More than 80 years after their conviction and almost 15 years after the final man’s death, the Scottsboro Boys can be pardoned for crimes they did not commit.
One of the most tragic cases of racial injustice will finally be addressed now that an Alabama bill has passed to allow posthumous pardons for the Scottsboro Boys, nine black men convicted by multiple all-white juries of raping two white women in 1931.
In an appalling case, the Scottsboro Boys were convicted based solely on the racial prejudice of the time that black men were violent, sexual animals. One judge refused to admit into evidence proof that the two alleged victims were most likely lying. Despite Ruby Bates recanting her statement that the nine men had raped her and her friend Victoria Price, the Scottsboro Boys were forced into horrible prison conditions for years as they went through multiple trials and appeals, and eight of them were sentenced to death, though all were eventually released from prison.
The appeals of the trials resulted in U.S. Supreme Court decisions that criminal defendants are entitled to effective counsel and that blacks cannot be systematically excluded from criminal juries, a huge step for the civil rights movement. And now, nearly a century later, Alabama’s posthumous pardon bill attempts to rectify the injustices not just of the Scottsboro Boys’ trials but of any cases more than 80 years old in which it is proven that a pardon would remedy social injustices associated with racial discrimination.
Unfortunately, there are still a lot of ‘i’s to dot and ‘t’s to cross before the pardons can be officially issued. The bill was passed and signed by Gov. Robert Bentley in April, but there are applications and public hearings that must still be done, and Sheila Washington, founder of the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center in northeast Alabama, said that will happen soon. Although she has not yet filed the paperwork, Washington has no intention of stopping now; in fact, she is hopeful that public interest in this case will help her track down the unknown burial sites for five of the nine men so that she can mark the graves with tombstones noting the Scottsboro Boys’ place in American history.
“Trust me. It is not going away after we got it this far.”
Photos: AP/File