Scottsboro

On March 25, 1931, nine black teenagers are arrested in Alabama and accused of raping two white women on a freight train. The following day, they are almost lynched by a mob that gathers in front of the Scottsboro jail, where they are being held. A grand jury indicts them almost immediately, and a trial begins on April 6. Until that very morning, the defendants do not even have a lawyer. After a remarkably short trial, the all-white jury finds the accused guilty and sentences all but one to death. The unseemly speed and rampant racism of the case horrify many people, and the incident escalates into a national scandal.

Sure of the youngsters' innocence, the judge orders a retrial, but again, the men are found guilty and sentenced to death. An appeal to the Supreme Court results in a landmark ruling in which the court finds that the defendants had ineffective counsel.

In January 1933, a famous northern lawyer, Samuel S. Leibowitz, is retained by the International Labor Defense to represent the "Scottsboro Boys." As the evidence was so poor — a year earlier one of the women had recanted her story, and the other had a contradictory story from the start — Leibowitz is stunned when yet another death sentence is handed down. After years of legal fighting, all the defendants will finally go free. By that time, they will have served a sum total of more than 100 years — for a crime they didn't commit.

Scottsboro Limited By Prentiss Taylor Dedicated to Langston Hughes 1931, Library of Congress