BLACK HISTORY
Mumia and the Scottsboro Brothers
By Monica Moorehead
and Leslie Feinberg
The struggle to save African American death-row
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal from execution has been aptly compared
to the cases of Sacco and Vanzetti and Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg. They all involve attempts by the state to put to
death political activists and, in doing so, to deepen a period
of right-wing reaction.
But the frame-up of Abu-Jamal is also racist
through and through. And from this standpoint, it recalls what
has been characterized as the "trial of the century": the 1930s
frame-up of the Scottsboro Brothers in Alabama.
The nine Scottsboro Brothers were arrested in
1931, during the depths of the capitalist economic depression.
Racist lynchings and Jim Crow segregation were the law of the
land throughout the South.
On March 25, a sheriff's posse stopped a
Southern Railroad freight train in Paint Rock, Ala. In those
days, an estimated 200,000 adults and children were illegally
riding the rails from town to town looking for work.
The posse--dozens of white men with
guns--rounded up the nine young African American men they found
on the train. Four were Black teenagers from Chattanooga,
Tenn., who were going to Memphis following a rumor about
government jobs hauling logs on the Mississippi River there.
Victoria Price and Ruby Bates--two young white women, dressed
in overalls--were also on the train. They were returning to
Huntsville, Ala., from an unsuccessful job hunt in the
Chattanooga cotton mills.
The nine African American youths were Roy
Wright, Andrew Wright, Eugene Williams, Haywood Patterson, Olen
Montgomery, Charlie Weems, Willie Roberson, Ozie Powell, and
Clarence Norris. They ranged in ages from 12 to 20 years old.
The posse tied them together with plow line and hauled them off
to jail on a flat-bed truck.
During questioning by the police, Price and
Bates--both vulnerable to morals charges--reportedly claimed
that the African American youths had raped them. Hours later a
frenzied lynch mob encircled the jail and the governor was
forced to call in the National Guard.
From the days of the slavocracy and the
counter-revolutionary terror used to destroy Black
Reconstruction, the baseless charge of rape of a white woman by
an African American man was the most frequently used excuse for
racist lynchings.
Why they weren't executed
"No crime in American history--let alone a
crime that never occurred--produced as many trials,
convictions, reversals, and retrials," historian Douglas O.
Linder wrote about the trials of the Scottsboro Nine, which
continued until 1937.
During the first trial, an all-white jury
sentenced eight of the defendants to death. Only Roy Wright was
given a life sentence, because he was the youngest. Before the
eight could be executed, the case went to the United State
Supreme Court. There the convictions were reversed and a new
trial was ordered.
Despite evidence of their innocence and glaring
grounds for mistrial, every trial led to a conviction. Yet
although each of the defendants spent years in jail, none was
executed.
What blocked the executions and continued to
win new legal opportunities? Mass organizing in defense of the
Scottsboro defendants.
The International Labor Defense committee, led
by individuals from the Communist Party USA, spearheaded the
defense. The ILD secured Samuel Leibowitz--a Jewish lawyer
hailed as one of the most prominent attorneys in the
country--to defend the nine.
Mass marches and rallies were held in virtually
all major U.S. cities. Telegrams and letters poured in to the
White House, the Alabama governor's mansion and to the
courts.
Angry, militant protests targeted U.S.
embassies and consulates throughout Latin America and
Europe.
Prominent figures in the United States spoke
out in defense of the Scottsboro Nine. They included well-known
Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen,
and white journalist Lincoln Steffens. Actor James Cagney
donated funds to the defense. Muriel Rukeyser, a well-known
poet and political activist, traveled to Alabama for the trial
to support the Nine.
In 1933, Ruby Bates told a Baltimore rally of
5,000 that the Scottsboro Nine "were framed by the bosses of
the South and two girls. I was one of the girls and I want you
to know that I am sorry I said what I did at the first trial,
but I was forced to say it ... and now I am willing to join
hands with Black and white to get them free."
Mass support saved the lives of the Scottsboro
defendants. But it took many years to secure their freedom. On
Oct. 25, 1976, the governor of Alabama pardoned Clarence
Norris, the last to be released from prison.
Today, there are parallels between the case of
the Scottsboro Brothers and that of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Overwhelming evidence points to his innocence. The police stand
accused of constructing the racist frame-ups. Widespread
support has given witnesses the courage to come forward and
explain that the police intimidated them into lying.
What will it take to stop the execution and win
a new trial for Abu-Jamal? Mass protests. That's the lesson of
the Scottsboro Nine trials.
Today, as momentum builds for the April 24
national "Millions for Mumia" mobilization in Philadelphia, you
can hear the widespread determination to organize for victory
in this case as activists from all walks of life vow: "Brick by
brick, wall by wall, we're gonna free Mumia Abu-Jamal!"
This article is copyright under a Creative
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