MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History March 25, 1931: The authorities arrested the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama and charged them with rape. The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American youths, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused of raping two white women. A lynch mob tried to murder them before they had even been indicted. All-white juries convicted each of them. Several judges gave death sentences, a common practice in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women. The Communist Party and the NAACP fought to get the cases appealed and retried. IWW cofounder Lucy Parsons and many other radicals also supported the cause. Finally, after numerous retrials and years in harsh prisons, four of the Scottsboro Boys were acquitted and released. The other five were got sentences ranging from 75 years to death. All were released or escaped by 1946. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes wrote it in his work Scottsboro Limited. And Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son was influenced by the case. It is believed that the case influenced Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which has a scene with a lynch mob going after a jailed African American man that is reminiscent of the lynch mob that went after the jailed Scottsboro Boys. Lead Belly did a song called “The Scottsboro Boys,” in which he tells listeners to “stay woke” when travelling through the South. Rage Against the Machine provides images of the Scottsboro Boys, and Sacco and Vanzetti, in their music video “No Shelter.”
The image accompanying this article is of an International Red Aid propaganda poster in Russian and Uzbek language that reads: "Wrest eight innocent young negroes out of the hands of the American bourgeoisie!" A U.S. cop is depicted in front of the Nazi swastika with baton raised against food rioters.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #scottsboroboys #racism #lynching #rape #prison #langstonhughes #richardwright #novel #naacp #communism #books #author #writer #fiction #alabama #BlackMastodon @bookstadon
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