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.

Campaign for Release

In 1933, Ruby Bates, who had been a star witness for the prosecution, denied that she had ever been raped and became a campaigner for their release. The Communist Party of the United States which led the struggle for the defence in the early years, made Scottsboro a name known in every country in the world.

Dan Carter has now produced an extensively researched and well written book. It has always been very clear that Scottsboro stood for much more than the actual case. As Carter says in his preface: "For most white Southerners it raised the spectre of Communist subversion and racial insubordination; for Negroes it was a mirror which reflected the three hundred years of mistreatment they had suffered at the hands of white America; Communists and other radicals saw Scottsboro as the inevitable offspring of an economic system based upon racism and class exploitation; and for American liberals it became a tragic symbol of the sickness which pervaded the South's regional culture".

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.

Beyond the Courts

While accepting the need for legal action, the ILD saw the Scottsboro case in the context of the whole struggle against capitalism and national oppression. It believed, and rightly so, that it was necessary to develop mass action outside the Courts and legislative bodies, and to alert and gain the support of workers in every country. The NAACP, on the other nand, believes in using only the Courts, and relying on the support of white liberals and the Negro middle class. In his often scathing criticism of the Communist Party and its leaders, Carter's 'objectivity' looses credibility. No doubt mistakes were made, but it was the ILD which developed the campaign and was the main force throughout in supporting those in gaol.

The Guts of Being in Gaol

In his preface, Carter states that hopefully his book "also tells something of what it meant to the nine Negro youths whose lives were changed forever by one morning's ride on an Alabama freight train". For me he does not succeed. Carter is highly critical of the book, "Scottsboro Boy" written by Hayward Patterson in collaboration with Earl Conrad, when Patterson was on the run after 1950. But it is "Scottsboro Boy" which gets at the guts of what it was like to be incarcerated in a gaol in Alabama for 19 years. Carter does not understand the social forces that make people what they are, and therefore by just recording their acts, he fails to see the Scottsboro boys as the victims of society.

He calls his book 'a tragedy of the American South'. That is one-sided. The Scottsboro case, like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, played a significant part in raising the consciousness of American working people, black and white, for their emancipation.

Nonetheless, "Scottsboro" is an important book to read.