The Scottsboro Boys
Topic: The Scottsboro Boys

On the night of March 25, 1931, a deputy sherriff posse in Paint Rock, Alabama stopped a freight train travelling from Chattanooga, Tennessee. They arrested nine young black men on the train. They also found two young white women -- Victoria Price and Ruby Bates -- dressed in men's overalls. Price claimed she was raped by six of the young men, while Bates claimed she was raped by the other three. The nine young men, from Chattanooga and various parts of Georgia, ranged in age from 12 to 20. They were roped together and taken to the Jackson County Jail in Scottsboro, Alabama. That night, a mob gathered outside the jail, but the governor sent in the National Guard to protect the young men who would come to be known as the Scottsboro Boys.

In the midst of a firestorm generated by the womens' allegations, a crowd of ten thousand came to town for the trials of the men. Judge A.E. Hawkins tried to figure out who would represent the nine defendants. Chattanooga attorney Stephen Roddy -- unfamiliar with Alabama law and drunk as well -- stepped forward to say he'd "help out" with the defense. Local attorney Milo Moody agreed to assist Roddy. The two had 25 minutes to meet with their clients before the trial began.

Price and Bates told the story of their alleged rapes to a shocked all-male, all-white jury. The defense barely put together a case, and any hopes of acquittals were dashed when the defendants only four of whom knew each other when arrested begin accusing each other. The jury deliberated for two hours before returning the first of the Scottsboro verdicts. All nine men were found guilty, and eight were sentenced to the electric chair only Roy Wright, 12 at the time of the alleged rapes, was spared when his sentencing ended in a mistrial. The date of their executions was set: July 10, 1931. Then on April 9, Judge Hawkins and Alabama governor Ben Miller received a telegram from the International Labor Defense. It said, in part: "We demand stay of execution and opportunity to investigate and prepare for new trial or appeal."

The ILD, which served as the legal arm of the U.S. Communist Party, stepped in and took up the fight to save the lives of the Scottsboro Boys. The NAACP, which hesitated to get involved and put in a belated bid to represent the nine young men, lost out to the ILD. As July 10 approached, eight sat on death row at Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Alabama, just on the other side of a door from the execution chamber. Just 72 hours before they were scheduled to die, they were told that the court had issued a stay of execution. In January 1932, the ILD presented its appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, arguing that the Scottsboro Boys were denied a fair trial, had inadequate representation and that the jeering of the mob in Scottsboro prejudiced the jury. The Alabama court disagreed, and the ILD took their case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court sided with the ILD in a landmark decision -- Powell v. Alabama -- which said that the defendants essentially had non-existent legal representation and were denied due process. It was the responsibility of the state, the high court ruled, to provide adequate defense counsel. Armed with their victory, the ILD returned to Alabama for a new trial, this time in Decatur, 50 miles west of Scottsboro. At the behest of the ILD, of which he was not a member, noted New York attorney Samuel Leibowitz took on the case. Leibowitz had a Lionel train model built to scale of the train from which the nine men and the two alleged victims were pulled.

Judge James Horton presided over the March 1933 trial in Decatur, Alabama. Leibowitz began the trial by laying grounds for appeal, arguing that the jury selection was racist since black citizens were omitted from the jury rolls. He put leaders in the local black community on the stand to testify that they had never been called for jury duty. Horton conceded Leibowitz's point, but denied the New York lawyer's motion for a mistrial. Alabama Attorney General Thomas Knight, Jr., who was prosecuting the case himself, put Victoria Price on the stand to tell her version of the rape on the train. But Leibowitz was ready for her. He suggested to Price that she and Ruby Bates spent the night before the alleged rape with two men -- and introduced medical evidence to that end, along with evidence suggesting that Price was a bootlegger and prostitute. Slowly, Price's tale began to fall apart.

Then Leibowitz got six of the defendants to testify, and this time their stories held together. He put Lester Carter, one of the two men Leibowitz claimed was with the women the night before the alleged rape, on the stand to tell of his own ride with the women on the train and of time spent in jail with Victoria Price and Jack Tiller, Price's boyfriend. As Carter's testimony finished, Leibowitz produced a final, surprise witness: Ruby Bates. Bates backed up Carter's story and said that the black men never raped her or Price, never touched them, never even talked to them. She made the accusations, she said, because Price told her they would otherwise be thrown in jail for vagrancy.

Associate prosecutor Wade Wright closed by telling jurors to show "that Alabama justice can't be bought with Jew money from New York!" After a night of cross-burnings and death threats, Leibowitz completed his own case by boldly telling the jury to give the defendants "acquittal or the chair." The jury's verdict in the second trial: guilty, with another death sentence. There was widespread outrage over the verdict, and Ruby Bates travelled the country with some of the Scottsboro Boys' giving speeches vindicating the young men. Then, on June 22, 1933, Judge Horton made a stunning announcement: Evidence made clear Bates wasn't raped on the train. Horton set aside the jury verdict and ordered a new trial. It was not until years later that he revealed why: One of the doctors who examined the women pulled Horton aside to say that he couldn't find signs a rape had occurred, but was afraid to testify to it on the stand.

New trials were set for November 1933 with Judge William Callahan presiding. Callahan wanted swift justice in these cases, with minimal interference. He banned cameras from the courtroom and denied the defendants protection by the National Guard. Tensions surrounding the trial were sharpened by a wave of lynchings in the South. The defense claimed the threat of violence would prevent a fair trial, but Callahan was unswayed. Leibowitz again asked for a mistrial due to the exclusion of blacks from the jury. Callahan denied it, despite a handwriting expert who testified that someone had tampered with the jury rolls.

Callahan also denied the defense a chance to present evidence of Price's background and her prior sexual activities. Ruby Bates was terrified of returning to Alabama to testify, and Callahan wouldn't allow a deposition by Bates into the record. When charging the jury, Callahan told jurors that Price's testimony needed no corroboration. He forgot to give jurors the option of "not guilty" until Leibowitz objected. The verdict in the third trial, not surprisingly, was guilty. The defense prepared to appeal. Months later, disaster struck the defense team. Nashville police arrested two Communist Party affiliated lawyers for attempting to bribe Price. Leibowitz denounced the Communists and said he'd carry on the defense himself. To that end, he joined with allies of the Scottsboro Boys including the NAACP and the ACLU -- as well as the Communists -- and formed the Scottsboro Defense Committee. In January 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Leibowitz's appeal. On April 1, the Court ruled that, in fact, the jury rolls were tampered with and that blacks had been unfairly excluded from serving on juries in the Alabama counties where the trials occurred.


The Scottsboro Boys' defenders prepared for one final trial. After members of the defense committee suggested that Leibowitz had worn out whatever welcome he had in the area, the New York attorney agreed to direct the defense from the sidelines. Local attorney Clarence Watts took over. The trial began January 6, 1936, almost five years after the nine were first arrested. Judge Callahan was once again presiding. Blacks were allowed into the jury pool, but kept segregated in the court and prevented by prosecutors from sitting on the jury. Watts did no better than Leibowitz. Haywood Patterson was found guilty, but miraculously avoided the death penalty, receiving 75 years in prison instead. On the way back to prison, defendant Ozie Powell stabbed a deputy. Powell was shot in the head but lived, sustaining serious brain damage. Callahan postponed the rest of the trials, pending review.

A year and a half later, the trials resumed. Clarence Norris was convicted and sentenced to death, Andy Wright got 99 years and Charlie Weems received a 75-year sentence. Watts was exhausted, as was Leibowitz. Then, a surprise from the prosecution: they dropped Powell's rape charge, but he was convicted and given 20 years for his assault on the deputy. Immediately afterwards, the court dropped the rest of the charges against the remaining four men. Eugene Williams, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson and Roy Wright were set free. A huge crowd in New York greeted Leibowitz and the four free Scottsboro Boys. Alabama Governor Bibb Graves commuted Norris' death sentence in 1938, but backed off on promises to release the convicted five. Between 1943 and 1950, four of the "Boys" were released on parole -- leaving only Haywood Patterson in custody. In 1946, Norris violated his parole and left Alabama. In 1948, Patterson escaped and made his way to Michigan. He was caught by the FBI in 1950, but Michigan wouldn't extradite him back to Alabama.

In 1976, Norris resurfaced in New York City, married with two children, living in Brooklyn. The last living Scottsboro Boy wanted to clear his name. Prison officials in Alabama considered Norris a wanted man, but appeals from the NAACP and Alabama's attorney general prompted Alabama Governor George Wallace to grant Norris a pardon. Norris returned to Alabama to receive his pardon. Norris died in 1989. He was 76 years old.

Bibb Graves
Topic: Alabama Governor


Bibb Graves was the popular two-term Democratic governor of Alabama who was expected to punch the tickets out of Alabama for five convicted Scottsboro Boys. The hoped-for pardons never materialized, however, because of disasterous pre-pardon interviews in November, 1938, just weeks before the sixty-five-year-old governor was to leave office.

Graves was first elected as the Klan-backed Democratic candidate for governor in 1926. He was replaced in 1931 by Governor Meeks Miller, a Klan-fighter who called out the militia to save the Scottsboro Boys from lynching in the days following their arrest in March, 1931. In 1934, Graves was elected to a second-term, this time without the help of the Klan, whose political power had been greatly weakened by the efforts of the Miller Administration. (Elected lieutenant governor on the Democratic ticket was Scottsboro prosecutor Thomas Knight.) Graves was a big-spending, New Deal-supporting governor, and by his second term considered a moderate on racial issues. He was a smart, good humored, forgiving man with a genuine concern for the well-being of his constituents. Graves sent copies of the United States Supreme Court decision in Norris vs. Alabama, ruling unconstitutional the state's system of excluding blacks from juries, to every judge in the state, reminding each that the Court's decision were "the law of the Land." When Scottsboro Boy Ozie Powell was shot in the head by a guard, Graves told doctors to use "every effort known to medical science" to save his life.

Samuel Liebowitz began a campaign for pardons in 1935, arguing to Graves that ending the cases would save thousands of dollars, prevent the South from becoming a fertile recruiting ground for Communists, and stop "the carousel of hate." By September, 1937, Graves was expressing a desire to resolve the Scottsboro controversy in a meeting with the head of the Scottsboro Defense Committee, Allan Chalmers. Two months later, Graves promised privately to grant pardons to all convicted Scottsboro defendants as soon as their appeals were exhausted.

Graves informed Chalmers that the five incarcerated Scottsboro Boys, with the possible exception of Ozie Powell who was serving time for his stabbing of a prison guard, would be released on October 28, 1938, a date that was later reset as November 14, 1938. Three days before the planned pardons and release, Graves scheduled separate interviews with each of the five Scottsboro Boys. He told them that he wanted to help them, that he hoped they would confide in him, and that they would not do anything after release to make him regret his decision. As Graves described the interviews, the Scottsboro Boys turned in disasterously poor performances. When searched on his way to the pre-pardon interview, Haywood Patterson was found to be carrying a knife, which Graves assumed Patterson intended to use to stab a guard and make an escape (Patterson said he always carried a knife for self-protection). Ozie Powell was said to have "sneered" at the Governor and said "I don't want to say nothing to you." Norris, who had been feuding with Patterson, was asked whether he planned to do anything to harm Patterson when he was released and said, "Yes, I'll kill him; I never forgets." Wright and Weems did somewhat better, but Graves thought their answers seemed suspiciously similar and coached. He also was upset to learn that Weems, upon his return to prison, told other prisoners he had been to see the Governor and would soon be kissing the pen goodbye. Graves concluded that the Boys were bestial, stupid, and incapable of rehabilitation. He decided to reverse his decision to grant the pardons.

The Scottsboro Defense Committee and others who had been counting on the pardons mounted a full-court press to convince Graves to make good on his promised release of the five. Supporters of the pardons generally conceded that the Scottsboro Boys were far from models of good citizenship, but blamed their pychological conditions on years in prison for crimes they did not commit. On December 7, 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote a letter to Graves urging that he go forward with the pardons and reminding him that the five would soon be "at least a thousand miles from Alabama" and of no concern to the state. Supreme Court Jusitce Hugo Black also urged Graves to grant the pardons.

Despite the pressure, Graves refused to reconsider his decision. The Scottsboro Defense Committee published a pamphlet attacking Graves called "A Record of Broken Promises." Graves left office without granting the pardons.

James Goodman
Topic: The Chroniclers



In 1994, James Goodman’s much acclaimed book, Stories of Scottsboro, was published. Civil war historian James McPherson said about the book that Goodman had invented “a new way of writing history.” Although a slight exaggeration, Goodman did not use a standard narrative format for the telling of his tale. Instead, his book tells the stories of various trial participants, each from his (or her) own perspective. Goodman writes, "I have struggled to be true to my sources." The new approach worked. The reader is left to sort out contradictions and inconsistencies, but the challenge absorbs and reminds us that historical truth is often unknowable. Goodman's own views, of course, are not entirely hidden. His ordering of the accounts, choice of whose accounts to include, and development of central themes leaves unmistakable his belief that the tragedy of Scottsboro grew out of the "poisonous idea" that black men are rapists. Goodman's book has been called “well written and kaleidoscopic" and “a superb retelling of this vital episode.” In addition to earning him praise form the critics, Goodman’s book also earned him a position as a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in history.

James Goodman is a professor of history at Rutgers University.

Dan T. Carter
Topic: The Chroniclers


In 1968 when Dan T. Carter published his book, “Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South,” it was an immediate success. Critics loved it and it earned the author a Bancroft Prize. The New York Times stated, “This is a fortunate exception to the general rule about “case” books, which are too often thesis-ridden, partisan, and full of special pleading. Here is the genuine historian at his proper work of finding the truth, whatever it “teaches,” wherever he can find it, and whomever it indicates.” The reviewer concludes, “[Carter] tells his story without fear and without favor.” It has also been said of the book that “this detailed, unembellished, utterly engrossing history is a work of clarification, and the author’s ability to make the reader aware of much--from the individuality of each of the victims, to the social structure of rural Alabama, to what would now be called the level of black power (or powerlessness) in the North--is remarkable.

Despite the widespread praise his book received, one inaccuracy in Carter's book is proved noteworthy. Carter reported that both Bates and Price died in 1961. This information was relied upon by NBC when it used Carter's work as the primary source of material for the script of "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys," a movie televised in 1976. Price and Bates turned out to be alive and well, and Price surfaced to file a defamation and false light privacy lawsuit against the network. Price's suit was dismissed in 1982 by a federal appellate court.

Carter is an historian and professor at Emory University. His most recent book is a biography of George C. Wallace entitled, “Politics of Rage.”

Thomas E. Knight, Jr.


Thomas Knight has often been portrayed as the bad guy (along with the bad woman, Victoria Price) in retellings of the Scottsboro Boys story. In the movie "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys," the actor playing Knight is given inflammatory and anti-semitic lines like "show them that Alabama justice can not be bought and sold with Jew money from New York" that were actually uttered by his co-prosecutor, Wade Wright. Although Knight himself was not above offering offensive and prejudicial remarks (for example, in his summation he referred to Haywood Patterson as "that thing"), in comparison to Wright he comes across as a voice of moderation as when he told the jury, "I do not want a verdict based on racial prejudice or relighious creed." Ruby Bates, in cross-examination by Knight, said "Yes" when asked whether it was true that in his initial interview of her he told her that he "did not want to burn any person that wasn't guilty."
Knight was born in Greensboro in 1898, the son of Thomas E. Knight, Sr., who would later serve as a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court and write the majority opinion in 1932 upholding the verdicts and death sentences in the initial Scottsboro trials. Thomas Knight, Jr. unsuccessfully defended his father's opinion in oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court. The Court's decision in Powell vs. Alabama sent the cases back to Alabama for retrial. Knight, having been elected Attorney General of Alabama in 1930, chose to assume the role of lead prosecutor in the Patterson trial before Judge Horton in 1933. He would also head up the prosecution team in the trials before Judge Callahan in late 1933 and early 1934.

In the courtroom, Knight was brusque and aggressive, often standing within a few feet of defense witnesses, raising his voice to a near shout, sometimes even sticking a finger within a few inches of a witness's face. Knight had numerous, heated encounters with defense attorney Samuel Liebowitz. Knight viewed his attack on the Alabama jury system as "an attack on the sovereignty" of the state. When asked by Liebowitz to address black witnesses as "Mr." rather than by first names, Knight replied, "I am not in the habit of doing that." Knight effectively attacked the credibility of key defense witnesses Bates and Lester Carter by accusing them of having sold out for fancy clothes. Bates, he said "sold out" for "a gray coat and a gray hat."

After the Supreme Court again reversed the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys in 1936, Knight met secretly with Liebowitz in New York to discuss a possible compromise. He told Liebowitz he was "sick of the cases," and that they were causing Alabama considerable political and economic harm. According to Liebowitz, Knight by that time had come to believe that Price was lying and no rape had ever occurred. Nonetheless, he thought jail time appropriate because at least some of the Scottsboro Boys were guilty of assault for having thrown the white boys off the train. After several meeting between the two, a compromise was reached that would result in the release of four of the boys and a reduction of sought charges for the others. The compromise was never carried out in full by the state because Knight died in May, 1937, and the new acting attorney general feared "looking soft" on rape.

Thomas E. Knight, Jr.
Topic: Prosecutor
Thomas Knight has often been portrayed as the bad guy (along with the bad woman, Victoria Price) in retellings of the Scottsboro Boys story. In the movie "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys," the actor playing Knight is given inflammatory and anti-semitic lines like "show them that Alabama justice can not be bought and sold with Jew money from New York" that were actually uttered by his co-prosecutor, Wade Wright. Although Knight himself was not above offering offensive and prejudicial remarks (for example, in his summation he referred to Haywood Patterson as "that thing"), in comparison to Wright he comes across as a voice of moderation as when he told the jury, "I do not want a verdict based on racial prejudice or relighious creed." Ruby Bates, in cross-examination by Knight, said "Yes" when asked whether it was true that in his initial interview of her he told her that he "did not want to burn any person that wasn't guilty."
Knight was born in Greensboro in 1898, the son of Thomas E. Knight, Sr., who would later serve as a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court and write the majority opinion in 1932 upholding the verdicts and death sentences in the initial Scottsboro trials. Thomas Knight, Jr. unsuccessfully defended his father's opinion in oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court. The Court's decision in Powell vs. Alabama sent the cases back to Alabama for retrial. Knight, having been elected Attorney General of Alabama in 1930, chose to assume the role of lead prosecutor in the Patterson trial before Judge Horton in 1933. He would also head up the prosecution team in the trials before Judge Callahan in late 1933 and early 1934.

In the courtroom, Knight was brusque and aggressive, often standing within a few feet of defense witnesses, raising his voice to a near shout, sometimes even sticking a finger within a few inches of a witness's face. Knight had numerous, heated encounters with defense attorney Samuel Liebowitz. Knight viewed his attack on the Alabama jury system as "an attack on the sovereignty" of the state. When asked by Liebowitz to address black witnesses as "Mr." rather than by first names, Knight replied, "I am not in the habit of doing that." Knight effectively attacked the credibility of key defense witnesses Bates and Lester Carter by accusing them of having sold out for fancy clothes. Bates, he said "sold out" for "a gray coat and a gray hat."

After the Supreme Court again reversed the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys in 1936, Knight met secretly with Liebowitz in New York to discuss a possible compromise. He told Liebowitz he was "sick of the cases," and that they were causing Alabama considerable political and economic harm. According to Liebowitz, Knight by that time had come to believe that Price was lying and no rape had ever occurred. Nonetheless, he thought jail time appropriate because at least some of the Scottsboro Boys were guilty of assault for having thrown the white boys off the train. After several meeting between the two, a compromise was reached that would result in the release of four of the boys and a reduction of sought charges for the others. The compromise was never carried out in full by the state because Knight died in May, 1937, and the new acting attorney general feared "looking soft" on rape.

Samuel Liebowitz
Topic: Defense Attorney



When New York attorney Samuel Liebowitz receieved a call from the International Labor Defense asking him whether he would defend the Scottsboro Boys in their new trials, he was considered by many to be the "new Clarence Darrow," the man to call if you were charged with a capital crime. In over fifteen years of criminal defense work, Liebowitz had represented seventy-eight persons charged with first-degree murder. His remarkable record over that period was seventy-seven acquittals, one hung jury, and no convictions.
Liebowitz, born in 1893, immigrated to the United States from Romania when he was four, attended college and law school at Cornell, then embarked on a career as a criminal defense attorney, seeing it as one path relatively open to Jews at the time. In the courtroom, Liebowitz was known for his meticulous preparation, knowledge of the law, vibrant voice, and flamboyant style.

Many people expressed surprise that the communists would ask Liebowitz to lead the Scottsboro defense. He was neither a communist or even a radical, but rather a mainstream Democrat who had never been associated with class-based causes. The choice of Liebowitz convinced many that the communists were serious about achieving justice for the Alabama defendants, and not just interested in making political hay. Liebowitz would be asked to accept as co-counsel, however, the ILD's chief attorney, Joseph Brodsky.

After reading the record of the first trials and becoming convinced of the innocense of the Scottsboro Boys, Liebowitz accepted the ILD's offer. He did so against the urgings of his wife and many friends who told him that the skin color of the defendants gave them no chance in the Alabama of the 1930's. He would work for the next four years on the cases without pay or reimbursement for most of his expenses.

Liebowitz quickly became an object of loathing around Decatur when he opened his defense of Haywood Patterson by challenging Alabama's exclusion of blacks from the jury rolls. Local hatred of Liebowitz grew uglier, as death threats were made against him after his tough cross-examination of Victoria Price. One national reporter overheard several people saying, "It'll be a wonder if he gets out of here alive." Five uniformed members of the National Guard were assigned to protect him during the trial, with another 150 available to defend against a possible lynch mob.

Liebowitz was stunned by the jury's guilty verdict in Patterson's 1933 trial. He compared the verdict to "the act of spitting on the tomb of Abraham Lincoln." Back in New York after the trial, Liebowitz vowed to defend the Boys "until hell freezes over." Speaking before enthusiatic audiences sometimes numbering in the thousands, he promised to take guilty verdicts to the Supreme Court and back until Alabama finally gives up: "It'll be a merry-go-round, and if some Klu Kluxer doesn't put a bullet through my head, I'll go right along until they let the passengers off." Liebowitz's determined efforts won the affection of his clients. Haywood Patterson said of Liebowitz, "I love him more than life itself."

After Judge Horton ordered a new trial for Patterson and the state transferred the cases to the courtroom of Judge William Callahan, Liebowitz's frustration grew. Virtually every motion or objection Liebowitz made was denied, virtually every motion or objection made by the prosecution was sustained. His anger showed, and Liebowitz found himself mocked, scolded, and reprimanded by the Judge Callahan. After guilty verdicts and death sentences were handed to Patterson and Norris, a battle for control of the case ensued between Liebowitz and the ILD. Liebowitz's anger with the ILD exploded after two ILD attorneys were charged with attempting to bribe Victoria Price.

Liebowitz appeared before the United States Supreme Court to participate in the appeal of Patterson's and Norris's convictions on the ground that blacks were systematically excluded from Alabama's juries. When Liebowitz alleged that the names of blacks appearing on jury rolls were fraudulently added after Haywood's trial began, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes asked Liebowitz if he could prove that allegation. Liebowitz called for a page to bring in the jury roll and a magnifying glass, which was passed from justice to justice. Their facial reactions indicated disgust. The Supreme Court reversed the convictions in a decision that Liebowitz called a "triumph for American justice."

After the third set of trials, Liebowitz began to involve himself again in projects unrelated to Scottsboro. He met on death row several times with Bruno Hauptmann, the German immigrant convicted of kidnapping Charles Lindbergh's baby, in the hopes of convincing him to reveal details of the crime.

In early 1937, following a series of secret meetings with Thomas Knight, Liebowitz reluctantly agreed to a compromise which would result in the release of four of the Scottsboro Boys while allowing prosecutions to again go forward against the others.Of the compromise, Liebowitz said, "I say yes, but with a heavy heart, and I feel very badly about it." In the next set of Scottsboro trials, Liebowitz allowed a local attorney to assume the more visible role, while he did the coaching. Liebowitz and others concerned with the Scottsboro Boy's welfare feared that the trials might become a refendum on Liebowitz himself, who was by then more unpopular than ever in northern Alabama.

After his work on the Scottsboro Boys case was finished, Liebowitz returned to his New York practice, then was appointed to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court of New York.

Liebowitz died in January, 1978.

Dr. R. R. Bridges
Topic: Key Witnesses


Dr. R. R. Bridges, a Scottsboro physician since 1914, was the prosecution witness who turned out be, in the minds of many, the best witness for the defense. The testimony of Bridges in the Scottsboro trials of 1931 through 1933 cast grave doubt on the story of Victoria Price that she had been beaten and gang raped by six blacks on March 25, 1931 aboard a Southern Railroad freight train.

Bridges and his assistant, Dr. John Lynch, examined Price and Bates less than two hours after the alleged rapes occurred. While the two doctors found semen in the vaginas of both women (much more in the case of Bates than Price), they found little evidence to support their contention that they had been the victims of a violent assault.

The prosecution used the testimony of Bridges in the first Scottsboro trials to prove that Bates and Price had intercourse in the two days before they were examined-- presumably, they hoped the jury would surmise, about two hours before their examination. A "great amount" of semen was found in Bates, Bridges said, but in the case of Price there was barely enough sperm to produce a smear.

In reading the record of the first trial, it was the testimony of Bridges that convinced Samuel Liebowitz that the Scottsboro Boys were innocent of rape and that he should take their cases. When time came to cross-examine Bridges in the 1933 trial before Judge Horton, Liebowitz made the most of the opportunity. Bridges testified in cross-examination that the sperm he found in Bates and Price was non-motile, even though sperm generally remains motile for at least twelve hours after intercourse. Bridges also described the girls as calm and composed, in contradiction to Price's story that she was crying and in shock. Bridges reported finding none of the lacerations or blood one would expect to find after a violent gang rape, and no head injuries that would support Price's contention that she was hit there by a gun butt. Finally, Bridges testified that one of the accused boys, Willie Roberson, was suffering from severe venereal disease and "would not have had any inclination to commit [rape]."

Judge Horton relied primarily on the medical testimony of Bridges in his controversial decision setting aside the jury's guilty verdict in the Patterson trial of April, 1933. Horton praised Bridges as fair, intelligent, honest, and unevasive.

The testimony of Bridges was also crucial to the defense case in later 1933 trials before Judge Callahan. By January 1936, Bridges was gravely ill and his testimony from the previous trial was read into the record at Patterson's fourth trial. He died soon thereafter.

Orville Gilley
Topic: Key Witnesses


Orville Gilley was the state's star witness in the 1933 trials of Patterson and Norris that followed Judge Horton's decision setting aside Patterson's earlier conviction. Judge Horton based his decision primarily on the lack of any eyewitness testimony or physical evidence that provided substantial corroboration of Victoria Price's story of gang rape by pistol-waving blacks. The day after Judge Horton's decision, prosecutor Thomas Knight announced that Orville Gilley, absent from Horton's courtroom, would be on hand at the next trials to provide the critical corroboration.

Orville Gilley was one of eight whites involved in a fight with about ten blacks on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight train that resulted in seven of the whites, all except Gilley, being thrown off the train. When Gilley attempted to leap off the moving train, he fell between two cars and was left hanging to the side of a gondola in danger of being swept off of the train which was steadily picking up speed. Haywood Patterson pulled Gilley back onto the car. Patterson said in his second trial, "I pulled this white boy back up in the train and saved his life." When the train was stopped by the posse in Paint Rock, it was the presence of Gilley, a sexual partner of Price who had been travelling with her and Bates, that increased the girls' concerns that they might be charged with adultery or a Mann Act violation. It is possible that the semen found in Victoria Price's vagina by examining doctors was that of Gilley, who had recently slept with Price in a Chattanooga freight yard.

Before assuming a starring role in the late 1933 trials before Judge Callahan, Gilley played a bit role in the first Scottsboro trials, saying little other than that a fight had occurred. If Gilley had actually witnessed the gang rape, as he said in 1933 that he did, why didn't he say so in 1931? Ruby Bates said later it was because Gilley was initially reluctant to tell anything but the truth. Between 1931 and 1933, however, prosecutor Knight sent "a rations check" weekly to Gilley's mother and spending money to Orville. The defense believed that Gilley's testimony in late 1933 was the result of the prosecutor calling in his chips. Liebowitz grilled Gilley during almost three hours of cross-examination, bringing out numerous contradictions between his testimony and that of Price. But on the basic issue of whether the rape took place, Gilley confirmed her story. Gilley said that the rapes only stopped when he convinced one of the blacks that if they didn't get off Price they would soon kill her. Liebowitz called Gilley "a dirty, filthy liar." He argued that it was implausible that Gilley would sit by and witness the gang rape without making an effort to go forward in the train to notify the engineer or a conductor. The papers called Gilley a stronger witness than Price. The juries may have found in Gilley's testimony another reason to convict. Gilley said that during the fight with the whites the defendants shouted, "All you white sons-of-bitches unload!" The statement hardly establishes rape, of course, but it may have been reason enough for white Alabama jurors to find the defendants guilty.

Gilley was, by all accounts, a charming and entertaining witness. Historian James Goodman, in his book Stories of Scottsboro, described Gilley as "the smiling, blue-eyed, radar-eared, almost handsome twenty-year-old who insisted he was not (as the defense portrayed him) a bought witness and a bum, but rather a wandering entertainer, a poet of hotel lobbies, restaurants, and the streets." Gilley even offered to share some of his poetry in the courtroom, but Judge Callahan dourly said "I don't like poetry."

Ruby Bates
Topic: The Accusers


Ruby Bates was, like Victoria Price, a poor Huntsville millworker who became one of the two accusers of the Scottsboro Boys. But, unlike Price, Bates later recanted her story of rape aboard a Chattanooga to Memphis freight train, and went on to actively campaign for the release of the jailed black defendants. Bates had a tough childhood. Her mother was a prostitute. Her father was a shiftless drunk who would beat her, her mother, and her siblings. When her father was jailed for horse-whipping her brother, the family left and began to move from one northern Alabama town to another before settling in Huntsville, where, at age fifteen, Ruby took a job in the Margaret cotton mill. Bates lived with her family in an unpainted wooden shack in worst part of Huntsville. Her family was the only white family on the block. Contrary to popular belief, segregation did not reach to the lower rungs of southern society, and Ruby lived, played, and slept with blacks.

Bates was frequently described as a "notorious prostitute." A defense affidavit of a resident of Chattanooga, where Bates rented a room for a time in a boarding house, stated that Bates often had "negro men in her room all night," and would sleep with as many as three men in an afternoon. As a prosecution witness in the first trials in Scottsboro, Bates proved to be much less effective that the brasher and more confidant Price. Shy, inarticulate, and insecure, Bates was a poor liar. Moreover, she could not identify any of her attackers and failed to corroborate Price on key points of her testimony.

Less than nine months after the first trial, Bates wrote her then boyfriend, Earl Streetman, a letter in which she denied having been raped: "those Negroes did not touch me....i hope you will believe me the law dont....i wish those Negroes are not Burnt on account of me." At the end of 1932, Bates left Huntsville for Montgomery, then Chattanooga, then New York City, where she landed a job in a tourist camp on the outskirts of the city. The Scottsboro case was in the papers, and Bates decided to visit a prominent minister named Harry Emerson Fosdick and confess her lies. Fosdick encouraged her to return to Alabama and tell the truth. Bates was a surprise witness for the defense in the second Haywood Patterson trial. She recanted her story of the rape, saying she was encouraged by Price to make the false accusation as a way of deflecting attention from possible charges of vagrancy or Mann Act (crossing state lines for immoral purposes) that they otherwise may have faced when they were among those rounded up by the posse in Paint Rock. Thomas Knight was merciless on cross-examination. He shouted at her, pointed out every minor inconsistency in her story, and suggested she had been bought by the communists. In his summation, Knight said that Bates "sold out for a gray coat and a gray hat." Bates's performance at the trial made her an object of intense southern scorn, and she had to be whisked into hiding by heavily armed deputies.

After the trial, Bates headed northeast and joined the International Labor Defense campaign for release of the Scottsboro Boys. Her speeches mixed communist rhetoric and apologies. She said "she was sorry for all the trouble that I caused them," and said she did so because she was "frightened by the ruling class of Scottsboro." She appeared in rallies, parades, and went to Washington where she met with the Speaker of the House and Vice President John Garner. In 1940, Bates moved to Washington state, where she married. She returned to Alabama in the 1960's. She died on October 27, 1976 at age sixty-three.