Download Your Copy The Trial Of The Scottsboro Boys Articulated By David Aretha File Format Audio Book

is an easytoread straightforward book about the trials, appeals, and aftermath of detention of the Nine Scottsboro Boys a story that galvanized the nation at the time of the Depression, and lasted until the last Scottsboro boy was released in.


The Boys were part of a group of African American youth that had hopped a freight train in Tennessee, hoping to find work hauling logs on the Mississippi River.
En route to Memphis, though, the train would dip into Alabama, On the train, they encountered a group of white boys harsh words were exchanged and a fight ensued.
Although the whites started the fight they lost it, Some of the white boys were thrown off the train and they in turn sought revenge by claiming at the next stop they had been attacked.
A couple of white girls who had nothing to do with the fight or either group of boys, claimed the blacks had raped them.
The entire fabricated story was intended by the whites to exact revenge against the blacks for losing the fight and being thrown off the train, so they had no problem with the additional lies of girls since it would only make the conviction and execution of the boys that much more certain.
The reality at the time in the South was such that racism was widespread, and Jim Crow was in effect the Scottsboro Boys could have been lynched then and there for their purported that is "phony" crimes simply on the word of the whites.
They were lucky they were not lynched, yet given the hostile crowds that surrounded the courthouse for their trials, it is unlikely they could have received a fair trial in Alabama.
It took years of organizing, appeals, even the intercession of Eleanor Roosevelt, to finally prove they did not rape the white girls, and nor had they started the fight with the white boys.
This book details the protracted struggle to save their lives, and also describes the often tragic lives they led after they were released.


Here are some quotes from the book:

"Through sharecropping plantation owners kept African Americans economically enslaved.
Black sharecroppers owed so much to the white landowners for rent, food, and farming equipment that they were perpetually in debt.
Any black male arrested for even the pettiest infraction could be forced to serve as free labor for a white man.
"

"The dream of a classless society appealed to many in the United States, and the attraction of communism grew more appealing after the sock market crash ofand the ensuing Great Depression that devastated the economy and left millions unemployed during thes.
The Communist party of the USA, also knows as the Communist Party USA or CPUSA, operated under the slogan "the united front from below.
"

"The CPUSA worked to attract members regardless of race, and the injustices of racism and racial segregation created ample opportunities to attract African Americans.
The CPUSA developed social and charitable organizations such as the Harlem Unemployment Council in New York City, to get their message into the African American community.
Another CPUSA organization, the International Labor Defense ILD, was established to protest racial discrimination, police brutality, and lynching,and in some cases the ILD provided free legal counsel to black defendants.
"

"After the ILD got involved in the Scottsboro case in the spring of, Communists and black Alabamians began to work more closely together.
Several black men formed the Alabama Share Croppers Union and made a list of demands from landlords, including the continuation of food advances, the right of sharecroppers to market their own crops, and a minimum wage ofa day.
They also demanded freedom for the Scottsboro Boys, "

"For many reasons, the case of the Scottsboro boys is still discussed today at universities throughout the country.
First and foremost, the two Supreme court decisions that resulted from the trials strengthened defendants' rights, In Powell v. Alabama, the court determined that in capital cases in not just federal courts but state courts as well defendants must be given access to counsel upon request.
Subsequent decisions would strengthen the defendant's right to counsel, culminating in Gideon v, Wainwright, when the Supreme Court said that defendants in all crimes must be provided an attorney if they could not afford one.


"In Norris v, Alabama, the Supreme Court put the nation on notice that excluding citizens from juries based on race was unconstitutional.
Southern officials would try to skirt this ruling for many more years, but by thes most juries would be integrated, even in the South.
"

"In addition to the Supreme Court decisions, the media coverage of the Scottsboro cases shone a bright light on the ugly face of Jim Crow.
Fromto, Northern newspapers, including papers that were widely read in black urban communities, decried the unjust treatment of African Americans in the South.
Rallies were staged in new York, Washington, and other major cities, including some in Europe, The hugely influential Life magazine ran a photo essay on the imprisoned Scottsboro Boys, and Americans got to know them not as dispensable "criminals" but as unjustly treated human beings.
"

"Then there was the Scottsboro case, the most prominent civil rightsrelated case of the first half of the twentieth century.
Although the boys suffered unspeakable injustices, their case, in the long term especially, was a strong blow to Jim Crow.
"

"It also revealed to many in the North how fearful and paranoid white leaders were.
It seemed that many whites lived in such fear of interracial sex that even the flimsiest accusation of rape was enough to produce a lynch mob and send eight innocent young men to death row.
"

"It also revealed how white Southerners hotly resented "outside agitators," such as the "New York Jew" Samuel Leibowitz one of the leading criminal defense lawyers in America.
Whites responded to black unionization and Communist infiltration with house raids, arrests, convictions, and shootings, "

"Many southern educators, legal experts, and other educated men and women believed in the defendants' innocence, even though few of them were willing to take a public stance.
The story of the Scottsboro boys is a tragic tale, filled with lies, bigotry, hatred, and ignorance.
Lives were ruined, and the legal system broke down time and time again, But it is also a story of courage and perseverance,

"As Clarence Norris said, after finally receiving his pardon infortyfive years after his arrest, "The lesson to black people, to my children, to everybody, is that you should always fight for your rights even if it cost you your life.
Stand up for your rights, even if it kills you, That's all that life consists of, "

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about a horrible case of nearlynching in the South that instead resulted in not only two landmark Supreme Court

decisions, but also the eventual vindication and freedom of the unjustly accused Boys themselves.
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