Opinion: The saga of Clarence Norris and the Scottsboro Boys

In this May 1, 1935, file photo, New York attorney Samuel Leibowitz, second left, meets with seven of the Scottsboro defendants at the jail in Scottsboro, Ala., just after he asked the governor to pardon the nine youths held in the case. From left are Deputy Sheriff Charles McComb, Leibowitz and defendants Roy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Robertson, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems and Andy Wright.

In this May 1, 1935, file photo, New York attorney Samuel Leibowitz, second left, meets with seven of the Scottsboro defendants at the jail in Scottsboro, Ala., just after he asked the governor to pardon the nine youths held in the case. From left are Deputy Sheriff Charles McComb, Leibowitz and defendants Roy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Robertson, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems and Andy Wright. AP

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Published: 01-06-2025 6:01 AM

Modified: 01-07-2025 12:59 PM


Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.

Back in 1980, when I was a young activist living in Boston, I had the opportunity to hear Clarence Norris speak. He was the last surviving Scottsboro Boy. He died in 1989. Norris came to Boston to rally support for Willie Sanders, a Black man from Dorchester who had been wrongfully accused of committing a series of rapes in the Allston-Brighton section of Boston.

That night I remember Norris saying, “Nothing has changed as far as framing innocent Black men are concerned.”

The story that Norris told should be widely known. The Scottsboro Boys were nine young Black men who in 1931 were accused of raping two white women. The case became an international cause celebre. After years of Jim Crow, the defense of the Scottsboro Boys became the first interracial civil rights effort in 40 years. All over the nation, Black and white people held demonstrations protesting and demanding freedom for the nine.

Segregation was the legally-maintained way of life in the United States back then. Since the 1890s, white people generally had acquiesced to white supremacy and had a weak history of opposing racism. Scottsboro was a turning point away from that acquiescence.

The country was plunged into the Great Depression and times were desperate. Unemployment and hunger ruled. The nine Black males who became the Scottsboro Boys were hoboing on a train, traveling and looking for work. After a conflict with a group of white men who they kicked off the train, word spread about the fight. When the train, which was moving very slowly, reached Paint Rock, Alabama, a crowd of white men gathered including some who had earlier been forced off that train.

Two white women appeared and claimed they had been raped by the Black men. A lynching almost occurred but the local sheriff managed to get the nine to a jail in Scottsboro, Alabama. Higher authorities called in the National Guard because the situation was so volatile. Norris said, “I knew if a white woman accused aBlack man of rape, he was as good as dead. All I could think was I was going to die for something I had not done.”

Norris was 19. Only four of the nine even knew each other. One was 13 years old.

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Southern white men were obsessed with the idea that Black men had an insatiable sexual appetite for white women. Most lynchings were about that fantasy. The two women in the Scottsboro case, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, had a past history of prostitution but they were transformed into paragons of white purity. Southerners saw the case as an attack on Southern womanhood.

Thousands came to Scottsboro for the trial. Two hundred National Guard ringed the courthouse. On the morning of the trial, a drunk 70-year-old real estate attorney who spent 20 minutes with the defendants before trial took the case and urged them to plead guilty. The lawyer had not tried a case in decades. Besides the defendants, there were no Black people allowed in the courtroom. The jury was all white men.

The trial lasted three days and all were found guilty of rape. Eight of nine defendants got the death penalty and one received life in prison. Of note, Ruby Bates could not identify any of her attackers. Price and Bates claimed they were raped at knife and gunpoint but no weapons were ever found. Nor was any medical evidence indicating rape produced at trial.

Outside the courthouse, huge crowds partied. When the sentences were announced, the crowd went wild with joy. People danced in the street. Bands struck up “Dixie” and “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

Three weeks after the trial, the International Labor Defense (ILD), a group connected to the Communist Party USA, decided to throw its resources into the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. They appealed the verdict to higher courts and fought off execution dates. The defendants’ cells were close to the chamber with the electric chair. Lights dimmed in their cells whenever that chair was utilized.

Clarence Norris watched eight coffins be brought into the prison yard. He was scheduled to die that evening. A telegram arrived late in the day. He and the others received a stay of execution. Their case went to the U.S, Supreme Court and the Court ruled 7-2 in Powell v Alabama that the defendants had received ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of due process. The Scottsboro case was the first case in which the Supreme Court held a state accountable to provide an adequate defense.

In an effort to get the Scottsboro Boys the best defense, the ILD reached out in unexpected fashion. They retained Samuel Leibowitz, possibly the best-known criminal defense attorney in the country. Leibowitz took the case pro bono. The Court had ordered a new trial. Leibowitz had a spectacular record of success having won 77 of 78 murder cases he had handled. One case had a hung jury.

Leibowitz’s presence stirred up tremendous resentment in the South. There was much sentiment that the “Jew lawyer” should go back to New York. In the second trial, Leibowitz produced Ruby Bates as a defense witness. She asserted that she and Price had fabricated the rape story and testified they had never been touched by any of the Scottsboro Boys. The jury still found the defendants guilty but the trial judge set aside the verdict and ordered another trial.

Alabama then replaced the trial judge with someone who had never attended law school. The new judge denied all defense requests and sustained every prosecution objection. Again, for the third time, the jury made a guilty finding. Leibowitz again appealed to the Supreme Court. In Norris v Alabama, the Court agreed that Norris was denied equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court found it was legal error that African Americans were excluded from serving on the jury.

Tired of the bad publicity, Alabama agreed to drop charges against four of the defendants. Norris was not among them. The fourth trial, which began July 13, 1937, ended in a guilty verdict with the death penalty again imposed. The four freed defendants went on a speaking tour on behalf of the five who were still being prosecuted.

Things were not easier for the five. The state moved them to another prison where they were made to work 12-hour days in a cotton mill. They were also subject to beatings by the guards. The health circumstances of the five worsened in the new environment.

After a prolonged negotiation with the Alabama governor, Norris had his sentence commuted to life in prison. In January 1944, Norris received parole but there was one condition: He had to stay in Alabama. Norris could not accept that and he moved to New York, violating parole. His lawyers convinced him though that he should return to Alabama. He had doubts but he was told he would not be returned to prison.

When he returned, he was incarcerated again for two more years. In 1946, he was again up for parole which he received. Once out of jail, he again violated parole by leaving the state. He headed north. He took another name. For the next 30 years, he lived in obscurity, working a steady job as a sanitation worker. He was still wanted for breaking a condition of parole.

In 1976, Alabama’s Attorney General opened a new investigation of the case. The NAACP helped with this advocacy. Governor George Wallace pardoned Norris in October 1976. Norris unsuccessfully sought $10,000 in compensation for his mistreatment. Alabama never paid a dime. In November 2013, more than 80 years after their convictions, three other Scottsboro Boys who had never been pardoned got posthumous clearing of their records.

The Scottsboro story is told in Clarence Norris’s autobiography, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys. There is also a very good video history, Scottsboro, An American Tragedy, which was made by PBS.

What is sad is Alabama’s failure to reckon with the pointless suffering it inflicted. Nine lives were devastated. The case showcases our national failure since Reconstruction to rectify our national curse of racism. How many other Clarence Norris-type stories are out there that no one knows about? We are still failing.