The Scottsboro case had several things that really made it different. First was the number of defendants. We are talking about sentencing in this case eight people to die on one day. They were very young. It was the times that made the Scottsboro case. We are in the middle of a depression. Issues of race, while they have been on the back burner in American History for 20 or 30 years, are finally beginning to emerge. Black Americans are no longer willing to tolerate the continuing oppression. Legally, politically and economically. It was like the grass was dry. The Scottsboro case was the flame that ignited the beginnings of black protest and black activism on a national scale in the 1930's.

Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were both young working class women in North Alabama Huntsville. They worked in the mills. This was remember the great depression. They worked haphazardly and were paid very poorly. They were struggling. And they traveled into Chattanooga, across the state line from Alabama, supposedly looking for work. It was really more of a lark.

The accusations made against the defendants in this case were certainly made almost immediately after they were taken off the train. The real dispute is about who made the accusations and what elicited them. I concluded after looking at all the evidence that I could that it was actually Ruby Bates who first said that they had been raped. Even though she later claimed that "Victoria Price told me to say that." That sounds reasonable in view of the fact that Price was a much more ingenious and resourceful person in this case. But the fact of the matter is a lot of issues in criminal cases, we'll never know with absolute certitude when, precisely when the accusation was made or the circumstances under which it was made.

For these nine teenagers, it was a night of terror. Haywood Patterson became the best known of the Scottsoboro defendants. Outside the Scottsoboro jail all of the sheriff, he called for support from the governor and the governor sent him the National Guard. Until the National Guard arrived, Patterson and the other Scottsoboro defendants, like any young black men of the time, knew what usually happened to individuals who were accused of rape. They were waiting and expecting to be pulled from that jail and lynched.

The assignment of counsel to this defendants in Scottsboro case was not what any of us would wish in a capital case. Local community leaders in Chatanooga, which is where several of the defendants, had come from, managed to raise about $50.00, which even in the Depression wasn't a lot of money. They persuaded a local attorney who had a number of black clients to go down to Scottsoboro. The problem was that, first, he wasn't very good. Second, he didn't know Alabama law. And third, he was drunk. According to...one of the prosecutors, when he walked into the court room he was so drunk he couldn't stand up. He was terrified for one thing. He knew what what might happen to him as the attorney for these defendants.

He made it clear to the court that he was there simply to advise these clients, but he was not familiar with Alabama law and didn't feel comfortable leading the defense. And at that point, one member of the bar in Scottsboro, who again by the reports of a number of individuals was semi-senile, certainly not a first rate attorney stepped forward and said he would assist. So these two men with less than 25 minutes to meet with their clients had them as their clients and these nine defendants went on trial for their life. That was it. No preparation. No background. These two attorneys unprepared, unqualified really, were only standing between these nine individuals and the electric chair. And it turned out not to be a very sturdy boardwalk.

The problem for the defense was that without adequate preparation, without having had a chance to interview not only their clients, but the other defendants, they had no idea who was gonna say what. And once they got them on the witness stand, essentially their only defense was to be able to put their own clients on the witness stand and the other defendants who were being tried in separate trials. Understandably, these young men were frightened. They had been told, they later said, that if they testified against each other then they might get off. So what happened within hours, and it was the longest trial, it took about 5 hours was they began accusing each other. And under those circumstances, given the absence of any alternative evidence, it's easy to see why the jury could reach its verdict.

The first trial in Scottsoboro took about 5 hours. As soon as the jury was removed in the case of the first two defendants who were being tried, the second trial began of Haywood Patterson, the most famous of the Scottsoboro defendants. And that trial had only been in progress a very short period of time when the first, the jury in the first case reached its verdict. The Patterson jury was removed to a separate room. But when that first jury announced that Norris and Charlie Weams were guilty and were to be sentenced to the electric chair, the crowd broke out in a riotous celebration. Shouting and cheering. And when the word passed on to the crowd outside, which was several thousand, then the cheering picked up again. This was unnerving even to think about, it had a particular legal importance. And that was, that the United States Supreme Court had ruled in an earlier case from Arkansas, Moore versus Dempsey in 1925, that whenever there was a trial was not a real trial, it was simply a formality in which the mob exercised its will through a jury because the jury was intimidated in some way, then it wasn't really a trial.

The International Labor Defense, which was the legal affiliate of the Communist Party, stepped in and managed to contact the parents of the Scottsoboro defendants and persuade them to sign, since many of them were minors, persuade them to sign an agreement, in which the International Labor Defense would represent their interests. There ensued after that this bitter struggle, because all of a sudden the NAACP realized that this was going to be one of the great civil rights cases of the time. And after first hesitating, they felt that they were better equipped in terms of legal expertise.

Clarence Darrow got involved in the case. The NAACP persuaded Clarence Darrow to take over the defense if the young men and their families should switch their allegiance to the NAACP. But they didn't. They stuck with the ILD.

I think most of the [newspaper] editors in Northern Alabama were so pleased that the Scottsoboro defendants weren't lynched, that they tended to forget that a trial was more than simply a formality. So what they did was to congratulate themselves and the courts at great length for observing the pro forma, at least, the appearance of a trial.

The local press had extraordinarily inflammatory accounts of this alleged rape based upon supposively the statements of some of the defendants, the women who were complaining. It would have been extraordinarily difficult for them to get a fair trial under those circumstances. And then once the trials were held, the editors of these newspapers...throughout the state, seemed filled with pride that they had managed to avoid a lynching. They had gone through with the trials. Everything had been done legally and properly. And they were stunned when the rest of the country didn't think this was acceptable.

The initial response to the Scottsboro convictions was not that great. There was a small story in the New York Times. The Associated Press ran an account. No newspapers outside the region sent reporters to that original trial. There was an Associated Press reporter. And there were some local newspaper reporters. I think we have to say that it was the Communist Party and and its mobilization of mass protest that really brought this case to the national attention.

It was able to put thousands of people on the street. And, I mean this is the beginning of an era in which demonstrations began to capture at least public attention. There wasn't television in the 1930s, but the news media begins to treat this as a serious issue. And then once the ball started rolling, and once other groups, including Southern groups, like the Southern Regional Council, at that time it was called Commission on Interracial Cooperation, it sent investigators to try to see what the Scottsboro, and they were appalled by what they'd found. They became convinced very early on, investigators for the CIC, that these defendants were not guilty, or at the very least that they had not received a fair trial.

Well, [the Scottsboro boys] were originally, of course, kept in jail. And then they were sent down to Kilby. It's probably not pleasant being on death row in any prison in this country. But Kilby Prison in Alabama was a kind of hell. These defendants were sent there to wait in isolation for their execution, which is what the courts had set while this appeals process ground slowly along. They were frightened, isolated. Didn't know what was going on.

And it was a kind of on going terror. Initially, of course, they are not out in the prison proper. They are on death row. And they're isolated in these cells. and so they're not subject to the kind of abuse that was characteristic of the prison system at this time.

The International Labor Defense made a decision early on that they were going to try to get the best attorney that they could get. And I think somewhat to their surprise, Samuel Lebowitz volunteered his services. He certainly had had compiled an outstanding record as a defense attorney. Often defending gangsters and rather unsavory types. He was anxious to take on the case and certainly it would've been hard for the International Labor Defense to find any, attorney who had more criminal experience than Sam Lebowitz did.

Sam Lebowitz took on the case probably for a mixture of purely mercenary reasons. I think he was politically ambitious. He wanted to be a judge and he realized that being known as a defender of the Scottsboro Boys was a lot more attractive in New York in the 1930's than being the defender of mobsters. But there was an element, I think, of idealism...in Lebowitz. I think he was moved by the predicament of the Scottsboro defendants. And once he got into the case, then he really became emotionally involved.

Tom Knight was the Attorney General, a young man in his 40s. Ambitious. And like any politician knew a good issue when he saw it. He was, at that time, Attorney General, was standing for re-election. But everyone who knew him said he hoped to be governor. That was his, his ultimate goal. And although he certainly is the chief prosecuting attorney of the state, would not normally have become involved in a criminal case like this. As soon as the International Labor of Defense took over the case, as soon as it was appealed, Knight immediately took the lead. Not only in representing the state in the appeals to the Supreme Court, but later even in the prosecutions in the case. A number of people who knew him said he was charming, pleasant outside the courtroom. In the courtroom, he was a fierce competitor.

I saw Victoria Price testify many years later in a defamation trial. She was a performer from beginning to end. Vivacious, energetic, assertive. As though she knew absolutely what the facts were. Clever at times whenever she could get cornered. Placed in a difficult position. She knew how to change the subject often by diverting it to race or by insisting that she didn't remember. She was very good at that.

Southern whites watching Samuel Lebowitz of New York -- Jewish, abrasive, aggressive, attaching Victoria Price on the witness stand, as he had always done in any case he had ever taken -- they saw it not simply as a defense attorney doing his duty, but as someone attacking white Southern womanhood. And although Victoria Price didn't fit the profile -- working class from a poor background, a mill girl -- nevertheless she was white and she was a woman. And to Southerners Lebowitz's attack on her was an attack on the South, white Southern woman. And they were outraged. Angered by his demeanor.

The original trial in Scottsboro, it wasn't really much of a trial. But in the trial in 1933 before Judge James Edwin Horton, in which Lebowitz for the first time defended the Scottsboro boys. He not only successfully attacked the credibility of Victoria Price in a number of different ways, simply in cross examination, but he presented a whole alternative explanation for the evidence in the case. That is, critical pieces of evidence for the prosecution were Victoria Price's statements. And the only real corroboration that she had was a medical testimony of a Scottsboro doctor that he found evidence of sexual intercourse at some time in the preceding 24 hours before the alleged rape. That's really all the State had.

[Leibowitz] had to explain that medical evidence. And here is where he had some help from Judge Horton. Because Judge Horton allowed him to introduce any background evidence that he wanted, that is Lebowitz entered any just background evidence that he wanted, to explain the evidence of semen in her vagina, which is what the doctor testified to. He brought in a witness named Lester Carter who was another hobo on the train who testified that the reason that Victoria Price showed evidence of sexual intercourse was because she had voluntary sexual intercourse with her boyfriend the night before at a hobo jungle in Chattanooga. And so Lebowitz introduced this critical piece of information in the trial.

Lebowitz never believed in that trial before Judge Horton that he would get a Alabama court to rule on the issue of the absence of black jurors. The Supreme Court had abstractly ruled that you could not have all-white juries.

In most Southern states, juries were always white. No blacks were ever placed in the jury pool or called. And so what Lebowitz wanted to do was to establish a record for the appeal. And one of the first things that he did in Decatur, which is where the second set of trials took place, was to begin calling a number of very distinguished, educated members of the black community in Decatur. And asked them if they had ever been asked to serve on a jury, or knew any black citizen who had ever been asked to serve on a jury.

One other tactic that Lebowitz followed in this case was to show the other improbability or impossibility of the attack having taken place the way the State insisted. He got the Lionel Train Company to manufacture a large replica of the train, including the gondola cars, the open cars which had the tank cars and box cars. And he had this full-sized replica sized train put in the courtroom. And then he got the various deputy sheriffs and law enforcement officers and members of the posse who had taken the defendants and Victoria Price and Ruby Street off the train, and got them to point out where they had taken them off the train. And this was a very long freight train. And what he showed was that it was virtually impossible for some of these individuals to have even reached the car where the rape supposively took place. And yet, Victoria Price emphatically identified some of these individuals as having raped her. It was really more than improbable. It was impossible.

In the trials before Judge Horton in 1933, one of the tactics that Lebowitz wanted to use was to attack the credibility and the character of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. And that meant introducing evidence that they had been arrested for prostitution. Realize in that in the 1990's, this is a ticklish subject. But in the 1930's no one had any inhibitions about doing this whatsoever. It's interesting that Judge Horton was very careful about this. He he allowed information about Ruby Bates and Victoria Price to be brought into the trial only to challenge their credibility.

One of the main parts of Victoria Price's story and Ruby Bates's story from the beginning that they had traveled on that freight train because they had gone looking for work. But Lebowitz was able to show that in fact they had not done so.

She claimed to have stayed in a boarding house. But the defense had a private detective look at every street, every boarding house in Chattanooga, and no such person as Victoria Price and Ruby Bates had ever stayed in a boarding house in Chattanooga. In short, they were lying. And once a witness of course is lying, a complainant in this case, then it should open up the way for the defense to raise credible doubts on the part of the jury.

Lebowitz thought that he had put together this extraordinary case and so did a lot of outside observers. But juries are not blank slates. They reacted to a lot of cues that Lebowitz just wasn't aware of. I mean, his attack on Victoria Price for example. Southern men -- this is an all-male, white jury -- saw that as an attack on Southern womanhood. He didn't realize how much he had antagonized the jury. For example, at several points in the trial he objected to the way in which Knight was badgering black witnesses. And asked Knight, in fact demanded, that he stop calling them by their first names. Well this horrified the jury. The thought that you would be expected to call black witnesses Mr. or Mrs., which is something that wasn't done. And so in case after case, Lebowitz I think stepped in cultural traps that he simply wasn't prepared to read correctly.

In the original trials in Scottsboro, there were two physicians in the town. Both of them testified. In the trial before Judge Horton, the prosecuting attorney, Attorney General Knight explained to the judge they were only gonna call the senior doctor, Dr. R. R. Bridges, and not Dr. Lynch, who was the younger physician. Simply to expedite the case, he said. But later on that morning, the bailiff came to see Judge Horton during a brief break in the trail and he said, "Dr. Lynch is desperate to see you." These were informal times. They met in the men's room, the only private place they could find. The bailiff stood outside. Judge Horton asked him why they were meeting. And Lynch said, "I haven't been dropped from the case because I'm simply gonna repeat Dr. Bridges. In fact, he said, "I told the Attorney General that I didn't believe these young women were raped. I saw no evidence of this at all. And that's what I was gonna testify." Horton remembered it many years afterwards, vividly. He said, "My God, doctor, is this whole thing a horrible mistake?" And Lynch said, "I just don't believe a rape took place. Sorry."

Everyone who knew [Judge Horton] had a kind of a double description of him. And the first thing they all commented on his dignity. Several people compared him to a young Abraham Lincoln. He had that kind of rangy look to him. But everyone commented on the fact that although he ran an informal courtroom in some ways, he was extraordinarily knowledgeable and kept a tight control over what was happening in his courtroom.

William Washington Callahan, who replaced Judge Horton in the Scottsboro trials, could not have been more different in a number of ways. "Speed" was his nickname. Whereas Horton had been relaxed, he'd allowed photographers in the courtroom. He'd allowed typewriters in the courtroom. One of the first things Callahan said was "There ain't gonna be no picture taking in this trial." And he made every effort to keep the press as far away from the case as he possibly could. He constantly tried to move the case along. But more importantly, I think, than his emphasis upon, upon expediting the case, was the fact that he always ruled against the defense. I think one would be hard pressed looking at the record of the trials for Judge Callahan defined a single instance in which he ever ruled in favor of the defense if it were the least bit uncertain.

In the arguments for the United States Supreme Court, it's rather a dramatic moment in which Lebowitz and Knight, just as they'd squared off in the courtroom, now they squared off before the United States Supreme Court. And Knight insisted that the court does not have the right to go behind the evidence. That it is their job is to look at the law. Not the facts in the case. But in an extraordinary action -- at least one scholar has claimed it's the first time that this has happened -- members of the court actually asked to look at the ledgers. To look at the evidence of forgery themselves. And although we don't know that that's the key reason, we do know that the Supreme Court in this case ended up giving a new trial on the basis of the fact that blacks had been systematically excluded from the the jury rolls in that county.

Getting toward the end of the 1930's, most people at Alabama were sick of the case. This had been going on for six years. And although is still had a kind of political pop to it, it was no longer, it was no longer the kind of emotional issue it had been.

The problem for the defense by 1937 was that they were running out of grounds on which to appeal to the federal courts. They knew they weren't going to get any relief from the Alabama courts. That was obvious. And they had already won two major Supreme Court decisions. And I think Lebowitz and, and many of the members of the Scottsboro defense team, which by this time was no longer under the control of the Communist Party, felt like they had thrown the dice about as many times as they could. And the best thing to do was to try to work out some kind of some kind of settlement in the case. The state got convictions in five cases. And then four of thedefendants were released. The State gave a vague explanation that the evidence wasn't quite as strong.

The fact of the matter was, they released these four defendants on the precisely at the same evidence that they had convicted the other five. And as a number of observers pointed out, the Scottsboro defendants were either guilty or innocent. They couldn't be half guilty and half innocent.

In the last set of trials, Lebowitz, some what reluctantly, agrees to step back a little bit. interestingly enough, it's Judge Horton who persuades one of his friends, Clarence Watts, who's a distinguished attorney from North Alabama. He persuades Watts to really put his career on the line by agreeing to join this bunch of Yankee New York attorneys to defend the Scottsboro Boys.

It...required a great deal of courage for an Alabama lawyer to step forward in this case.

The Scottsboro case is not he first time when Southerners have suddenly found themselves on the siege....And it's a long tradition going back to abolitionism and the Civil War and reconstructure. And there is this reflexive reaction that whenever Yankees, outsiders attack, white Southerners bristle and retaliate. And it does become, as Lebowitz said in his final summation in the 1937 trial of Charlie Weems, it becomes not a question of guilt or innocence, but of us versus them. New York Yankees, Jews versus Alabama citizens who are simply defending their state and their state's rights. And Alabama's motto is, "We dare defend our rights. It's a kind of belligerent motto in some ways. And it reflects this truculence, I think, whenever the state comes under attack. And by 1937, they were rubbed pretty raw from the attacks on the the criminal justice system. Rightly so.

Leibowitz wanted Ruby Bates, even though she hadn't been a very good witness before Judge Horton. He needed her, given the limits that Callahan had placed on the defense. He needed her in that case. But Ruby Bates lost her nerve.

She was attacked. She was threatened. She had to be hustled out of the state after that case. And she was terrified. She simply would not go back.

She complained of illness and emotional problems. And Callahan wasn't about to allow any kind of delay. And he certainly wasn't about to allow her to give any kind of interrogatory statements outside the court.

Because Judge Callahan would not delay the trial and they couldn't get, and Lebowitz couldn't get, Ruby Bates to testify before Judge Callahan, he tried to get Callahan to allow her testimony in the trial before Judge Horton to be introduced into the record. So that at least he could present this to the jury. But Callahan would not allow it.

In my letter of support for Clarence Norris' pardon, and supporting the notion that he was innocent, I said: Of course, there were people who believed he was guilty. But there were also people that believed that it was a flat Earth. And joined something called a Flat Earth Society. But I believed it was easier to believe in a flat earth than it was the guilt of Clarence Norris. And I didn't see how any reasonable person could look at the evidence in the case and not conclude that he was entitled a full and unconditional pardon.

It's no accident that the Scottsboro case became such a central thing, I think, to African Americans. Because it was their denial of rights under the law which were the most pressing, the most grievous, in the 1930's and throughout much of the 20th century. And they saw rightly in that case....the way in which the Scottsboro defendants, in a sense, stood in for all black Americans who had had to suffer at the hands of all-white juries, white prosecutors, white judges -- a system which did not allow them to take part as equals.

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