain national attention towards the movement. Also, during this time frame the slaughtering of three men unfortunately but ultimately helped direct the American public’s eye towards the misery of the African Americans in…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The authorities in the Scottsboro trial were totally wrong. They based their accusations on segregation. If it was white men raping white women they would’ve been let off after learning that the women were lying.…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Scottsboro Trials was a sad tragedy that took place in Alabama during the 1930s. While nine black youth, ages from 13 to 21, were on a train heading to Memphis, Tennessee to find a job, a fight between the nine black youths and a group of white men started. After the white men were kicked out of the train, they reported what had happened to a stationmaster, and the station master stopped the train at a town called Paint Rock. After the train stopped, a group of policed jumped on the train and arrested the nine black youths. When they are caught on the train, two white women, dressed in men’s clothes, were found hiding on the train. Then the two white women accused the nine black youths raping them without any evidence. Because raping in 1930s in the Deep South was a big crime, so many trials started. At the end, every one of the Scottsboro Boys were sentenced to death except for the youngest one, Roy Wright, who was 13 years old. The reason why the jurors did not sentence him to death is because of his age. Although he was not sentenced to death, he was still sentenced for spending his life time in jail (The Scottsboro Case (1931)) (Lanset).…

    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claude McKay and Langston Hughes use their writing skills to vocalize a major social issue during the 1920s. They construct the poems with personification, mood, and tone.…

    • 954 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Obstacles to Unity

    • 1594 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Coming Of Age In Mississippi, Anne Moody's poignant autobiographical account of growing up black in Mississippi in the years surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, allows us to peer through a window into a world that no textbook could accurately represent. What we see forces us to discard any illusions of the Movement: that it was an effortless transition to improved race-relations, that it consisted of a unified Southern black front battling segregation and white oppression, and that the aims of the Movement were satisfied by its end in the 6os. The image of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to the masses about his dream for the nation during the March on Washington rally at the Lincoln Memorial has come to symbolize the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement. Moody's firsthand experience paints a different picture, detailing the struggle and division that served as obstacles to the Movement and to the unity of the black community as a whole. The black South, as depicted in Moody's autobiography, was deeply divided internally by issues of skin tone, economics and age, and externally faced with manipulation and intimidation by whites, factors that together proved a formidable adversary to the unity of the Southern black population.…

    • 1594 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    To Kill a Mockingbird

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The 1930’s in the United States could be described as a reformation period in response to the worst economic collapse in national history. The Great Depression was a battle for all aspects of the American society and in particular, the South, because of its meager efforts for racial equality. The South is well known for being a stronghold of reactionary principles and in To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee composed an earnest tale focused on the lives of two children in Maycomb County. The consistent bigotry exposed in the narrative reveal a principle that African Americans did not receive- the opportunity to receive a fair trial and a slim chance of being found innocent. But who is responsible for not enforcing the laws that are written in the Constitution? The duty of this action falls highly into Maycomb’s restraints on tolerating change and diversity. Whether it was the poor farm families, the middle class townspeople, or the civil force, the historic racial complications set by the slave era established a dreadful social system that unfortunately underlies the rules that operate Maycomb.…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays