In the 1930's, Scottsboro was a name known to progressive people throughout the world. It meant that on March 21st, 1931, nine Negro boys, the youngest thirteen years old, were gaoled in Scottsboro, Alabama, on a framed charge of raping two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, on a freight train chugging from Chattanooga to Memphis. Within a fortnight, all but one were sentenced to the in the electric chair.

Lawyer Samuel Leibowitz meets his clients in a jail cell. Seated is Hayward Patterson. The other defendants (left to right) are Olem Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson (front). Andrew Wright (partially obscured), Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems, and Roy Wright.

From then on developed one of the, most famous battles in American Labour history to free the 'Scottsboro Nine'. Argued back and forth in the Courts for years, it was not until 1950 that the last was freed. The nine had served a total of over 100 years in Alabama prisons for a crime they did not commit. Hayward Patterson was tried four times, finally escaping from the notorious Kilby prison in 1950, to die of cancer in 1952.