Real Friends and Enemies

There is no doubt that Scottsboro played a vital role in raising the consciousness of the black people for liberation, and showing them who were their real friends and enemies. Carter brings out a wealth of detail surrounding the long drawn out battle in the courts. His accounts of the Alabama trials of 1931 and 1933 build up a horrifying picture of the mood, hatred and events surrounding the trials. Carter builds up the tension brilliantly as he slowly and relentlessly exposes the 'justice' of the Courts, and the entrenchment of racial hatred. When Patterson was sentenced to death for the second time, Carter points out that "the jury's loyalty to its white caste could only be proved unequivocally by a guilty verdict. Whether Patterson was guilty or innocent was, at most, a peripheral question".

Much space is devoted to the constant struggles between the International Labour Defense (an organisation set up by the Communist Party in 1925 largely to counteract the activities of organisations such as the Klu Klux Klan) and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Superficially it was a struggle as to who would conduct the defense for the Scottsboro boys and how it would be done. But fundamentally it was a question of ideological struggle within a much larger framework. A viable united front did not develop until 1935 with the formation of the Scottsboro Defence Committee. It is in his analyses of these struggles that Carter's book falls down. Carter attempts to be a detached historian and researcher, rather than analysing the class forces involved. He reluctantly admits that it was the ILD which took the initiative, and that the NAACP was slow to get off the ground.