Scottsboro Case

Scottsboro Case, legal case developing from the arrest, on March 9, 1931, of nine young blacks, in Scottsboro, Alabama, for the alleged rape of two white girls. The following month, although the evidence against them consisted largely of the testimony of the girls involved, one of whom subsequently recanted, eight of the accused were sentenced to death and the ninth, only 13 years old, to life imprisonment. Many Americans, including such eminent lawyers as Clarence Darrow, considered the verdict unfounded and brought about by racial bias; civic organizations supported the Scottsboro boys, as they came to be called, and their case became an international cause célèbre. After six years of appeals and retrials, during which the U.S. Supreme Court twice declared mistrials, five of the original indictments were dropped. The remaining four men received long prison terms. Heywood Patterson, regarded by the prosecution as the leader of the group, drew 75 years. By 1946 all were paroled except Patterson, who, two years later, escaped to Michigan, where the state government refused to extradite him to Alabama. Patterson was coauthor of Scottsboro Boy (1950).