Flyer. Save the Scottsboro Boys: Smash All Racism.
West Side Workers Forum, 1933.

The cause célèbre of the 1930s, equal to the Sacco-Vanzetti case of the previous decade and the Tom Mooney frame-up of the 1910s, was the Scottsboro Case. In March 1931, nine male black teenagers were hauled off a freight train in northern Alabama after a fight with a gang of white youths. Very shortly, however, they faced charges of rape on the word of two white prostitutes, who had been taken off the same train. Despite the fact that medical examinations showed no evidence, the "Scottsboro Boys" were convicted and eight of them sentenced to death in a Roman carnival atmosphere, so prejudicial that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial. The trials, the rival defense committees with their publicity campaigns, the sufferings of the victims, and the illogical verdicts form a saga of civil rights in the 1930s. As they became less useful to partisan causes and to further fund-raising, the Scottsboro Boys sank into obscurity. It was not until 1950, nineteen years after the arrests, that the last victim of the false rape charges left the Alabama prison system.