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A SIGNED BOOK PAGE PHOTO BY SCOTTSBORO BOY ACCUSER (LATER RECANTING) RUBY BATES ON PAPER OF HER IMAGE FROM BOOK. MEASURING APPROXIMATELY 6X9 INCHES

Ruby Bates, along with Victoria Price, falsely accused nine young African American men of rape on a train in Jackson County in 1931, a situation that developed into one of the most glaring examples of legal injustice in the Jim Crow South. Bates later recanted her testimony and advocated for the men, known in the media as the "Scottsboro Boys."

Two white females, Victoria Price, age 21, and Ruby Bates, age 17, both mill workers, hopped on a train to hitch a ride from Chattanooga to Huntsville, Alabama, early in the morning of March 25, 1931. On board with them were approximately twenty black teenage boys and young men who were also hitching rides on the train. A group of white boys of about the same age were in the train car as well.

When the train stopped, the group of white males jumped off, though the reasons for this are disputed. After jumping off the train, they reported to the nearby train stationmaster that two women and a group of black men were riding on the train, and the train was then stopped in Paint Rock. Once the train stopped, 19-year-old Clarence Norris and the eight other young black men (referred to as the “Scottsboro Boys”) found aboard the train were arrested. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were transported by police and interviewed. Price and Bates claimed the black teens forced the white teens to jump from the train and then proceeded to attack and rape the two of them.

The nine Scottsboro Boys were each charged with rape. Several weeks after their arrest, in early April 1931, the nine were divided into four groups for trial. It is estimated that a crowd of 8,000 to 10,000 spectators gathered in small Scottsboro for the trial, with armed soldiers on hand to keep the crowd at bay.

The primary evidence against the defendants was the testimony of Price and Bates. At the first trial, 19-year-old Clarence Norris and 20-year-old Charlie Weems were convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death in less than two hours on April 7. Within a span of three days, eight of the Scottsboro Boys, all under age 21, had been convicted and sentenced to death, with their execution date set for July 10, 1931. The trial of the ninth boy –14-year-old Roy Wright – ended in a mistrial. He was never tried again, but he remained in jail until the charges against him were dropped in 1937.

Both the International Labor Defense, a group affiliated with the Communist party, and the NAACP quickly backed the cause of the Scottsboro Boys. While the group’s appeal was pending in court, they received a stay of their executions. In January 1932, the NAACP withdrew from the case because of the great tension that had developed between the NAACP and the ILD as each group attempted to gain control of the representation and legal strategy of the Scottsboro Boys.

Also in January 1932, accuser Ruby Bates wrote a letter in which she denied that she had been raped. Over the course of the following year, Bates formally recanted her rape and assault claims in court, admitting that the story in which she accused the Scottsboro Boys of these crimes was completely false.

The appeal reached the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1932. The Court reversed the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys based on its determination that the defendants had been deprived of their constitutional right to due process when they were not provided adequate legal representation at their trials.

Two months later, the first retrial of one of the Scottsboro Boys – Haywood Patterson – began. On April 9, 1933, Patterson was again found guilty and sentenced to death. Following his conviction, protests broke out both locally and nationally, and the remainder of the retrials of the Scottsboro Boys were postponed. Three months later, the trial judge, Judge James Horton, set aside Patterson’s conviction. The cases of the Scottsboro Boys were then removed from Judge Horton’s jurisdiction, and Patterson and Clarence Norris were quickly tried again in the nearby court of Judge William Callahan. Both were once again convicted and sentenced to death. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the convictions in June 1934.

In January 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court again reviewed the convictions of Patterson and Norris. The Court overturned the convictions on the basis that black people had been excluded from the jury, ruling that the systematic exclusion of prospective black jurors from jury service violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Retried again in January 1936, Patterson was convicted, and this time received a sentence of 75 years in prison. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld this conviction in June of the following year.

The next month, July 1937, Norris, Weems, and Andy Wright were all retried and convicted. Norris was again sentenced to death.

In July 1937, the charges against Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell and Eugene Williams (as well as Roy Wright) were finally dismissed. The State Attorney announced that the prosecution was “convinced they were not guilty.” This group was released from prison, except for Powell, who remained incarcerated on charges relating to an altercation with a prison guard.

The other four Scottsboro Boys – Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Charlie Weems and Haywood Patterson – remained in prison, having been labeled by the prosecution as the ringleaders of the alleged assault on Bates and Price.

In 1943 and 1944, Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris and Andy Wright were paroled. In 1948, Haywood Patterson escaped from prison, though he was arrested again and died in prison shortly thereafter.

In 1976, Clarence Norris was pardoned by the Alabama Governor George Wallace. Norris, the last surviving member of the Scottsboro Boys, lived until 1989. For several years, Norris unsuccessfully sought $10,000 in compensation from the State of Alabama.

In November 2013, more than eighty years after the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles granted posthumous pardons to Charlie Weems, Andy Wright and Haywood Patterson in order to formally exonerate them as well.

- Meghan Barrett Cousino

Two whiteCharles Weems, at age nineteen was the oldest of the Scottsboro Boys when he was arrested in March, 1931. Weems, of Atlanta, was involved in the fight aboard the Southern Railroad freight. He was convicted of rape first in 1931, then in a second trial in 1937. He kept a clean prison record and was paroled in 1943.

Weems had a hard childhood. His mother died when he was four, and only one other of his seven siblings survived childhood. Weems finished the fifth grade, then took a jobs in a pharmacy.

Prison life was also difficult for Weems. He complained about being "half fed" and said he spent a lot of time thinking about "the ladies out in the world and I'm shut in here." In 1934, he was beaten and tear-gassed for reading Communist literature that had been sent to him. The gassing caused permanent eye injuries. In 1937, he contracted tuberculosis. In 1938, he was stabbed by a prison guard who had mistaken him for his intended target, Andy Wright.

After his release in 1943, Weems moved back to Atlanta where he married and took a job in a laundry. (BACK)

Clarence Norris

Clarence Norris died in Bronx Community Hospital on Janurary 23, 1989 at the age of seventy-six. He was, as the title of a book he helped write suggested, the last of the Scottsboro Boys.

Norris was the second of eleven children born to Georgia sharecroppers. He attended school only to second grade, then at age seven began working in the cotton fields. Norris had a job in a Goodyear plant, working up to sixteen hours a day, when his girlfriend left and he decided to hit the railroad tracks.

When Norris, who had been one of those involved in the train fight with white boys, was accused of rape he thought he "was as good as dead." According to Norris, on the night before the first trial, he was removed from his cell, beaten and told to turn state's evidence if he wanted to save his life. At the first trial in Scottsboro, Norris testified that theother blacks raped Price and Bates and that he alone was innocent: "They all raped her, everyone of them."

Norris's second conviction was overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Norris vs Alabama, which found Alabama's system of excluding blacks from jury rolls to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Norris was convicted a third time in 1937 (in what Norris termed "a Kangaroo Court"), and again sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison by Governor Graves. Norris was bitter over developments which left him and four others in prison, while four boys were released. He believed that he was paying the price for their freedom.

Norris fought often in prison. One incident in 1943 landed him ten days in the hole with only a blanket, bread, and water. Another incident brought on a beating with a leather strap.

Norris was first paroled in 1944. He moved to New York in violation of his parole, and was returned to prison. In 1946, he was a paroled a second time. He got a job shoveling coal in Cleveland for three years, then moved to New York City. Unemployed in 1956, Norris visited Samuel Liebowitz who arranged a job for him as a dishwasher.

In the 1960's, Norris asked the help of the NAACP in obtaining a pardon from the State of Alabama. Norris had violated parole when he left Alabama and was a fugitive subject to parole revocation and a return to prison. A successful full-scale campaign was mounted, and in 1976 Norris received his pardon from Governor George Wallace. (BACK)

Andy Wright

Andy Wright, nineteen at the time of his arrest, was the older brother of Scottsboro Boy Roy Wright. Wright attended school, doing well, in Chattanooga until the sixth grade, when his father died and he quit to help his mother support the family. He started driving a truck for a produce distributor at age twelve, a job he kept up for seven years until the distributor's insurance company learned of his young age and raised rates. In March of 1931, the two Wrights, Patterson, and Williams all boarded the Southern Railroad freight, planning to ride it to Memphis where they heard government jobs hauling logs on the Mississippi might be available. Wright admitted to having fought with white boys on the train, but denied ever having seen Price or Bates until he got off the train.

In prison, despite a 1937 Life Magazine piece which described him as "the best natured" of the Scottsboro Boys, Wright was frequently ill and depressed. He was also said to be mistrustful, something of a loner, and to have a mean streak. Wright was beaten by both prison guards and other inmates, on more than one occassion severely enough to require hospitalization. He wrote that "It seems as though I've been in here for century an century."

Wright was first paroled in January, 1944. He married a woman from Mobile later that year. He took a job, which he held for two years, driving a grocery delivery truck. Wright left Alabama in violation of his parole in 1946, was arrested, and for the next four years was in and out of the Alabama prison system. He left Kilby prison for good on June 6, 1950, the last Scottsboro Boy to be freed.

Wright moved to New York, living for times in Albany and New York City. In 1951, he was accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl (NAACP investigators viewed the charges as false; Wright had been dating the girl's mother and his accuser), but acquitted by an all-white jury. (BACK)

Ozie Powell

Ozie Powell, sixteen when arrested, was from Atlanta. Powell was not involved in the train fight, but said that he witnessed it. He did not know any of the other Scottsboro Boys prior to his arrest.

Powell, whose IQ was measured at "64-plus," could write only his name. Powell who was born in rural Georgia, had only one year of schooling. He had spent most of the three years prior to his arrest working in lumber camps. He described himself as quiet, shy, and bashful.

In February of 1936, after testifying at Haywood Patterson's fourth trial, Powell was loaded into a car with Clarence Norris and Roy Wright. The three were handcuffed together in the backseat, while a sherrif and his deputy rode in front. Powell and the deputy got into an argument. The deputy hit Powell on his head. With his one free hand, Powell took a pen knife that had escaped detection during a search out of his pants and slashed the deputy's throat, wounding him. The sheriff stopped the car, got out, and fired a bullet at Powell (who, along with the others, had his hands in the air) which lodged in his brain. (The sheriff and deputy described the incident as an escape attempt). Powell survived, but suffered permanent brain damage. He had trouble speaking and hearing, memory loss, and weakness in his right leg and arm. On the operating table Powell told his mother, "I done give up...cause everybody in Alabama is down on me and is mad at me."

According to those who knew him, like Clarence Norris, Powell was never the same again. In what was to be his pre-parole interview with Governor Graves in 1938, Powell refused to answer the Governor's questions saying, "I don't want to say nothing to you." Graves decided not to parole Powell. He was finally released from prison in June, 1946. He moved to back to Georgia. (BACK)

Olen Montgomery

Olen Montgomery, seventeen at the time of his arrest, was born in Monroe, Georgia, where he attended school through the fifth grade. Montgomery was riding alone in a tank car near the rear of the train when the fight and alleged rape took place on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight. Montgomery stuck consistently to his story, and by 1937 every prosecutor connected with the Scottsboro cases agreed Montgomery was innocent. Montgomery was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937.

During his six years in jail, Montgomery, who was severely nearsighted in both eyes and nearly blind in one, wrote frequent letters to his supporters asking for such things as six-string guitars (Montgomery hoped to be "the Blues King" after his release) and money to buy a night with a woman.

After his release in 1937, Montgomery said that he wanted to be a lawyer or musician. Despite the assistance of the Scottsboro Defense Committee, however, none of his career dreams were realized. Montgomery bought a saxophone, then a guitar, and practiced as much as possible. Most of the job opportunities that came his way-- dishwasher, porter, laborer-- Montgomery despised, believing they just were getting in the way of his musical calling. He did agree to tour the country with Roy Wright for the Defense Committee and spoke at a number of SDC-arranged meetings. Montgomery bounced back and forth between New York City and Georgia, drinking heavily, and rarely holding a job for more than a few months. Sometime after 1960, Montgomery settled for good in Georgia. (BACK)

Eugene Williams

Eugene Williams was thirteen when arrested along with his friends the Wright brothers and Haywood Patterson in March, 1931. Prior to boarding the Southern Railroad freight, Williams had worked as a dishwasher in a Chattanooga cafe. At trial, Williams admitted that he fought with white boys on the train, but denied having seen Price or Bates until after his arrest.

In prison, Williams said that "getting out is the main thing I think about." A 1937 Life Magazine article described Williams as "a sullen, shifty mulatto" who "tries to impress interviewers with his piety."

The state dropped charges against Williams in July, 1937, citing his youth at the time of the alleged incident. After his release he told Samuel Liebowitz that he hoped to land a job someday in a jazz orchestra. He moved to St. Louis where he had relatives, and where his sponsors hoped that he would enroll in a Baptist seminary. (BACK)

Willie Roberson

When Willie Roberson, age seventeen, allegedly raped Ruby Bates aboard the Chattanooga to Memphis freight we was suffering from a serious case of syphillis, with sores all over his genitals, that would have made intercourse very painful. Moreover, Roberson was unable to walk without a cane, and clearly was in in no condition to leap from railroad car to railroad car, as his accusers alleged. Nonetheless, on the strength of Price's and Bate's allegations Roberson was prosecuted and convicted. Price testified that Roberson held her legs apart while other boys yelled "pour it to her." The prosecution even managed to use Roberson's syphillitic condition to its advantage, suggesting that the syphillis Ruby Bates contracted in 1931 was caused by his having had sex with her.

In fact, Roberson was no where near the scene of the alleged rape, but alone in a boxcar near the caboose. He had left his job as a hotel busboy in Georgia to go to Chattanooga in search of better work. Finding none available, he boarded the freight for Memphis. Throughout the several trials in which he testified, Roberson stuck to his story. Finally, even prosecutors came to believe him, and Roberson was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937. After his release, Roberson lived in New York City where he found steady work.

Roberson's six years in jail were difficult. Roberson suffered from asthma, and the lack of fresh air available aggravated his condition. He was diagnosed (as were four other Scottsboro Boys) with "prison neurosis." He said of his situation, "If I don't get free I just rather they give me the electric chair and be dead out of my misery." (BACK)

Roy Wright

Roy Wright, twelve or thirteen when arrested, was the youngest of the Scottsboro Boys. He was the brother of Andy Wright, who was also arrested upon disembarking the Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, 1931. Wright was on his first trip away from his home in Chattanooga, where he worked in a grocery store. His only trial ended in a mistrial when eleven jurors held out for death, even though, in view of his age, the prosecution had only asked for a life sentence. At the first trials in Scottsboro, Wright testified that he saw other defendants rape the white girls. He later said that he did so after having been threatened and severely beaten by authorities.

Wright kept a Bible with him at all times in jail, where he was held six years without retrial. He needed whatever comfort he could find. In a letter to his mother he wrote, "I am all lonely and thinking of you...I feel like I can eat some of your cooking Mom." Wright went over a year without getting fresh air.

Alabama dropped all charges against Wright in 1937. After his release, he told Samuel Leibowitz that wanted to be a lawyer or a teacher. After going on a national tour for the Scottsboro Defense Committee, Wright served in the army, got married, and took a job with the merchant marine. In 1959, after returning from an extended stay at sea, Wright became convinced that his wife had been unfaithful. Wright shot and killed his wife, then killed himself. (BACK)Norris, Weems, and Andy Wright were all retried and convicted. Norris was again sentenced to death.

In 1943 and 1944, Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris and Andy Wright were paroled. In 1948, Haywood Patterson escaped from prison, though he was arrested again and died in prison shortly thereafter.

- Meghan Barrett Cousino

Clarence Norris, the last survivor of the ''Scottsboro Boys'' rape case, which became a symbol of racial injustice in the Deep South in the 1930's, died Monday at Bronx Community Hospital after a long illness. He was 76 years old.

Mr. Norris, who was sentenced to death three times in a series of trials involving nine black teen-agers accused of raping two white women, spent 15 years in prison. He was then a fugitive for 30 years after he violated his parole and fled Alabama. He came to New York City, where he worked as a warehouseman.

It was not until 1976, when he was 64 years old, that the Alabama Pardon and Parole Board unanimously found that Mr. Norris was innocent of the rape charges. Gov. George C. Wallace signed the pardon order. Attention of the World

The ''Scottsboro Boys'' case won worldwide attention as the nine defendants, aged 13 to 19 at the time of the alleged crime, became symbols in the conflict between Northeastern liberals and Southern conservatives.

The case began March 25, 1931, when the youths, who had caught a freight as they headed north to seek jobs, were taken off the train at Paint Rock, Ala., and taken to the nearby jail at Scottsboro. They were all charged with rape.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Norris and the other youths were caught on the same train, but in different cars, with two white women, who said they had been raped. Following one of a series of trials, which dragged on until 1937, one of the women withdrew her accusation.

In ''The Last of the Scottsboro Boys,'' his 1979 autobiography written with Sybil D. Washington, Mr. Norris contended that the black youths were scapegoats, caught at the wrong place at the wrong time with two white women who were afraid they would be accused of fraternizing with blacks. Pawns in a Struggle

Once arrested and charged, the youths became pawns in a political struggle between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Communist Party and the socialist International Labor Defense.

''Neither group wanted to handle the case unless all of us signed with them exclusive,'' Mr. Norris said. ''I never did understand why they couldn't work together, since they all said they wanted to see us free.''

The International Labor Defense won the right to defend the youths and hired a well known New York lawyer, Samuel S. Liebowitz, who in the course of the trials was reviled publicly by some as a ''meddling New York Jew.'' He received so many threats on his life that at one point Mayor Fiorello La Guardia sent two New York city detectives to Alabama to guard him. Rungs on a Ladder

Mr. Norris was sentenced to death three times. In fact, all but the youngest defendant were sentenced to death. Although none was executed, all went to prison.

In the end, they served as rungs on a ladder for a lot of people involved in the case. ''Reputations were won and lost,'' said Mr. Norris. ''Organizations became larger and better known. Newspapers sold better, deputies became sheriffs, elected sheriffs were re-elected and went on to better positions.''

Finally having gotten his death sentences reduced to life imprisonment, Mr. Norris was paroled in 1946. But he said he could not escape the ''Scottsboro boy'' stigma, and so he took his brother's name and came north to live.

He said that in 1970 he decided to clear his name, and he did so with the conspicuous help of the N.A.A.C.P., in particular an association lawyer, James I. Meyerson, who handled his appeal for a pardon. The appeal also had the backing of William J. Baxley, who was then the Attorney General of Alabama.

''A man should never give up hope,'' Mr. Norris said after receiving his pardon. ''I'm just so glad to be free. They had said that I was a nobody, a dog, but I stood up and I said the truth. Somebody's got to do these things in life.''

Mr. Norris, who was born in Warm Springs, Ga., on July 12, 1912, is survived by his wife, Melba, and two daughters, Deborah N. Webster and Adele Norris, all of Brooklyn, and three sisters, Evaneza Ward and Virginia Ferrier, both of Cleveland, and Blanche Norris, of Zebulon, Ga.

Plans for a funeral service tomorrow were incomplete yesterday.

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American teenagers, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused in Alabama of raping two white women on a train in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a miscarriage of justice in the United States legal system.

On March 25, 1931, two dozen people were 'hoboing' on a freight train traveling between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, the hoboes being an equal mix of African-Americans and Caucasians. A group of white teenage boys saw 18-year-old Haywood Patterson on the train and attempted to push him off the train, claiming that it was "a white man's train".[1] A group of whites gathered rocks and attempted to force all of the black men from the train. Patterson and the other black passengers were able to ward off the group. The humiliated white teenagers jumped or were forced off the train and reported to the city's sheriff that they had been attacked by a group of black teenagers. The sheriff deputized a posse comitatus, stopped and searched the train at Paint Rock, Alabama and arrested the black Americans. Two young white women also got off the train and accused the African American teenagers of rape. The case was first heard in Scottsboro, Alabama, in three rushed trials, in which the defendants received poor legal representation. All but 12-year-old Roy Wright were convicted of rape and sentenced to death, the common sentence in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women,[2] even though there was medical evidence to suggest that they had not committed the crime.[3]

With help from the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the case was appealed. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed seven of the eight convictions, and granted 13-year-old Eugene Williams a new trial because he was a minor. Chief Justice John C. Anderson dissented, ruling that the defendants had been denied an impartial jury, fair trial, fair sentencing, and effective counsel. While waiting for their trials, eight of the nine defendants were held in Kilby Prison. The cases were twice appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which led to landmark decisions on the conduct of trials. In Powell v. Alabama (1932), it ordered new trials.[4]

The case was first returned to the lower court and the judge allowed a change of venue, moving the retrials to Decatur, Alabama. Judge Horton was appointed. During the retrials, one of the alleged victims admitted to fabricating the rape story and asserted that none of the Scottsboro Boys touched either of the white women. The jury found the defendants guilty, but the judge set aside the verdict and granted a new trial.

The judge was replaced and the case tried under a judge who ruled frequently against the defense. For the third time a jury—now with one African-American member—returned a guilty verdict. The case was sent to the US Supreme Court on appeal. It ruled that African-Americans had to be included on juries, and ordered retrials.[5] Charges were finally dropped for four of the nine defendants. Sentences for the rest ranged from 75 years to death. All but two served prison sentences; all were released or escaped by 1946. One was shot while being escorted to prison by a Sheriff's Deputy and permanently disabled. Two escaped, were later charged with other crimes, convicted, and sent back to prison. Clarence Norris, the oldest defendant and the only one sentenced to death in the final trial, "jumped parole" in 1946 and went into hiding. He was found in 1976 and pardoned by Governor George Wallace, by which time the case had been thoroughly analyzed and shown to be an injustice. Norris later wrote a book about his experiences. The last surviving defendant[who?] died in 1989.

"The Scottsboro Boys", as they became known, were defended by many in the North and attacked by many in the South. The case is now widely considered a miscarriage of justice, highlighted by use of all-white juries. Black Americans in Alabama had been disenfranchised since the late 19th century and were likewise not allowed on juries. The case has been explored in many works of literature, music, theatre, film and television. On November 21, 2013, Alabama's parole board voted to grant posthumous pardons to the three Scottsboro Boys who had not been pardoned or had their convictions overturned.[6]

Contents

1 Arrests and accusations

2 Lynch mob

3 The trials

3.1 Defense attorneys

3.2 Norris and Weems trial

3.3 Patterson trial

3.4 Powell, Roberson, Williams, Montgomery and Wright trial

3.5 Roy Wright trial

3.6 Death sentences

3.7 Help from Communist Party and NAACP

3.8 Appeal to Alabama Supreme Court

3.9 Williams' ruling

3.10 Weems and Norris ruling

3.10.1 Dissent

3.11 Appeal to United States Supreme Court

4 Decatur trials

4.1 Patterson trial

4.1.1 Defense

4.2 Closing arguments

4.3 Verdict

4.3.1 Irwin Craig

4.4 Horton grants Patterson a new trial

4.5 New trials under Callahan

4.6 Norris' retrial

4.7 United States Supreme Court reverses Decatur convictions

4.8 Final round of trials

4.9 Final decisions

4.10 Aftermath

4.11 2013 pardon

4.12 Fates of the defendants

4.13 In popular culture

5 Notes and references

5.1 Notes

5.2 References

6 Further reading

7 External links

Arrests and accusations

Victoria Price (left) and Ruby Bates (right) in 1931

Historical marker in Paint Rock recalling the arrests

On March 25, 1931, the Southern Railway line between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, had nine black youths who were hoboing on a freight train with several white males and two white women.[7][8][9] A fight broke out between the white and black groups near the Lookout Mountain tunnel, and the whites were kicked off the train. The whites went to a sheriff in the nearby town Paint Rock, Alabama, and claimed that they were assaulted by the blacks on the train. The sheriff gathered a posse and gave orders to search for and "capture every Negro on the train."[10] The posse arrested all black passengers on the train for assault.[11]

The unfortunate black teenagers were: Haywood Patterson (age 18) who claimed that he had ridden freight trains for so long that he could light a cigarette on the top of a moving train; Clarence Norris (age 19), who had left behind ten brothers and sisters in rural Georgia[citation needed]; Charlie Weems (age 19); brothers Andy Wright (age 19) and Roy Wright (age 12), who were leaving home for the first time; the nearly blind Olin Montgomery (age 17), who was hoping to get a job in order to pay for a pair of glasses that he so desperately needed; Ozie Powell (age 16); Willie Roberson (age 16), who suffered from such severe syphilis that he could barely walk; and Eugene Williams (age 13);[7] Of these nine boys, only four knew each other prior to their arrest.

Two white women who were also aboard the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, told a member of the posse that they had been raped by a group of black teenagers.[12] The posse brought the women to the jail where the accused were being held, and they identified them as their attackers. A doctor was summoned to examine Price and Bates for signs of rape, but none was found. A widely published photo showed the two women shortly after the arrests in 1931.[citation needed]

There was no evidence (beyond the women's testimony) pointing to the guilt of the accused, yet that was irrelevant due to the prevalent acism in the South at the time, according to which black men were constantly being policed by white men for signs of sexual interest in white women, which could be punishable by lynching. Price and Bates may have told the police that they were raped to divert police attention from themselves. They were both suspected of being prostitutes and not only risked being arrested for it, but they could also have been prosecuted for violating the Mann Act by crossing a state line "for immoral purposes."

Lynch mob

In the Jim Crow South, lynching of black males accused of raping or murdering whites was common; word quickly spread of the arrest and rape story. Soon a lynch mob gathered at the jail in Scottsboro, demanding the youths be surrendered to them.[13]

The crowd at Scottsboro on April 6, 1931

Sheriff Matt Wann stood in front of the jail and addressed the mob, saying he would kill the first person to come through the door.[14] He removed his belt and handed his gun to one of his deputies. He walked through the mob and the crowd parted to let him through; Wann was not touched by anyone. He walked across the street to the courthouse where he telephoned Governor Benjamin M. Miller, who mobilized the Alabama Army National Guard to protect the jail.[14][15] He took the defendants to the county seat of Gadsden, Alabama, for indictment and to await trial. Although rape was potentially a capital offense in Alabama, the defendants at this point were not allowed to consult an attorney.[citation needed]

The trials

The prisoners were brought to court by 118 Alabama guardsmen, armed with machine guns. It was market day in Scottsboro, and farmers were in town to sell produce and buy supplies. A crowd of thousands soon formed.[16] Courthouse access required a permit due to the salacious nature of the testimony expected.[17] As the Supreme Court later described this situation, "the proceedings ... took place in an atmosphere of tense, hostile, and excited public sentiment."[18] For each trial, all-white juries were selected. There were few African Americans in the jury pool, as most had been disenfranchised since the turn of the century by a new state constitution and white discriminatory practice, and were thus disqualified from jury service.[citation needed]

Defense attorneys

The pace of the trials were very fast before the standing-room-only, all-white audience. The judge and prosecutor wanted to speed the nine trials to avoid violence, so the first trial took a day and a half, and the rest took place one right after the other, in just one day. The judge had ordered the Alabama bar to assist the defendants, but the only attorney who volunteered was Milo Moody, a 69-year-old attorney who had not defended a case in decades.[17] The judge persuaded Stephen Roddy, a Chattanooga, Tennessee, real estate lawyer, to assist him. Roddy admitted he had not had time to prepare and was not familiar with Alabama law, but agreed to aid Moody.[19]

Against accepted practice, Roddy presented both the testimony of his clients and the case of the girls. Because of the mob atmosphere, Roddy petitioned the court for a change of venue, entering into evidence newspaper and law enforcement accounts[20] describing the crowd as "impelled by curiosity".[21][22] Judge Hawkins found that the crowd was curious and not hostile.[23]

Norris and Weems trial

Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems were tried first. During prosecution testimony, Victoria Price stated that she and Ruby Bates witnessed the fight, that one of the black men had a gun, and that they all raped her at knife point. During cross-examination by Roddy, Price livened her testimony with wisecracks that brought roars of laughter.[24]

Clarence Norris

Charlie Weems

Dr. Bridges testified that his examination of Victoria Price found no vaginal tearing (which would have indicated rape), and that she had had semen in her for several hours. Ruby Bates failed to mention that either she or Price was raped until she was cross-examined.[25] The prosecution ended with testimony from three men who claimed the black youths fought the white youths, put them off the train, and "took charge" of the white girls. The prosecution rested without calling any of the white youths as witness.[26]

During the defense testimony, defendant Charles Weems testified that he was not part of the fight, that Patterson had the pistol, and that he had not seen the white girls on the train until the train pulled into Paint Rock.[citation needed]

Defendant Clarence Norris stunned the courtroom by implicating the other defendants. He denied participating in the fight or being in the gondola car where the fight took place. But he said that he saw the alleged rapes by the other blacks from his spot atop the next boxcar.[25][27] The defense put on no further witnesses.[citation needed]

During closing, the prosecution said, "If you don't give these men death sentences, the electric chair might as well be abolished."[28] The defense made no closing argument, nor did it address the sentencing of the death penalty for their clients.[28]

The Court started the next case while the jury was still deliberating the first. The first jury deliberated less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict and imposed the death sentence on both Weems and Norris.[29]

Patterson trial

Haywood Patterson

The trial for Haywood Patterson occurred while the Norris and Weems cases were still under consideration by the jury. When the jury returned its verdict from the first trial, the jury from the second trial was taken out of the courtroom. When the verdicts of guilty were announced, the courtroom erupted in cheers, as did the crowd outside. A band, there to play for a show of Ford Motor Company cars outside, began playing Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here and There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.[29][30] The celebration was so loud that it was most likely heard by the second jury waiting inside.[31]

After the outburst, the defense of Patterson moved for a mistrial, but Judge Hawkins denied the motion and testimony continued.[32] The second trial continued. During the second trial's prosecution testimony, Victoria Price mostly stuck with her story, stating flatly that Patterson raped her. She accused Patterson of shooting one of the white youths. Price volunteered, "I have not had intercourse with any other white man but my husband. I want you to know that."[29][30]

Dr. Bridges repeated his testimony from the first trial.[30] Other witnesses testified that "the negroes" had gotten out of the same gondola car as Price and Bates; a farmer claimed to have seen white women [on the train] with the black youths.[33]

Patterson defended his actions, testifying again that he had seen Price and Bates in the gondola car, but had nothing to do with them. On cross-examination he testified that he had seen "all but three of those negroes ravish that girl", but then changed his story. He said that he had not seen "any white women" until the train "got to Paint Rock."[34]

The younger Wright brother testified that Patterson was not involved with the girls, but that nine black teenagers had sex with the girls.[30] On cross examination, Roy Wright testified that Patterson "was not involved with the girls, but that, "The long, tall, black fellow had the pistol. He is not here." He claimed also to have been on top of the boxcar, and that Clarence Norris had a knife.[35]

Co-defendants Andy Wright, Eugene Williams, and Ozie Powell all testified that they did not see any women on the train. Olen Montgomery testified that he sat alone on the train and did not know of any of the referenced events.[36] The jury quickly convicted Patterson and recommended death by electric chair.[37]

Powell, Roberson, Williams, Montgomery and Wright trial

This trial began within minutes of the previous case.

Ozie Powell

Willie Roberson

Eugene Williams

Olen Montgomery

Andy Wright

Price repeated her testimony, adding that the black teenagers split into two groups of six to rape her and Ruby Bates. Price accused Eugene Williams of holding the knife to her throat, and said that all of the other teenagers had knives.[38] Under cross examination she gave more detail,[37] adding that someone held a knife to the white teenager, Gilley, during the rapes.[37]

This trial was interrupted and the jury sent out when the Patterson jury reported; they found him guilty.[39] There was no uproar at the announcement. Ruby Bates took the stand, identifying all five defendants as among the 12 entering the gondola car, putting off the whites, and "ravishing" her and Price.[37]

Dr. Bridges was the next prosecution witness, repeating his earlier testimony. On cross examination, Bridges testified detecting no movement in the spermatozoa found in either woman, suggesting intercourse had taken place some time before. He also testified that defendant Willie Roberson was "diseased with syphilis and gonorrhea, a bad case of it." He admitted under questioning that Price told him that she had had sex with her husband and that Bates had earlier had intercourse as well, before the alleged rape events.[40]

The defense called the only witnesses they had had time to find – the defendants. No new evidence was revealed.

The next prosecution witnesses testified that Roberson had run over train cars leaping from one to another, and that he was in much better shape than he claimed.[40] Sim Gilley testified that he saw "every one of those five in the gondola,"[41] but did not confirm that he had seen the women raped.

The defense again waived closing argument, and surprisingly the prosecution then proceeded to make more argument. The defense objected vigorously, but the Court allowed it.[41]

Judge Hawkins then instructed the jury, stating that any defendant aiding in the crime was as guilty as any of the defendants who had committed it. The jury began deliberating at four in the afternoon.

Roy Wright trial

The prosecution agreed that 13-year-old Roy Wright[2] was too young for the death penalty; it did not seek it. The prosecution presented only testimony from Price and Bates. His case went to the jury at nine that evening. His jury and that from the trial of five men were deliberating at the same time.

Roy Wright

At nine on Thursday morning, April 9, 1931, the five defendants in Wednesday's trial were all found guilty. Roy Wright's jury could not agree on sentencing, and was declared a hung jury that afternoon. All the jurors agreed on his guilt, but seven insisted on the death sentence while five held out for life imprisonment (in cases like this, that was often an indication that the jurors believed the suspect was innocent but they were unwilling to go against community norms of conviction). Judge Hawkins declared a mistrial.[42]

Death sentences

The eight convicted defendants were assembled on April 9, 1931, and sentenced to death by electric chair. The Associated Press reported that the defendants were "calm" and "stoic" as Judge Hawkins handed down the death sentences one after another.[42]

Judge Hawkins set the executions for July 10, 1931, the earliest date Alabama law allowed. While appeals were filed, the Alabama Supreme Court issued indefinite stays of executions 72 hours before the defendants were scheduled to die. The men's cells were next to the execution chamber, and they heard the July 10, 1931 execution of William Hokes,[43] a black man from St. Clair County convicted of murder.[44] They later recalled that he "died hard."[45]

Help from Communist Party and NAACP

After a demonstration in Harlem, the Communist Party USA took an interest in the Scottsboro case. Chattanooga Party member James Allen edited the Communist Southern Worker, and publicized "the plight of the boys".[46] The Party used its legal arm, the International Labor Defense (ILD), to take up their cases,[47] and persuaded the defendants' parents to let the party champion their cause. The ILD retained attorneys George W. Chamlee, who filed the first motions, and Joseph Brodsky.

The NAACP also offered to handle the case, offering the services of famed criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow. However, the Scottsboro defendants decided to let the ILD handle their appeal.[2]

Chamlee moved for new trials for all defendants. Private investigations took place, revealing that Price and Bates had been prostitutes in Tennessee, who regularly serviced both black and white clientele.[48] Chamlee offered judge Hawkins affidavits to that effect, but the judge forbade him to read them out loud. The defense argued that this evidence proved that the two women had likely lied at trial.[49] Chamlee pointed to the uproar in Scottsboro that occurred when the verdicts were reported as further evidence that the change of venue should have been granted.

Appeal to Alabama Supreme Court

Following Judge Hawkins' denial of the motions for new trial, attorney George W. Chamlee filed an appeal and was granted a stay of execution. Chamlee was joined by Communist Party attorney Joseph Brodsky and ILD attorney Irving Schwab. The defense team argued that their clients had not had adequate representation, had insufficient time for counsel to prepare their cases, had their juries intimidated by the crowd, and finally, that it was unconstitutional for blacks to have been excluded from the jury. In the question of procedural errors, the state Supreme Court found none.

Williams' ruling

On March 24, 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled against seven of the eight remaining Scottsboro Boys, confirming the convictions and death sentences of all but the 13-year-old Eugene Williams. It upheld seven of eight rulings from the lower court.

The Alabama Supreme Court granted 13-year-old Eugene Williams a new trial because he was a juvenile, which saved him from the immediate threat of the electric chair.[50]

Weems and Norris ruling

The Court upheld the lower court's change of venue decision, upheld the testimony of Ruby Bates, and reviewed the testimony of the various witnesses. As to the "newly discovered evidence", the Court ruled: "There is no contention on the part of the defendants, that they had sexual intercourse with the alleged victim ... with her consent ... so the defendants would not be granted a new trial."[51]

As to representation, the Court found "that the defendants were represented by counsel who thoroughly cross examined the state's witnesses, and presented such evidence as was available."[51] Again, the Court affirmed these convictions as well. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed seven of the eight convictions and rescheduled the executions.

Dissent

Chief Justice John C. Anderson dissented, agreeing with the defense in many of its motions. Anderson stated that the defendants had not been accorded a fair trial and strongly dissented to the decision to affirm their sentences.[52] He wrote, "While the constitution guarantees to the accused a speedy trial, it is of greater importance that it should be by a fair and impartial jury, ex vi termini ("by definition"), a jury free from bias or prejudice, and, above all, from coercion and intimidation."[53]

He pointed out that the National Guard had shuttled the defendants back and forth each day from jail, and that

this fact alone was enough to have a coercive effect on the jury.[53]

Anderson criticized how the defendants were represented. He noted that Roddy "declined to appear as appointed counsel and did so only as amicus curiae." He continued, "These defendants were confined in jail in another county ... and local counsel had little opportunity to ... prepare their defense."[53] Moreover, they "would have been represented by able counsel had a better opportunity been given."[53] Justice Anderson also pointed out the failure of the defense to make closing arguments as an example of underzealous defense representation.[53] About the courtroom outburst, Justice Anderson noted that "there was great applause ... and this was bound to have influence."[54]

Anderson noted that, as the punishment for rape ranged between ten years and death, some of the teenagers should have been found "less culpable than others", and therefore should have received lighter sentences. Anderson concluded, "No matter how revolting the accusation, how clear the proof, or how degraded or even brutal, the offender, the Constitution, the law, the very genius of Anglo-American liberty demand a fair and impartial trial."[54]

Appeal to United States Supreme Court

Main article: Powell v. Alabama

The case went to the United States Supreme Court on October 10, 1932, amidst tight security. The ILD retained Walter Pollak[55] to handle the appeal. Alabama Attorney General Thomas Knight, Jr. represented the State.

Pollak argued that the defendants had been denied due process first due to the mob atmosphere, and second, because of the strange attorney appointment and their poor performance at trial. Last, he argued that African Americans were systematically excluded from jury duty contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Knight countered that there had been no mob atmosphere at the trial, and pointed to the finding by the Alabama Supreme Court that the trial had been fair and representation "able." He told the Court that he had "no apologies" to make.[56]

In a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court reversed the convictions on the ground that the due process clause of the United States Constitution guarantees the effective assistance of counsel at a criminal trial. In an opinion written by Associate Justice George Sutherland, the Court found the defendants had been denied effective counsel. Chief Justice Anderson's previous dissent was quoted repeatedly in this decision.

The Court did not fault Moody and Roddy for lack of an effective defense, noting that both had told Judge Hawkins that they had not had time to prepare their cases. They said the problem was with the way Judge Hawkins "immediately hurried to trial."[4] This conclusion did not find the Scottsboro defendants innocent, but ruled that the procedures violated their rights to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Supreme Court sent the case back to Judge Hawkins for a retrial.

Decatur trials

When the case, by now a cause celebre, came back to Judge Hawkins, he granted the request for a change of venue. The defense had urged for a move to the city of Birmingham, Alabama, but the case was transferred to the small, rural community of Decatur. This was near homes of the alleged victims and in Ku Klux Klan territory.[57]

The American Communist Party maintained control over defense of the case, retaining the New York criminal defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz. He had never lost a murder trial and was a registered Democrat, with no connection to the Communist Party. They kept Joseph Brodsky as the second chair for the trial.

The case was assigned to District Judge James Edwin Horton and tried in Morgan County. His appointment to the case drew local praise. The judge carried a loaded pistol in his car throughout the time he presided over these cases.[why?][57]

The two years that had passed since the first trials had not dampened community hostility for the Scottsboro Boys. But others believed they were victims of Jim Crow justice, and the case was covered by numerous national newspapers.

At the trial, some 100 reporters were seated at the press tables. Hundreds more gathered on the courthouse lawn. National Guard members in plain clothes mingled in the crowd, looking for any sign of trouble. The Sheriff's department brought the defendants to Court in a patrol wagon guarded by two carloads of deputies armed with automatic shotguns.

In the courtroom, the Scottsboro Boys sat in a row wearing blue prison denims and guarded by National Guardsmen, except for Roy Wright, who had not been convicted. Wright wore street clothes. The Birmingham News described him as "dressed up like a Georgia gigolo."[58]

Leibowitz asserted his trust in the "God fearing people of Decatur and Morgan County";[58] he made a pretrial motion to quash the indictment on the ground that blacks had been systematically excluded from the grand jury. Although the motion was denied, this got the issue in the record for future appeals. To this motion, Attorney General Thomas Knight responded, "The State will concede nothing. Put on your case."[58]

Leibowitz called the editor of the Scottsboro weekly newspaper, who testified that he'd never heard of a black juror in Decatur because "they all steal."[59] He called local jury commissioners to explain the absence of African-Americans from Jackson County juries. When Leibowitz accused them of excluding black men from juries, they did not seem to understand his accusation. It was as if the exclusion was so ordinary as to be unconscious.[60] (Note: Since most blacks could not vote after having been disenfranchised by the Alabama constitution, the local jury commissioners probably never thought about them as potential jurors, who were limited to voters.)

Leibowitz called local black professionals as witnesses to show they were qualified for jury service. Leibowitz called John Sanford, an African-American of Scottsboro, who was educated, well-spoken, and respected. The defense attorney showed that "Mr. Sanford" was evidently qualified in all manner except by virtue of his race to be a candidate for participation in a jury. During the following cross examination, Knight addressed the witness by his first name, "John." The first two times that he did so, Leibowitz asked the court to have him alter his behavior. He did not, and this insult eventually caused Leibowitz to leap to his feet saying, "Now listen, Mr. Attorney-General, I've warned you twice about your treatment of my witness. For the last time now, stand back, take your finger out of his eye, and call him mister", causing gasps from the public seated in the gallery.[61] The judge abruptly interrupted Leibowitz.[62]

While the pretrial motion to quash the indictment was denied, Leibowitz had positioned the case for appeal. The issue of composition of the jury was addressed in a second landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that race could not be used to exclude anyone from candidacy for participation on a jury anywhere in the United States. This astonished (and infuriated) many residents of Alabama and many other Southern states.

Patterson trial

See also: Patterson v. Alabama

Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes

The case went to the United States Supreme Court for a second time as Norris v. Alabama. The court reversed the convictions for a second time on the basis that blacks had been excluded from the jury pool because of their race.[121]

Attorneys Samuel Leibowitz, Walter H. Pollak and Osmond Frankel argued the case from February 15 to 18, 1935. Leibowitz showed the justices that the names of African Americans had been added to the jury rolls. The Justices examined the items closely with a magnifying glass. Thomas Knight maintained that the jury process was color blind.

Alabama Governor Bibb Graves

Because the case of Haywood Patterson had been dismissed due to the technical failure to appeal it on time, it presented different issues. Attorneys Osmond Frankel and Walter Pollak argued those.[122]

On April 1, 1935, the United States Supreme Court sent the cases back a second time for retrials in Alabama. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes observed the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution clearly forbade the states from excluding citizens from juries due solely to their race.[123] He noted that the Court had inspected the jury rolls, chastising Judge Callahan and the Alabama Supreme Court for accepting assertions that black citizens had not been excluded. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, "something more" was needed. The Court concluded, "the motion to quash ... should have been granted."[5] The Court ruled that it would be a great injustice to execute Patterson when Norris would receive a new trial, reasoning that Alabama should have opportunity to reexamine Patterson's case as well.[124]

Alabama Governor Bibb Graves instructed every solicitor and judge in the state, "Whether we like the decisions or not ... We must put Negroes in jury boxes. Alabama is going to observe the supreme law of America."[125]

Final round of trials

After the case was remanded, on May 1, 1935, Victoria Price swore new rape complaints against the defendants as the sole complaining witness. An African American, Creed Conyer, was selected as the first black person since Reconstruction to sit on an Alabama grand jury. Indictment could be made with a two-thirds vote, and the grand jury voted to indict the defendants. Thomas Knight, Jr. by now (May 1935) Lieutenant Governor, was appointed special prosecutor to the cases.[126]

Leibowitz recognized that he was viewed by Southerners as an outsider, and allowed the local attorney Charles Watts to be the lead attorney; he assisted from the sidelines. Judge Callahan arraigned all the defendants except the two juveniles in Decatur; they all pleaded not guilty.

Watts moved to have the case sent to the Federal Court as a civil rights case, which Callahan promptly denied. He set the retrials for January 20, 1936.[127]

Final decisions

Ozie Powell in hospital

By January 23, 1936 Haywood Patterson was convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years—the first time in Alabama that a black man had not been sentenced to death in the rape of a white woman.[2] Patterson escaped from prison in 1948; he published The Scottsboro Boy in 1950. That year he was caught by the FBI in Michigan. The governor of the state refused to extradite Patterson to Alabama. He was later arrested for stabbing a man in a bar fight and convicted of manslaughter. Patterson died of cancer in prison in 1952, after serving one year of his second sentence.

On January 24, 1936, Ozie Powell was involved in injuring a deputy.

During May 1937, Thomas Knight died.

On July 15, 1937, Clarence Norris was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to death. Governor Bibb Graves of Alabama in 1938 commuted his death sentence to life in prison. He was paroled in 1946 and moved north, where he married and had children. In 1970 he began seeking a pardon, with the help of the NAACP and Alabama's attorney. In 1976 Governor George Wallace pardoned Norris, declaring him "not guilty." Norris' autobiography, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys, was published in 1979. Norris died on January 23, 1989, of Alzheimer's disease.

On July 22, 1937, Andrew Wright was convicted of rape and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled, but returned to prison after violating parole. Finally released in 1950, he was paroled in New York State.

On July 24, 1937, Charlie Weems was convicted of rape and sentenced to 105 years in prison. He was paroled in 1943.

On July 24, 1937, Ozie Powell was brought into court and the new prosecutor, Thomas Lawson, announced that the state was dropping rape charges against Powell and that he was pleading guilty to assaulting a deputy. He was sentenced to 20 years. The state dropped the rape charges as part of this plea bargain.[7] Powell was released from prison in 1946.

On July 24, 1937, the state of Alabama dropped all charges against Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright. The four had spent over six years in prison on death row, as "adults" despite their ages. Thomas Lawson announced that all charges were being dropped against the remaining four defendants: He said that after "careful consideration" every prosecutor was "convinced" that Roberson and Montgomery were "not guilty." Wright and Williams, regardless of their guilty or innocence, were 12 and 13 at the time and, in view of the jail time they had already served, justice required that they also be released.

After Alabama freed Roy Wright, the Scottsboro Defense Committee took him on a national lecture tour. He joined the United States Army. Later he married and joined the Merchant Marine. After Wright came back from a lengthy time at sea in 1959, he thought his wife had been unfaithful. He shot and killed her before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.[128]

On July 26, 1937, Haywood Patterson was sent to Atmore State Prison Farm. The remaining "Scottsboro Boys" in custody, that of Norris, A Wright and Weems were at this time in Kilby Prison.

Aftermath

Governor Graves had planned to pardon the prisoners in 1938, but was angered by their hostility and refusal to admit their guilt. He refused the pardons but did commute Norris' death sentence to life in prison.

Ruby Bates toured for a short while as an ILD speaker. She said she was "sorry for all the trouble that I caused them", and claimed she did it because she was "frightened by the ruling class of Scottsboro." Later, she worked in a New York state spinning factory until 1938; that year she returned to Huntsville. Victoria Price worked in a Huntsville cotton mill until 1938, then moved to Flintville, Tennessee.

Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (1969) by Dan T. Carter was widely thought to be authoritative, but it wrongly asserted that Price and Bates were dead. An NBC TV movie, Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (1976), asserted that the defense had proven that Price and Bates were prostitutes; both sued NBC over their portrayals. Bates died in 1976 in Washington state, where she lived with her carpenter husband, and her case was not heard. Price's case was initially dismissed but she appealed. When the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in 1977, Price disregarded the advice of her lawyer and accepted a settlement from NBC. She used the money to buy a house. Price died in 1983, in Lincoln County, Tennessee.[129][130]

Most residents of Scottsboro have acknowledged the injustice that started in their community.[131] In January 2004, the town dedicated a historical marker in commemoration of the case at the Jackson County Court House.[132] According to a news story, "An 87-year-old black man who attended the ceremony recalled that the mob scene following the Boys' arrest was frightening and that death threats were leveled against the jailed suspects. Speaking of the decision to install the marker, he said, 'I think it will bring the races closer together, to understand each other better.'"[131]

Sheila Washington founded the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center in 2010 in Scottsboro.[133] It is located in the former Joyce Chapel United Methodist Church, and is devoted to exploring the case and commemorating the search for justice for its victims.[134]

2013 pardon

In early May 2013, the Alabama legislature cleared the path for posthumous pardons.[133] On November 21, 2013, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles granted posthumous pardons to Weems, Wright and Patterson, the only Scottsboro Boys who had neither had their convictions overturned nor received a pardon.[135][136]

Governor Robert J. Bentley said to the press that day:

While we could not take back what happened to the Scottsboro Boys 80 years ago, we found a way to make it right moving forward. The pardons granted to the Scottsboro Boys today are long overdue. The legislation that led to today's pardons was the result of a bipartisan, cooperative effort. I appreciate the Pardons and Parole Board for continuing our progress today and officially granting these pardons. Today, the Scottsboro Boys have finally received justice.[137]

Fates of the defendants

In 1936, Haywood Patterson was convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years in prison. He escaped in 1949 and in 1950 was found in Michigan, but the governor refused to extradite him. In 1951 he was convicted of an assault and sentenced to prison, where he died of cancer in 1952.

In 1936, Ozie Powell was involved in an altercation with a guard and shot in the face, suffering permanent brain damage. In 1937 He pleaded guilty to assault, and the rape charges were dropped. He was paroled in 1946.

1937, Charlie Weems was convicted and sentenced to 105 years. He was paroled in 1943 after having been held in prison for a total of 12 years in some of Alabama's worst institutions.

1937, Andy Wright was convicted and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled and returned to prison after violating parole. He was paroled in New York State in 1950.

1937, Clarence Norris was convicted of rape and was the only defendant sentenced to death. Governor Bibb Graves of Alabama in 1938 commuted his death sentence to life. Given parole in 1946, he "jumped" and went into hiding. In 1976 he was found in Brooklyn, New York. Governor George Wallace pardoned him that year, declaring him "not guilty". Norris published an autobiography, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys (1979). He died of Alzheimer's disease on January 23, 1989.

In 1937, the state dropped all charges for Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright, who had already been in prison for six years.

Roy Wright had a career in the US Army and Merchant Marine. In 1959, believing his wife had been unfaithful during his tour, he shot and killed her, and shot himself, committing suicide.[128]

2013, the state of Alabama issues posthumous pardons for Patterson, Weems, and Andy Wright.

In this Ryan Walker editorial cartoon — published four days after the conclusion of the Scottsboro trial — a member of the Ku Klux Klan seizes a black baby from a cradle and charges him with rape. The jury instantly convicts the baby, and the judge instantly sentences him to death; the Klansman emphasizes that this has been a fair trial, and is preferable to a lynching.

In popular culture

Literature

African-American poet and playwright Langston Hughes wrote about the trials in his work Scottsboro Limited.

The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about growing up in the Deep South in the 1930s. An important plot element concerns the father, attorney Atticus Finch, defending a black man against a false accusation of rape. The trial in this novel is often characterized as based on the Scottsboro case. But Harper Lee said in 2005 that she had in mind something less sensational, although the Scottsboro case served "the same purpose" to display Southern prejudices.[138]

Ellen Feldman's Scottsboro: A Novel (2009) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize; it is a fictionalized account of the trial, told from the point of view of Ruby Bates and a fictional journalist, Alice Whittier.

Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son (New York: Harper, 1940) was influenced by the Scottsboro Boys case. There is a parallel between the court scene in Native Son in which Max calls the "hate and impatience" of "the mob congregated upon the streets beyond the window" (Wright 386) and the "mob who surrounded the Scottsboro jail with rope and kerosene" after the Scottsboro boys' initial conviction. (Maxwell 132)[139]

The poet Allen Ginsberg references the Scottsboro Boys in his poem America

Music

The American folk singer and songwriter Lead Belly commemorated the events in his song "The Scottsboro Boys".[140] In the song, he warns "colored" people to watch out if they go to Alabama, saying that "the man gonna get ya", and that the "Scottsboro boys [will] tell ya what it's all about."

Metal/Rap band Rage Against The Machine provides imagery of the Scottsboro Boys in their music video "No Shelter", along with imagery of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, two men who were also denied a fair trial in court and were executed by authorities.[141]

Film and television

In 1976, NBC aired a TV movie called Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, based on the case.

In 1998, Court TV produced a television documentary on the Scottsboro trials for its Greatest Trials of All Time series.[142]

Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman produced the story of the Scottsboro Boys in the 2001 documentary Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, which received an Oscar nomination.

Timothy Hutton starred in a 2006 film adaptation titled Heavens Fall.[143]

Theater

Jean-Paul Sartre's 1946 play The Respectful Prostitute (La Putain respectueuse), in which a black man is wrongfully blamed for an incident on a train involving a white prostitute, is believed to have been based on the Scottsboro case.[144]

The Scottsboro Boys is a staged musical portrayal of the Scottsboro case. The show premiered Off Broadway in February 2010[145] and moved to Broadway's Lyceum Theatre in October 2010. The show received good reviews, but closed on December 12, 2010.[146][147] The musical opened in London's Young Vic Theatre in 2013 before moving to the Garrick Theatre in October 2014.

Direct from Death Row The Scottsboro Boys, a black ensemble vaudevillesque "play with music and masks" Mark Stein production, directed by Michael Menendian, and presented at Chicago's Raven Theatre during the 2015 and 2016 seasons.[148]

In March of 1931, nine young African-American men were accused of raping two white women on a train. The African-American men ranged in age from thirteen to nineteen. Each young man was tried, convicted and sentenced in a matter of days.

African-American newspapers published news accounts and editorials of the events of the case. Civil rights organizations followed suit, raising money and providing defense for these young men. However, it would take several years for these young men's cases to be overturned.

1931

March 25: A group of young African-American and white men engage in a scuffle while riding a freight train. The train is stopped in Paint Rock, Ala and nine African-American teens are arrested for assault. Soon after, two white women, Victoria Price, and Ruby Bates charge the young men with rape. The nine young men are taken to Scottsboro, Ala. Both Price and Bates are examined by doctors. By the evening, the local newspaper, Jackson County Sentinel calls the rape a "revolting crime."

March 30: The nine "Scottsboro Boys" are indicted by a grand jury.

April 6 - 7: Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems, were placed on trial, convicted and given the death sentence.

April 7 - 8: Haywood Patterson meets the same sentence as Norris and Weems.

April 8 - 9: Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, and Andy Wright are also tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

April 9: 13-year-old Roy Wright is also tried. However, his trial ends with a hung jury as 11 jurors want the death sentence and one vote for life in imprisonment.

April through December: Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as the International Labor Defense (ILD) are astonished by the age of the defendants, length of their trails, and sentences received. These organizations provide support to the nine young men and their families. The NAACP and IDL also raise money to for appeals.

June 22: Pending an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, the executions of the nine defendants are stayed.

1932

January 5: A letter written from Bates to her boyfriend is uncovered. In the letter, Bates admits she was not raped.

January: The NAACP withdraws from the case after the Scottsboro Boys decide to let the ILD handle their case.

March 24: The Alabama Supreme Court upholds the convictions of seven defendants in a vote of 6-1. Williams is granted a new trial because he was considered a minor when he was originally convicted.

May 27: The United States Supreme Court decides to hear the case.

November 7: In the case of Powell v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that the defendants were denied the right to counsel. This denial was considered a violation of their right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The cases are sent to the lower court.

1933

January: Noted attorney Samuel Leibowitz takes the case for the IDL.

March 27: Patterson's second trial begins in Decatur, Ala before Judge James Horton.

April 6: Bates comes forward as a witness for the defense. She denies being raped and further testifies that she was with Price for the duration of the train ride. During the trial, Dr. Bridges says that Price showed very little physical signs of rape.

April 9: Patterson is found guilty during his second trial. He is sentenced to death by electrocution.

April 18: Judge Horton suspends Patterson's death sentence after a motion for a new trial. Horton also postpones the trials of the eight other defendants as racial tensions are high in town.

June 22: Patterson's conviction is set aside by Judge Horton. He is granted a new trial.

October 20: The cases of the nine defendants are moved from Horton's court to Judge William Callahan.

November 20: The cases of the youngest defendants, Roy Wright, and Eugene Williams, are moved to Juvenile Court. The other seven defendants appear in Callahan's courtroom.

November to December: Patterson and Norris' cases both end in the death penalty. During both cases, Callahan's bias is revealed through his omissions—he does not explain to Patterson's jury how to deliver a not guilty verdict and also does not ask for the mercy of God upon Norris' soul during his sentencing.

1934

June 12: In his bid for re-election, Horton is defeated.

June 28: In a defense motion for new trials, Leibowitz argues that qualified African-Americans were kept off jury rolls. He also argues that names added on the current rolls were forged. The Alabama Supreme Court denies the defense motion for new trials.

October 1: Lawyers associated with ILD are caught with $1500 bribe that was to be given to Victoria Price.

1935

February 15: Leibowitz appears before the Supreme Court of the United States, describing the lack of African-American presence on juries in Jackson County. He also shows the Supreme Court justices the jury rolls with forged names.

April 1: In the case of Norris v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court decides that the exclusion of African-Americans on jury rolls did not protect African-American defendants of their rights to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The case is overturned and sent to a lower court. However, Patterson's case is not included in the argument because of filing date technicalities. The Supreme Court suggests that lower courts review Patterson's case.

December: The defense team is reorganized. The Scottsboro Defense Committee (SDC) is established with Allan Knight Chalmers as chairman. Local attorney, Clarence Watts serves as co-counsel.

1936

January 23: Patterson is retried. He is found guilty and sentenced to 75 years in prison. This sentence was a negotiation between the foreman and the rest of the jury.

January 24: Ozie Powell pulls a knife and slashes a police officer's throat while being transported to Birmingham Jail. Another police official shoots Powell in the head. Both the police officer and Powell survive.

December: Lieutenant Governor Thomas Knight, the prosecuting attorney for the case, meets with Leibowitz in New York to come to a compromise.

1937

May: Thomas Knight, a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court, dies.

June 14: Patterson's conviction is upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court.

July 12 - 16: Norris is sentenced to death during his third trial. As a result of the pressure of the case, Watts becomes sick, causing Leibowitz to steer the defense.

July 20 - 21: Andy Wright's is convicted and sentenced to 99 years.

July 22 - 23: Charley Weems is convicted and sentenced to 75 years.

July 23 - 24: Ozie Powell's rape charges are dropped. He pleads guilty to assaulting a police officer and is sentenced to 20 years.

July 24: The rape charges against Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright are dropped.

October 26: The United States Supreme Court decides not to hear the appeal of Patterson.

December 21: Bibb Graves, the governor of Alabama, meets with Chalmers to discuss clemency to the five convicted defendants.

1938

June: The sentences given to Norris, Andy Wright, and Weems are affirmed by the Alabama Supreme Court.

July: Norris' death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment by Governor Graves.

August: A denial of parole is recommended for Patterson and Powell by an Alabama parole board.

October: A denial of parole is also recommended for Norris, Weems, and Andy Wright.

October 29: Graves meets with the convicted defendants to consider parole.

November 15: The pardon applications of all five defendants are denied by Graves.

November 17: Weems is released on parole.

1944

January: Andy Wright and Clarence Norris are released on parole.

September: Wright and Norris leave Alabama. This is considered a violation of their parole. Norris returns to jail in October 1944 and Wright in October 1946.

1946

June: Ozie Powell is released from prison on parole.

September: Norris receives parole.

1948

July: Patterson escapes from prison and travels to Detroit.

1950

June 9: Andy Wright is released on parole and finds a job in New York.

June: Patterson is caught and arrested by the FBI in Detroit. However, G. Mennen Williams, governor of Michigan does not extradite Patterson to Alabama. Alabama does not continue its attempts to return Patterson to prison.

December: Patterson is charged with murder after a fight in a bar.

1951

September: Patterson is sentenced to six to fifteen years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter.

1952

August: Patterson dies of cancer while serving time in prison.

1959

August: Roy Wright dies

1976

October: George Wallace, governor of Alabama, pardons Clarence Norris.

1977

July 12: Victoria Price sues NBC for defamation and invasion of privacy after its broadcast of Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys airs. Her claim, however, is dismissed.

1989

January 23: Clarence Norris dies. He is the last surviving Scottsboro Boys.

uby 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.

Victoria Price (1911 - 1982):

"I didn't lie in Scottsboro. I didn't lie in Decatur and I ain't lied here. I've told the truth all the way through and I'm a' gonna go on fighting 'til my dying day or 'til justice is done."

-- after her lawsuit against NBC, 1976

Scottsboro-Victoria-1.jpg

Victoria Price. Courtesy: Morgan County Archives

On March 25, 1931, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were travelling in men's overalls, hoboing aboard a Southern Railroad freight train, when it was met by a heavily-armed posse in Paint Rock, Alabama. The posse sought the black teenagers who had thrown a group of white boys off the train. When the two white women said they had been raped by the black youths, the town, the women and the group of black young men and boys became part of the tragic episode in American history known as Scottsboro.

Price grew up in a poor part of Huntsville, Alabama and worked in local cotton mills, when there was work. During the Depression, the mills only employed Price and Bates for five or six days a month. On some of the other days, Price trespassed on the rails, travelling in search of work. She was just one of a vast army; at the height of the Depression, a quarter million jobless young people lived itinerant lives, moving from place to place by hopping trains.

Price had first gone to work as a spinner at age 10, alongside her mother, but after her mother suffered an injury, young Victoria earned all the money they had. Her 1931 wages, $1.20 a day, were only half of what she had been making before the Depression, in 1929. The Hunstville Deputy Sheriff told a researcher for the American Civil Liberties Union that Price supplemented her earnings with prostitution. Other neighbors reported that black men were among her patrons. Price herself insisted that she was virtuous and ruined by the black youths on the train.

When Victoria Price accused six of the nine boys of raping her, she was twenty-one years old, and had been married three times. According to Ruby Bates and Lester Carter, the white young man Bates had met a few days before, Price had been with her boyfriend, a married man named Jack Tiller, two nights before the ill-fated train ride. On the witness stand, Carter testified he'd met Tiller and Price in Huntsville, where they were jailed for adultery and he had been locked up for vagrancy. When they were released, the group met up with Ruby Bates, and the four decided to ride the rails together. Bates and Price spent the night, and had sex with Carter and Tiller, in a hobo jungle, a temporary camp near the tracks that was used by itinerants waiting for trains.

Scottsboro-Victoria-2.jpg

Victoria Price. Courtesy: Morgan County Archives

Defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz suggested that Price had invented the rape by the black defendants when the train they'd hopped was stopped in Paint Rock. He proposed that Price made up the charge to protect herself and Bates. Leibowitz speculated that the young women feared they would be arrested for vagrancy or for being hobos in the company of the black youths. And he amassed a host of details in his witnesses' testimony to prove Price wasn't telling the truth. But Leibowitz was unable to depict Price as the lying, loose woman he believed her to be. An atmosphere of extreme hostility toward the Jewish New York lawyer and his witnesses had taken hold, so much so that a reporter in the courtroom heard more than one person say, "It'll be a wonder if Leibowitz gets out alive." Despite the many inconsistencies in her testimony, Price captured the all-white jury's sympathy. Denying any acquaintance with Carter, rejecting his story of spending the night in the hobo jungle, and insisting she had been raped by the black youths on the train, Price offered her own explanation of events.

She was an avid talker and told the story of the rape with many colorful details. The rape story she told to grand and petit juries at Scottsboro involved knives and guns with one boy claiming they were going to take the girls north and "make us their women." At the trials in Decatur, she said that "one of them pulled out his private parts and says, 'when I put this in you and pull it out you will have a Negro baby.'"

Price was the star witness for the prosecution, but perfectly uncooperative with the defense. In response to Leibowitz's questions, she would reply, "I can't say" or "I can't remember." When asked if the model train he set up in court was similar to the one they had been riding on she said it was not, the train she rode on was much bigger. Along with his questions, Leibowitz introduced evidence that Price had been arrested for adultery and fornication in January of 1931.

The cases were repeatedly appealed and retried. In 1934 lawyers for the International Labor Defense tried to bribe her to change her testimony, but she revealed the plot to the police. At four trials in Scottsboro, one before Judge Horton, two more in 1933 before Judge Callahan, and four more in 1937, Victoria Price stuck to her story, refusing to budge under cross-examination, and each time the jury found the defendants guilty. After 1937, four of the defendants were in prison for rape, one for assault and four others had been let free. Price was no longer needed to testify and she faded into obscurity. Dan Carter wrote in his 1969 history of the trial, Scottsboro, A Tragedy of the American South, that he believed she was dead.

In 1976 Price resurfaced. Now known as Katherine Queen Victory Street, she was suing NBC for slander and invasion of privacy for the broadcast of Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, a television movie. She had married twice more since World War II and was living in Tennessee. She returned to the witness stand for her suit and told her story for the twelfth time in a court of law. In the end, her case was dismissed by the judge. She died in 1982.

Ruby Bates (1915 - 1976):

"I told it just like Victoria Price told it." - testifying at Decatur, 1933

scottsboro Bates 1.jpg

Ruby Bates. Courtesy: Morgan County Archives

At the time she accused three black young men of raping her, Ruby Bates was seventeen years old. She lived, like Victoria Price, in a poor neighborhood of Huntsville and worked in the mills. Wages in 1931 were half what they had been just two years ago, and that was when work was available.

Although some Southerners believed racial segregation was present at all levels of society, that just wasn't true. In the poverty-stricken parts of Huntsville where Bates spent her time, blacks and whites played together, drank together, and even sometimes slept together. Bates, who was white, had once been arrested for hugging a black man in public; this incident indicates the difference between behavior that was present and that which was legislated against.

Bates was the quieter of the two accusers, and was always more vague about what had happened on the train. For the most part, she let Price do the talking and concurred with her version of events. At the first trial, in Scottsboro in 1931, she confirmed the story they had told the posse at Paint Rock, Alabama, on the day they came off the train and alleged that nine black teenagers had raped them.

In 1932, during an unrelated arrest, police found a letter that Bates had written to a boyfriend. In the letter, she denied having been raped. The man who had the letter on his person claimed that he had been paid by the International Labor Defense to get Bates drunk and have her write the letter.

Scottsboro Bates 2.jpg

Ruby Bates. Courtesy: Morgan County Archives

Not long afterward, Bates disappeared. She wasn't seen for weeks. Then, in a surprise twist to Haywood Patterson's second trial in Decatur before Judge James Horton in 1933, Bates appeared as a surprise witness for the defense. She testified that there was never any rape, and that the evidence of sexual activity from the examination of herself and Price was from the night before, when they had been with their boyfriends. Under cross-examination, she was confronted with the conflicts in her testimony at Scottsboro, and becoming flustered, proved to be a poor witness. Furthermore, she was asked about how she had paid for the new dress she had on, and where she had been. Her answer, that her new possessions were bought for her in New York, convinced many that her testimony had been bought as well.

According to Bates, she had gone to New York with a friend. Having a crisis of conscience, she sought out Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of Riverside Church, whose picture she had seen and found trustworthy. They met, and he convinced her to return to Alabama to testify.

After the Patterson trial, Bates discovered that she was the target of much of the hate and resentment that had previously been focused on defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz and the Communists of the I.L.D. She was taken out of town by armed deputies and sent back north, where many people celebrated her courage and honesty. Among them were Communists, who asked her to speak at rallies for the case, including a March on Washington in 1933 with the parents of the defendants. On that trip, she spoke to a crowd of five thousand in Baltimore: "I want to tell you that the Scottsboro boys were framed by the bosses of the south and two girls. I was one of the girls and I want you to know that I am sorry I said what I did at the first trial, but I was forced to say it. Those boys did not attack me and I want to tell you all right here now that I am sorry that I caused them all this trouble for two years, and now I am willing to join hands with black and white to get them free." Bates even wrote to the defendants in prison and appeared at rallies with them when four were released in 1937.

After testifying for the defense, Bates could no longer stay in her community. She moved to Washington State in 1940, married Elmer Schut and called herself Lucille. She resurfaced in the 1970s to file a slander suit against NBC for its broadcast of the television movie Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys. Her husband died in October of 1976, and Ruby died a week later, just two days after Clarence Norris received his pardon from the State of Alabama.

People & Events: Ruby Bates, 1915 - 1976

Ruby Bates testifying on the stand during trial"I told it just like Victoria Price told it."

-- testifying at Decatur, 1933

Ruby Bates testifying on the standNot long afterward, Bates disappeared. She wasn't seen for weeks. Then, in a surprise twist to Haywood Patterson's second trial in Decatur before Judge James Horton in 1933, Bates appeared as a surprise witness for the defense. She testified that there was never any rape, and that the evidence of sexual activity from the examination of herself and Price was from the night before, when they had been with their boyfriends. Under cross-examination, she was confronted with the conflicts in her testimony at Scottsboro, and becoming flustered, proved to be a poor witness. Furthermore, she was asked about how she had paid for the new dress she had on, and where she had been. Her answer, that her new possessions were bought for her in New York, convinced many that her testimony had been bought as well.

Bates, Ruby (1913–1976)

Key American participant in the notorious Scottsboro case. Name variations: Ruby Schut. Born in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1913; died in Yakima, Washington, on October 27, 1976; had two brothers; married Elmer Schut.

Perhaps more than any other single event in the 1930s, the Scottsboro case of Alabama made clear to the American public the full extent of racial injustice in those Southern states whose legal and social systems were based on de jure segregation. Two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, accused nine "black boys" ranging in age from 13 to 21 of raping both of them while the "boys" were traveling as hoboes in March 1931 on the Chattanooga-to-Huntsville freight train. Tried without adequate legal counsel, all nine were convicted of rape on the basis of shaky testimony by Price and Bates. The Scottsboro case became a national controversy, as independent liberals, the American Communist Party, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) regarded the convictions as an outrageous miscarriage of justice. The sentencing exacerbated the issue, when all but one received death sentences.

Behind the scenes, the defenders of the Scottsboro boys were often at odds. Their legal defense was in the hands of a Communist-affiliated organization, the International Labor Defense, which viewed the case not simply as a question of justice for nine individuals but as a symbol of racial and class injustice in a capitalist society. The NAACP suspected that the Communists were more interested in the defendants' propaganda value as "victims of the system," than their fate as individuals. Applying mass pressure to the Alabama political and judicial system, individual liberals and radicals as well as their organizations bombarded officials, including the governor, with telegrams, postcards and letters demanding justice, including a retrial of all the defendants.

Ruby Bates, in a move that blew up the case, then changed her testimony. Her motives for the dramatic change were apparently mixed. She was annoyed because the other witness, Victoria Price, had pushed her out of the limelight. But the element of conscience was also present, for as she wrote in a letter to a boyfriend, "i wish those negroes are not burnt on account of me." Whatever her reasons, it took considerable courage for her to change her testimony in a racially-charged case in the deep South of the 1930s. Bates found herself vilified, being accused by many of the local elites that she had been bribed by the defense team, which as far as they were concerned was comprised mostly of Jewish Communists who had no right to be in the South. After her testimony, Ruby was taken from the courtroom and hidden by several National Guardsmen.

Recognizing Bates' publicity value, the leftist defenders of the Scottsboro boys took her on a tour of New York and Washington, D.C. At New York's St. Nicholas Arena, she spoke as a poor white woman before a crowd of over 5,000, saying that her initial false story of rape had been the result of having been "excited and frightened by the ruling class of white people." Back in Alabama, hostility toward Bates increased. The Huntsville Times noted with sarcasm that she had become "Harlem's darling" and called on the state attorney general to institute perjury proceedings against the "former Huntsville gutter snipe."

After a brief period as a speaker for the International Labor Defense, she vanished into obscurity despite continuing attempts by the Alabama attorney general's office to depict her as a clever liar who had been rewarded by the Communists with a luxurious New York penthouse for "going red." For a while, she worked in a spinning factory in upstate New York.

As for the Scottsboro boys, their attorneys agreed to an unusual plea bargain in 1937 whereby four of them were released while the other five remained in prison. The last of them was not to be released until 1950. Ruby Bates, who had married and taken her husband's name of Schut, died in Yakima, Washington, on October 27, 1976. Two days before her death, Clarence Norris, a resident of New York City and the last of the nine defendants known to be still alive, received a full pardon from the state of Alabama.

he civil rights movement[b] was a political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. The movement has its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

After the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, African American men voted and held political office, but they were increasingly deprived of civil rights, often under the racist Jim Crow laws, and African Americans were subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by white supremacists in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and civil rights, such as the civil rights movement (1865–1896) and the civil rights movement (1896–1954). In 1954, the separate but equal policy, which aided the enforcement of Jim Crow laws, was substantially weakened and eventually dismantled with the United States Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling and other subsequent rulings which followed.[1] Between 1955 and 1968, nonviolent mass protests and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to immediately respond to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans across the country. The lynching of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, and the outrage generated by seeing how he had been abused when his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral, galvanized the African-American community nationwide.[2] Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the successful Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama, "sit-ins" such as the Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina and successful Nashville sit-ins in Tennessee, mass marches, such as the 1963 Children's Crusade in Birmingham and 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama, and a wide range of other nonviolent activities and resistance.

At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 under the leadership of Earl Warren struck down many of the laws that had allowed racial segregation and discrimination to be legal in the United States as unconstitutional.[3][4][5][6] The Warren Court made a series of landmark rulings against racist discrimination, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), and Loving v. Virginia (1967) which banned segregation in public schools and public accommodations, and struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage.[7][8][9] The rulings also played a crucial role in bringing an end to the segregationist Jim Crow laws prevalent in the Southern states.[10] In the 1960s, moderates in the movement worked with the United States Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that overturned discriminatory laws and practices and authorized oversight and enforcement by the federal government. The Civil Rights Act of 1964,[11] which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), explicitly banned all discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices, ended unequal application of voter registration requirements, and prohibited racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minorities as voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and young people across the country were inspired to take action. From 1964 through 1970, a wave of inner-city riots and protests in black communities dampened support from the white middle class, but increased support from private foundations.[12] The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1965 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its constant practice of legalism and nonviolence. Instead, its leaders demanded that, in addition to the new laws gained through the nonviolent movement, political and economic self-sufficiency had to be developed in the black community. Support for the Black Power movement came from African Americans who had seen little material improvement since the civil rights movement's peak in the mid-1960s, and who still faced discrimination in jobs, housing, education and politics. Many popular representations of the civil rights movement are centered on the charismatic leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., who won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combatting racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. However, some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to any particular person, organization, or strategy.[13]

Contents

1 Background

1.1 American Civil War and Reconstruction era

1.2 Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction

1.3 National issues

1.4 Protests begin

2 History

2.1 Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

2.2 Emmett Till's murder, 1955

2.3 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, 1955–1956

2.4 Little Rock Crisis, 1957

2.5 Method of nonviolence and nonviolence training

2.6 Sit-ins, 1958–1960

2.7 Freedom Rides, 1961

2.8 Voter registration organizing

2.9 Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–1965

2.10 Albany Movement, 1961–1962

2.11 Birmingham campaign, 1963

2.12 "Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963

2.13 March on Washington, 1963

2.14 Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965

2.15 St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–1964

2.16 Chester school protests, Spring 1964

2.17 Freedom Summer, 1964

2.18 Civil Rights Act of 1964

2.19 Harlem riot of 1964

2.20 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964

2.21 Selma Voting Rights Movement

2.22 Voting Rights Act of 1965

2.23 Watts riot of 1965

2.24 Fair housing movements, 1966–1968

2.25 Nationwide riots of 1967

2.26 Memphis, King assassination, and Civil Rights Act of 1968

2.26.1 Civil Rights Act of 1968

2.27 Gates v. Collier

2.28 Legacy

3 Characteristics

3.1 African-American women

3.1.1 Sexist discrimination

3.2 Avoiding the "Communist" label

3.3 Grassroots leadership

3.4 Tactics and non-violence

4 Popular reactions

4.1 American Jews

4.1.1 Public profile

4.2 Black segregationists

4.3 "Black Power" militants

4.4 Native Americans

4.5 Northern Ireland

4.6 Soviet Union

4.7 White moderates

4.8 White segregationists

5 Political responses

5.1 Eisenhower administration, 1953-1961

5.2 Kennedy administration, 1961–1963

5.3 Johnson administration: 1963–1969

6 In popular culture

7 Activist organizations

7.1 National/regional civil rights organizations

7.2 National economic empowerment organizations

7.3 Local civil rights organizations

8 Individual activists

9 See also

9.1 History preservation

9.2 Post–civil rights movement

10 Notes

11 References

12 Bibliography

13 Further reading

13.1 Historiography and memory

13.2 Autobiographies and memoirs

14 External links

Background

Main articles: African-American history and Timeline of African-American history

American Civil War and Reconstruction era

Further information: Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Before the American Civil War, eight serving presidents had owned slaves, almost four million black people remained enslaved in the South, generally only white men with property could vote, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites.[14][15][16] Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for Congressional apportionment; and the 15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time).[17] From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction era during which the federal government tried to establish free labor and the civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to the formation of insurgent movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, whose members attacked black and white Republicans in order to maintain white supremacy. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts.[18] Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders.[19][20] However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the Federal Government to get involved.[20] Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.[20]

Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction

Main article: Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era

Further information: Jim Crow laws, Civil rights movement (1865–1896), and Civil rights movement (1896–1954)

After the disputed election of 1876, which resulted in the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures. They continued to intimidate and violently attack blacks before and during elections to suppress their voting, but the last African Americans were elected to Congress from the South before disenfranchisement of blacks by states throughout the region, as described below.

The mob-style lynching of Will James, Cairo, Illinois, 1909

From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to disenfranchise African Americans and many Poor Whites by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks and poor whites were forced out of electoral politics. After the landmark Supreme Court case of Smith v. Allwright (1944), which prohibited white primaries, progress was made in increasing black political participation in the Rim South and Acadiana – although almost entirely in urban areas[21] and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations.[22] The status quo ante of excluding African Americans from the political system lasted in the remainder of the South, especially North Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than sixty years, blacks in the South were essentially excluded from politics, unable to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.[20] Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries.

During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting bloc in Congress. The Republican Party—the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belonged—shrank to insignificance except in remote Unionist areas of Appalachia and the Ozarks as black voter registration was suppressed. The Republican lily-white movement also gained strength by excluding blacks. Until 1965, the "Solid South" was a one-party system under the white Democrats. Excepting the previously noted historic Unionist strongholds the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.[23] In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to dine at the White House, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers."[24] Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, these actions were resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.[24]

Lynching victim Will Brown, who was mutilated and burned during the Omaha, Nebraska race riot of 1919. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.[25]

During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed racial segregation by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous lynchings through the turn of the century. The system of de jure state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "Jim Crow" system. The United States Supreme Court made up almost entirely of Northerners, upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, legitimizing them through the "separate but equal" doctrine.[26] Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.[27] For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first.[27] Elected in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson gave in to demands by Southern members of his cabinet and ordered segregation of workplaces throughout the federal government.[28]

The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations", when the number of lynchings was highest. While tensions and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination affected African Americans in other regions as well.[29] At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of federal laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South.

Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:

Racial segregation. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains.[30] Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.

Disenfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they were no longer able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans, and U.S. states such as Alabama disenfranchised poor whites as well.

Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks through the convict lease system, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.

Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and mob racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in the West Coast).

KKK night rally near Chicago, in the 1920s

African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the Civil rights movement (1896–1954)). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), when the Warren Court ruled that segregation of public schools in the US was unconstitutional and, by implication, overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896.[7][31] Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, many states began to gradually integrate their schools, but some areas of the South resisted by closing public schools altogether.[7][31]

The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement.[32] This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.[32] For example, in 1963 in the city of Anniston, Alabama, two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.[32] Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions.[32]

National issues

Colored Sailors room in World War I

The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual Hampton Negro Conference in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage-earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South."[33] From 1910 to 1970, blacks sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration, most during and after World War II. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to a white majority (in combination with other developments). The rapid influx of blacks altered the demographics of Northern and Western cities; happening at a period of expanded European, Hispanic, and Asian immigration, it added to social competition and tensions, with the new migrants and immigrants battling for a place in jobs and housing.

A white gang looking for blacks during the Chicago race riot of 1919

Reflecting social tensions after World War I, as veterans struggled to return to the workforce and labor unions were organizing, the Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of white race riots against blacks that took place in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919. Urban problems such as crime and disease were blamed on the large influx of Southern blacks to cities in the north and west, based on stereotypes of rural southern African-Americans. Overall, blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest status and restrictive in potential mobility. Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering".[34] The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans becoming urbanized, and they began to realign from the Republican to the Democratic Party, especially because of opportunities under the New Deal of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s.[35] Substantially under pressure from African-American supporters who began the March on Washington Movement, President Roosevelt issued the first federal order banning discrimination and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee. After both World Wars, black veterans of the military pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which ended segregation in the military.[36]

White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the housing project erected this sign, Detroit, 1942.

Housing segregation became a nationwide problem following the Great Migration of black people out of the South. Racial covenants were employed by many real estate developers to "protect" entire subdivisions, with the primary intent to keep "white" neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II were racially restricted by such covenants.[37] Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee,[38] Los Angeles, Seattle, and St. Louis.[39]

Said premises shall not be rented, leased, or conveyed to, or occupied by, any person other than of the white or Caucasian race.

— Racial covenant for a home in Beverly Hills, California.[40]

While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward black people, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as white flight.[41] From the 1930s to the 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood." The result was the development of all-black ghettos in the North and West, where much housing was older, as well as South.[42]

The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage.[43] In a speech in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people".[44] By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes.[43] By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.[43] While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his involvement with white actress Kim Novak.[45] Davis briefly married a black dancer in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.[45] In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Mildred and Richard Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years.[43]

Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with "massive resistance" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, African-American activists adopted a combined strategy of direct action, nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, and many events described as civil disobedience, giving rise to the civil rights movement of 1954 to 1968.

A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to support demands for elimination of employment discrimination in defense industries; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the order.[46]

Protests begin

The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized "direct action": boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience.[47]

Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others.

In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard, a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Nashville which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the White Citizens' Councils.[48]

After Claudette Colvin was arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in March 1955, a bus boycott was considered and rejected. But when Rosa Parks was arrested in December, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council put the bus boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, John Cannon (chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State University) and others mimeographed and distributed thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott.[49][50] The eventual success of the boycott made its spokesman Martin Luther King Jr., a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the successful Tallahassee, Florida boycott of 1956–57.[51] This movement also sparked the 1956 Sugar Bowl riots in Atlanta which later became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr.[52][53]

In 1957, King and Ralph Abernathy, the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison, to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made nonviolence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting rcism.

In 1959, Septima Clarke, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of Myles Horton's Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, began the first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina's Sea Islands. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on Johns Island. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.

History

Main article: History of civil rights in the United States

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the civil rights movement.

Further information: Civil rights movement (1865–1896) and Civil rights movement (1896–1954)

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Main article: Brown v. Board of Education

In the spring of 1951, black students in Virginia protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at Moton High School protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.[54] Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as Brown v. Board of Education.[54] Under the leadership of Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers donated $75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court.[55]

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that mandating, or even permitting, public schools to be segregated by race was unconstitutional.[7] Chief Justice Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that[7][31]

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.[56]

The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. Their method of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One pertained to having exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was argued that interracial contact would, in turn, help prepare children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regards to race and thereby afford them a better chance of living in a democracy. In addition, another argument emphasized how "'education' comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings".[57]

Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Courts that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, was unconstitutional.

The federal government filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the justices to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the Cold War. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted in the brief stating that "The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country."[58][59]

The following year, in the case known as Brown II, the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".[60] Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy v. Ferguson was segregation in transportation modes. Brown v. Board of Education dealt with segregation in education. Brown v. Board of Education did set in motion the future overturning of 'separate but equal'.

School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955

On May 18, 1954, Greensboro, North Carolina, became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States."[61] This positive reception for Brown, together with the appointment of African American David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia where "massive resistance" was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white Christian private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971.[61]

Many Northern cities also had de facto segregation policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In Harlem, New York, for example, neither a single new school was built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the Second Great Migration was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. Brown helped stimulate activism among New York City parents like Mae Mallory who, with the support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on Brown's principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first freedom schools of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically-white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of white flight, however.)[62][63]

Emmett Till's murder, 1955

Main article: Emmett Till

Emmett Till’s mother Mamie (middle) at her son's funeral in 1955. He was killed by white men after a white woman accused him of offending her in her family's grocery store.

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, visited his relatives in Money, Mississippi, for the summer. He allegedly had an interaction with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a small grocery store that violated the norms of Mississippi culture, and Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam brutally murdered young Emmett Till. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, Mamie Till,[64] came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen".[65] Till's mother then had his body taken back to Chicago where she had it displayed in an open casket during the funeral services where many thousands of visitors arrived to show their respects.[65] A later publication of an image at the funeral in Jet is credited as a crucial moment in the civil rights era for displaying in vivid detail the violent rcism that was being directed at black people in America.[66][65] In a column for The Atlantic, Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy".[2] The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury.[67]

"Emmett's murder," historian Tim Tyson writes, "would never have become a watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter."[68] The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S.[2] The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists.[68] Joyce Ladner referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation."[68] One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.[69] Parks later informed Till's mother that her decision to stay in her seat was guided by the image she still vividly recalled of Till's brutalized remains.[69] The glass topped casket that was used for Till's Chicago funeral was found in a cemetery garage in 2009. Till had been reburied in a different casket after being exhumed in 2005.[70] Till's family decided to donate the original casket to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History, where it is now on display.[71] In 2007, Bryant said that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955.[66][72]

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, 1955–1956

Main articles: Rosa Parks and Montgomery bus boycott

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a white person

On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested, Rosa Parks did the same thing. Parks soon became the symbol of the resulting Montgomery bus boycott and received national publicity. She was later hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement".[73]

Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where nonviolence as a strategy was taught by Myles Horton and others. After Parks' arrest, African Americans gathered and organized the Montgomery bus boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally.[74] The organization was led by Jo Ann Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council who had been waiting for the opportunity to boycott the bus system. Following Rosa Parks’ arrest, Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott. They were distributed around the city and helped gather the attention of civil rights leaders. After the city rejected many of its suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E. D. Nixon, pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. This movement also sparked riots leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl.[75] In November 1956, the United States Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling in the case of Browder v. Gayle and ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated, ending the boycott.[74]

Local leaders established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.[50]

Little Rock Crisis, 1957

Main article: Little Rock Nine

A crisis erupted in Little Rock, Arkansas, when Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus called out the National Guard on September 4 to prevent entry to the nine African-American students who had sued for the right to attend an integrated school, Little Rock Central High School.[76] Under the guidance of Daisy Bates, the nine students had been chosen to attend Central High because of their excellent grades.

On the first day of school, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was the only one of the nine students who showed up because she did not receive the phone call about the danger of going to school. A photo was taken of Eckford being harassed by white protesters outside the school, and the police had to take her away in a patrol car for her protection.[77] Afterwards, the nine students had to carpool to school and be escorted by military personnel in jeeps.

White parents rally against integrating Little Rock's schools

Faubus was not a proclaimed segregationist. The Arkansas Democratic Party, which then controlled politics in the state, put significant pressure on Faubus after he had indicated he would investigate bringing Arkansas into compliance with the Brown decision. Faubus then took his stand against integration and against the Federal court ruling. Faubus' resistance received the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was determined to enforce the orders of the Federal courts. Critics had charged he was lukewarm, at best, on the goal of desegregation of public schools. But, Eisenhower federalized the National Guard in Arkansas and ordered them to return to their barracks. Eisenhower deployed elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the students.

The students attended high school under harsh conditions. They had to pass through a gauntlet of spitting, jeering whites to arrive at school on their first day, and to put up with harassment from other students for the rest of the year. Although federal troops escorted the students between classes, the students were teased and even attacked by white students when the soldiers were not around. One of the Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown, was suspended for spilling a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who was harassing her in the school lunch line. Later, she was expelled for verbally abusing a white female student.[78]

Only Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine graduated from Central High School. After the 1957–1958 school year was over, Little Rock closed its public school system completely rather than continue to integrate. Other school systems across the South followed suit.

Method of nonviolence and nonviolence training

During the time period considered to be the "African-American civil rights" era, the predominant use of protest was nonviolent, or peaceful.[79] Often referred to as pacifism, the method of nonviolence is considered to be an attempt to impact society positively. Although acts of racial discrimination have occurred historically throughout the United States, perhaps the most violent regions have been in the former Confederate states. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nonviolent protesting of the civil rights movement caused definite tension, which gained national attention.

In order to prepare for protests physically and psychologically, demonstrators received training in nonviolence. According to former civil rights activist Bruce Hartford, there are two main branches of nonviolence training. There is the philosophical method, which involves understanding the method of nonviolence and why it is considered useful, and there is the tactical method, which ultimately teaches demonstrators "how to be a protestor—how to sit-in, how to picket, how to defend yourself against attack, giving training on how to remain cool when people are screaming racist insults into your face and pouring stuff on you and hitting you" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). The philosophical method of nonviolence, in the American civil rights movement, was largely inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's "non-cooperation" policies during his involvement in the Indian independence movement which were intended to gain attention so that the public would either "intervene in advance," or "provide public pressure in support of the action to be taken" (Erikson, 415). As Hartford explains it, philosophical nonviolence training aims to "shape the individual person's attitude and mental response to crises and violence" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). Hartford and activists like him, who trained in tactical nonviolence, considered it necessary in order to ensure physical safety, instill discipline, teach demonstrators how to demonstrate, and form mutual confidence among demonstrators (Civil Rights Movement Archive).[79][80]

For many, the concept of nonviolent protest was a way of life, a culture. However, not everyone agreed with this notion. James Forman, former SNCC (and later Black Panther) member, and nonviolence trainer was among those who did not. In his autobiography, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Forman revealed his perspective on the method of nonviolence as "strictly a tactic, not a way of life without limitations." Similarly, Bob Moses, who was also an active member of SNCC, felt that the method of nonviolence was practical. When interviewed by author Robert Penn Warren, Moses said "There's no question that he (Martin Luther King Jr.) had a great deal of influence with the masses. But I don't think it's in the direction of love. It's in a practical direction . . ." (Who Speaks for the Negro? Warren).[81][82]

According to a 2020 study in the American Political Science Review, nonviolent civil rights protests boosted vote shares for the Democratic party in presidential elections in nearby counties, but violent protests substantially boosted white support for Republicans in counties near to the violent protests.[83]

Sit-ins, 1958–1960

See also: Greensboro sit-ins, Nashville sit-ins, and Sit-in movement

In July 1958, the NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated. This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City led by Clara Luper, which also was successful.[84]

Student sit-in at Woolworth in Durham, North Carolina on February 10, 1960

Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit-in at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina.[85] On February 1, 1960, four students, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served food there.[86] The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter.[87]

The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The Greensboro sit-in was quickly followed by other sit-ins in Richmond, Virginia;[88][89] Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia.[90][91] The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students conducted sit-ins in coordination with a boycott campaign.[92][93] As students across the south began to "sit-in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brutal force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities.

The "sit-in" technique was not new—as far back as 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library.[94] In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement.[95] On March 9, 1960, an Atlanta University Center group of students released An Appeal for Human Rights as a full page advertisement in newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Journal, and Atlanta Daily World.[96] Known as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the group initiated the Atlanta Student Movement and began to lead sit-ins starting on March 15, 1960.[91][97] By the end of 1960, the process of sit-ins had spread to every southern and border state, and even to facilities in Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio that discriminated against blacks.

Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public facilities. In April 1960 activists who had led these sit-ins were invited by SCLC activist Ella Baker to hold a conference at Shaw University, a historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. This conference led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[98] SNCC took these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further, and organized the freedom rides. As the constitution protected interstate commerce, they decided to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in public bus facilities by putting interracial teams on them, to travel from the North through the segregated South.[99]

Freedom Rides, 1961

Main article: Freedom Rider

Freedom Rides were journeys by civil rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by CORE, the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[100]

During the first and subsequent Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the Deep South to integrate seating patterns on buses and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains. That proved to be a dangerous mission. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.[101]

A mob beats Freedom Riders in Birmingham. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed.

In Birmingham, Alabama, an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor gave Ku Klux Klan members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police "protect" them. The riders were severely beaten "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them." James Peck, a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.[101]

In a similar occurrence in Montgomery, Alabama, the Freedom Riders followed in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and rode an integrated Greyhound bus from Birmingham. Although they were protesting interstate bus segregation in peace, they were met with violence in Montgomery as a large, white mob attacked them for their activism. They caused an enormous, 2-hour long riot which resulted in 22 injuries, five of whom were hospitalized.[102]

Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham temporarily halted the rides. SNCC activists from Nashville brought in new riders to continue the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans. In Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station, a mob charged another busload of riders, knocking John Lewis[103] unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded James Zwerg,[104] a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.[101]

On May 24, 1961, the freedom riders continued their rides into Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested for "breaching the peace" by using "white only" facilities. New Freedom Rides were organized by many different organizations and continued to flow into the South. As riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested. By the end of summer, more than 300 had been jailed in Mississippi.[100]

.. When the weary Riders arrive in Jackson and attempt to use "white only" restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett in defense of segregation: "The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him." From lockup, the Riders announce "Jail No Bail"—they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal convictions—and by staying in jail they keep the issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39 days, the maximum time they can serve without loosing [sic] their right to appeal the unconstitutionality of their arrests, trials, and convictions. After 39 days, they file an appeal and post bond...[105]

The jailed freedom riders were treated harshly, crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100 °F (38 °C) heat. Others were transferred to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, where they were treated to harsh conditions. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe.

Public sympathy and support for the freedom riders led John F. Kennedy's administration to order the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue a new desegregation order. When the new ICC rule took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they chose on the bus; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and lunch counters began serving people regardless of skin color.

The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, a single-minded activist; James Lawson,[106] the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; Diane Nash,[107] an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; Bob Moses, pioneer of voting registration in Mississippi; and James Bevel, a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer, strategist, and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included Dion Diamond,[108] Charles McDew, Bernard Lafayette,[109] Charles Jones, Lonnie King, Julian Bond,[110] Hosea Williams, and Stokely Carmichael.

Voter registration organizing

After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. Also, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting.

By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In June and July 1959, members of the black community in Fayette County, TN formed the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to spur voting. At the time, there were 16,927 blacks in the county, yet only 17 of them had voted in the previous seven years. Within a year, some 1,400 blacks had registered, and the white community responded with harsh economic reprisals. Using registration rolls, the White Citizens Council circulated a blacklist of all registered black voters, allowing banks, local stores, and gas stations to conspire to deny registered black voters essential services. What's more, sharecropping blacks who registered to vote were getting evicted from their homes. All in all, the number of evictions came to 257 families, many of whom were forced to live in a makeshift Tent City for well over a year. Finally, in December 1960, the Justice Department invoked its powers authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to file a suit against seventy parties accused of violating the civil rights of black Fayette County citizens.[111] In the following year the first voter registration project in McComb and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered.[112]

White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO.[113]

In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the Voter Education Project, SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around Greenwood, and the areas surrounding Hattiesburg, Laurel, and Holly Springs. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the literacy test to keep blacks off the voting roles by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes.[114] Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.

Similar voter registration campaigns—with similar responses—were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in Louisiana, Alabama, southwest Georgia, and South Carolina. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[11] protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens.

Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–1965

Beginning in 1956, Clyde Kennard, a black Korean War-veteran, wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) at Hattiesburg under the G.I. Bill. William David McCain, the college president, used the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, in order to prevent his enrollment by appealing to local black leaders and the segregationist state political establishment.[115]

The state-funded organization tried to counter the civil rights movement by positively portraying segregationist policies. More significantly, it collected data on activists, harassed them legally, and used economic boycotts against them by threatening their jobs (or causing them to lose their jobs) to try to suppress their work.

Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison.[116] After three years at hard labor, Kennard was paroled by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his colon cancer.[116]

McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.[117][118][119][120] While trying to prevent Kennard's enrollment, McCain made a speech in Chicago, with his travel sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. He described the blacks' seeking to desegregate Southern schools as "imports" from the North. (Kennard was a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said:

We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a segregated society...In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting...The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands.[117][119][120]

Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively disfranchised most blacks by changing electoral and voter registration requirements; although it deprived them of constitutional rights authorized under post-Civil War amendments, it survived U.S. Supreme Court challenges at the time. It was not until after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that most blacks in Mississippi and other southern states gained federal protection to enforce the constitutional right of citizens to vote.

James Meredith walking to class accompanied by a U.S. Marshal and a Justice Department official

In September 1962, James Meredith won a lawsuit to secure admission to the previously segregated University of Mississippi. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, who said, "[N]o school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor." The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. in contempt, ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll.

U.S. Army trucks loaded with Federal law enforcement personnel on the University of Mississippi campus 1962

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent in a force of U.S. Marshals and deputized U.S. Border Patrol agents and Federal Bureau of Prisons officers. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and firing on the federal agents guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Rioters ended up killing two civilians, including a French journalist; 28 federal agents suffered gunshot wounds, and 160 others were injured. President John F. Kennedy sent U.S. Army and federalized Mississippi National Guard forces to the campus to quell the riot. Meredith began classes the day after the troops arrived.[121]

Kennard and other activists continued to work on public university desegregation. In 1965 Raylawni Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong became the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. By that time, McCain helped ensure they had a peaceful entry.[122] In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s.[116]

Albany Movement, 1961–1962

Main article: Albany Movement

The SCLC, which had been criticized by some student activists for its failure to participate more fully in the freedom rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. King, who had been criticized personally by some SNCC activists for his distance from the dangers that local organizers faced—and given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a result—intervened personally to assist the campaign led by both SNCC organizers and local leaders.

The campaign was a failure because of the canny tactics of Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief, and divisions within the black community. The goals may not have been specific enough. Pritchett contained the marchers without violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion. He also arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to jails in surrounding communities, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. Pritchett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle, and it obtained significant gains in the next few years.[123]

Birmingham campaign, 1963

Main article: Birmingham campaign

The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director Wyatt Tee Walker carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goal—the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany.

The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office.

The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an injunction barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for mass arrests of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.[124]

Recreation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s cell in Birmingham Jail at the National Civil Rights Museum

While in jail, King wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail"[125] on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.[126] Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors.[127] King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child and was released early on April 19.

The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. James Bevel, SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the Children's Crusade, more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail. In this first encounter, the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren.[128]

Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders.

A black and white photograph of a building in ruins next to an intact wall

Wreckage at the Gaston Motel following the bomb explosion on May 11, 1963

Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement—Fred Shuttlesworth was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They bombed the Gaston Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, thousands of blacks rioted, burning numerous buildings and one of them stabbed and wounded a police officer.[129]

Congress of Racial Equality march in Washington D.C. on September 22, 1963, in memory of the children killed in the Birmingham bombings

Alabama governor George Wallace tried to block desegregation at the University of Alabama and is confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach in 1963.

Kennedy prepared to federalize the Alabama National Guard if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls.

"Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963

Main articles: Gloria Richardson, Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, and Civil Rights Address

Birmingham was only one of over a hundred cities rocked by the chaotic protest that spring and summer, some of them in the North but mainly in the South. During the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. would refer to such protests as "the whirlwinds of revolt." In Chicago, blacks rioted through the South Side in late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen-year-old black boy who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.[130] Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects.[131][132] On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed.[133][134] Edwin C. Berry of the National Urban League warned of a complete breakdown in race relations: "My message from the beer gardens and the barbershops all indicate the fact that the Negro is ready for war."[130]

In Cambridge, Maryland, a working‐class city on the Eastern Shore, Gloria Richardson of SNCC led a movement that pressed for desegregation but also demanded low‐rent public housing, job‐training, public and private jobs, and an end to police brutality.[135] On June 11, struggles between blacks and whites escalated into violent rioting, leading Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes to declare martial law. When negotiations between Richardson and Maryland officials faltered, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directly intervened to negotiate a desegregation agreement.[136] Richardson felt that the increasing participation of poor and working-class blacks was expanding both the power and parameters of the movement, asserting that "the people as a whole really do have more intelligence than a few of their leaders.ʺ[135]

In their deliberations during this wave of protests, the Kennedy administration privately felt that militant demonstrations were ʺbad for the countryʺ and that "Negroes are going to push this thing too far."[137] On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a meeting with prominent black intellectuals to discuss the racial situation. The blacks criticized Kennedy harshly for vacillating on civil rights and said that the African-American community's thoughts were increasingly turning to violence. The meeting ended with ill will on all sides.[138][139][140] Nonetheless, the Kennedys ultimately decided that new legislation for equal public accommodations was essential to drive activists "into the courts and out of the streets."[137][141]

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Mall

Leaders of the March on Washington posing before the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963

On June 11, 1963, George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, tried to block[142] the integration of the University of Alabama. President John F. Kennedy sent a military force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. That evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation on TV and radio with his historic civil rights speech, where he lamented "a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety." He called on Congress to pass new civil rights legislation, and urged the country to embrace civil rights as "a moral issue...in our daily lives."[143] In the early hours of June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan.[144][145] The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.[146]

March on Washington, 1963

Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Bayard Rustin (left) and Cleveland Robinson (right), organizers of the March, on August 7, 1963

Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which they proposed in 1962. In 1963, the Kennedy administration initially opposed the march out of concern it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, Randolph and King were firm that the march would proceed.[147] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. Concerned about the turnout, President Kennedy enlisted the aid of white church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, to help mobilize white supporters for the march.[148][149]

The march was held on August 28, 1963. Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals:

meaningful civil rights laws

a massive federal works program

full and fair employment

decent housing

the right to vote

adequate integrated education.

Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham.

Martin Luther King Jr. at a civil rights march on Washington, D.C.

National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In the essay "The March on Washington and Television News,"[150] historian William Thomas notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event.[150]

"I Have a Dream" (0:30)

0:30

30-second sample from "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963

Problems playing this file? See media help.

The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy administration for the efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, John Lewis of SNCC took the administration to task for not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South.

After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had enough votes in Congress to do so. However, when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963,[146] the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to use his influence in Congress to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.

Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965

Main articles: Malcolm X, Black Nationalism, and The Ballot or the Bullet

In March 1964, Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), national representative of the Nation of Islam, formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required Black separatism). Gloria Richardson, head of the Cambridge, Maryland, chapter of SNCC, and leader of the Cambridge rebellion,[151] an honored guest at The March on Washington, immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman [civil rights] leader,"[152] told The Baltimore Afro-American that "Malcolm is being very practical...The federal government has moved into conflict situations only when matters approach the level of insurrection. Self-defense may force Washington to intervene sooner."[152] Earlier, in May 1963, writer and activist James Baldwin had stated publicly that "the Black Muslim movement is the only one in the country we can call grassroots, I hate to say it...Malcolm articulates for Negroes, their suffering...he corroborates their reality..."[153] On the local level, Malcolm and the NOI had been allied with the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) since at least 1962.[154]

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. speak to each other thoughtfully as others look on.

Malcolm X meets with Martin Luther King Jr., March 26, 1964

On March 26, 1964, as the Civil Rights Act was facing stiff opposition in Congress, Malcolm had a public meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Capitol. Malcolm had tried to begin a dialog with King as early as 1957, but King had rebuffed him. Malcolm had responded by calling King an "Uncle Tom", saying he had turned his back on black militancy in order to appease the white power structure. But the two men were on good terms at their face-to-face meeting.[155] There is evidence that King was preparing to support Malcolm's plan to formally bring the U.S. government before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African Americans.[156] Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.[157]

Civil rights activists became increasingly combative in the 1963 to 1964 period, seeking to defy such events as the thwarting of the Albany campaign, police repression and Ku Klux Klan terrorism in Birmingham, and the assassination of Medgar Evers. The latter's brother Charles Evers, who took over as Mississippi NAACP Field Director, told a public NAACP conference on February 15, 1964, that "non-violence won't work in Mississippi...we made up our minds...that if a white man shoots at a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back."[158] The repression of sit-ins in Jacksonville, Florida, provoked a riot in which black youth threw Molotov cocktails at police on March 24, 1964.[159] Malcolm X gave numerous speeches in this period warning that such militant activity would escalate further if African Americans' rights were not fully recognized. In his landmark April 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm presented an ultimatum to white America: "There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets."[160]

As noted in the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, "Malcolm X had a far-reaching effect on the civil rights movement. In the South, there had been a long tradition of self-reliance. Malcolm X's ideas now touched that tradition".[161] Self-reliance was becoming paramount in light of the 1964 Democratic National Convention's decision to refuse seating to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and instead to seat the regular state delegation, which had been elected in violation of the party's own rules, and by Jim Crow law instead.[162] SNCC moved in an increasingly militant direction and worked with Malcolm X on two Harlem MFDP fundraisers in December 1964.

When Fannie Lou Hamer spoke to Harlemites about the Jim Crow violence that she'd suffered in Mississippi, she linked it directly to the Northern police brutality against blacks that Malcolm protested against;[163] When Malcolm asserted that African Americans should emulate the Mau Mau army of Kenya in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded.[164]

During the Selma campaign for voting rights in 1965, Malcolm made it known that he'd heard reports of increased threats of lynching around Selma. In late January he sent an open telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, stating:

"if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans...you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence."[165]

The following month, the Selma chapter of SNCC invited Malcolm to speak to a mass meeting there. On the day of Malcolm's appearance, President Johnson made his first public statement in support of the Selma campaign.[166] Paul Ryan Haygood, a co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, credits Malcolm with a role in gaining support by the federal government. Haygood noted that "shortly after Malcolm's visit to Selma, a federal judge, responding to a suit brought by the Department of Justice, required Dallas County, Alabama, registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."[167]

St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–1964

Main article: St. Augustine movement

Further information: 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest

"We Cater to White Trade Only" sign on a restaurant window in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and spent a night in jail for attempting to eat at a white-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida.

St. Augustine was famous as the "Nation's Oldest City", founded by the Spanish in 1565. It became the stage for a great drama leading up to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. A local movement, led by Robert B. Hayling, a black dentist and Air Force veteran affiliated with the NAACP, had been picketing segregated local institutions since 1963. In the fall of 1964, Hayling and three companions were brutally beaten at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

Nightriders shot into black homes, and teenagers Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Samuel White, and Willie Carl Singleton (who came to be known as "The St. Augustine Four") sat in at a local Woolworth's lunch counter, seeking to get served. They were arrested and convicted of trespassing, and sentenced to six months in jail and reform school. It took a special act of the governor and cabinet of Florida to release them after national protests by the Pittsburgh Courier, Jackie Robinson, and others.

Black and white photograph of segregationists fighting on a beach

White segregationists (foreground) trying to prevent black people from swimming at a "White only" beach in St. Augustine during the 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests

In response to the repression, the St. Augustine movement practiced armed self-defense in addition to nonviolent direct action. In June 1963, Hayling publicly stated that "I and the others have armed. We will shoot first and answer questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The comment made national headlines.[168] When Klan nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods in St. Augustine, Hayling's NAACP members often drove them off with gunfire. In October 1963, a Klansman was killed.[169]

In 1964, Hayling and other activists urged the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to come to St. Augustine. Four prominent Massachusetts women – Mary Parkman Peabody, Esther Burgess, Hester Campbell (all of whose husbands were Episcopal bishops), and Florence Rowe (whose husband was vice president of the John Hancock Insurance Company) – also came to lend their support. The arrest of Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, for attempting to eat at the segregated Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in an integrated group, made front-page news across the country and brought the movement in St. Augustine to the attention of the world.[170]

Widely publicized activities continued in the ensuing months. When King was arrested, he sent a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to a northern supporter, Rabbi Israel S. Dresner. A week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place, while they were conducting a pray-in at the segregated Monson Motel. A well-known photograph taken in St. Augustine shows the manager of the Monson Motel pouring hydrochloric acid in the swimming pool while blacks and whites are swimming in it. As he did so he yelled that he was "cleaning the pool", a presumed reference to it now being, in his eyes, racially contaminated.[171] The photograph was run on the front page of a Washington newspaper the day the Senate was to vote on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Chester school protests, Spring 1964

Main article: Chester school protests

From November 1963 through April 1964, the Chester school protests were a series of civil rights protests led by George Raymond of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP) and Stanley Branche of the Committee for Freedom Now (CFFN) that made Chester, Pennsylvania one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement. James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality called Chester "the Birmingham of the North".[172]

In 1962, Branche and the CFFN focused on improving conditions at the predominantly black Franklin Elementary school in Chester. Although the school was built to house 500 students, it had become overcrowded with 1,200 students. The school's average class size was 39, twice the number of nearby all-white schools.[173] The school was built in 1910 and had never been updated. Only two bathrooms were available for the entire school.[174] In November 1963, CFFN protesters blocked the entrance to Franklin Elementary school and the Chester Municipal Building resulting in the arrest of 240 protesters. Following public attention to the protests stoked by media coverage of the mass arrests, the mayor and school board negotiated with the CFFN and NAACP.[172] The Chester Board of Education agreed to reduce class sizes at Franklin school, remove unsanitary toilet facilities, relocate classes held in the boiler room and coal bin and repair school grounds.[174]

Emboldened by the success of the Franklin Elementary school demonstrations, the CFFN recruited new members, sponsored voter registration drives and planned a citywide boycott of Chester schools. Branche built close ties with students at nearby Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania Military College and Cheyney State College in order to ensure large turnouts at demonstrations and protests.[172] Branche invited Dick Gregory and Malcolm X to Chester to participate in the "Freedom Now Conference"[175] and other national civil rights leaders such as Gloria Richardson came to Chester in support of the demonstrations.[176]

In 1964, a series of almost nightly protests brought chaos to Chester as protestors argued that the Chester School Board had de facto segregation of schools. The mayor of Chester, James Gorbey, issued "The Police Position to Preserve the Public Peace", a ten-point statement promising an immediate return to law and order. The city deputized firemen and trash collectors to help handle demonstrators.[172] The State of Pennsylvania deployed 50 state troopers to assist the 77-member Chester police force.[174] The demonstrations were marked by violence and charges of police brutality.[177] Over six hundred people were arrested over a two-month period of civil rights rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-ins.[172] Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton became involved in the negotiations and convinced Branche to obey a court-ordered moratorium on demonstrations.[175] Scranton created the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission to conduct hearings on the de facto segregation of public schools. All protests were discontinued while the commission held hearings during the summer of 1964.[178]

In November 1964, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission concluded that the Chester School Board had violated the law and ordered the Chester School District to desegregate the city's six predominantly African-American schools. The city appealed the ruling, which delayed implementation.[174]

Freedom Summer, 1964

Main article: Freedom Summer

In the summer of 1964, COFO brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi—most of them white college students from the North and West—to join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools," and organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).[179]

Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local governments, police, the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan used arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality.[180]

Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964 shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared: James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student; and Michael Schwerner, a CORE organizer from Manhattan's Lower East Side. They were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of the members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

From June to August, Freedom Summer activists worked in 38 local projects scattered across the state, with the largest number concentrated in the Mississippi Delta region. At least 30 Freedom Schools, with close to 3,500 students, were established, and 28 community centers were set up.[181]

Over the course of the Summer Project, some 17,000 Mississippi blacks attempted to become registered voters in defiance of the red tape and forces of white supremacy arrayed against them—only 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded. But more than 80,000 joined the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), founded as an alternative political organization, showing their desire to vote and participate in politics.[182]

Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the civil rights movement. It helped break down the decades of people's isolation and repression that were the foundation of the Jim Crow system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. The progression of events throughout the South increased media attention to Mississippi.[183]

The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to non-Southerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued the lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whom—black and white—still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.[183]

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Main article: Civil Rights Act of 1964

Although President Kennedy had proposed civil rights legislation and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening filibusters. After considerable parliamentary maneuvering and 54 days of filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate, President Johnson got a bill through the Congress.[184]

Lyndon B. Johnson signs the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964

On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[11] which banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination.

Harlem riot of 1964

Main article: Harlem riot of 1964

When police shot an unarmed black teenager in Harlem in July 1964, tensions escalated out of control. Residents were frustrated with racial inequalities. Rioting broke out, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, a major black neighborhood in Brooklyn, erupted next. That summer, rioting also broke out in Philadelphia, for similar reasons. The riots were on a much smaller scale than what would occur in 1965 and later.

Washington responded with a pilot program called Project Uplift. Thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by HARYOU called Youth in the Ghetto.[185] HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, together with the National Urban League and nearly 100 smaller community organizations.[186] Permanent jobs at living wages were still out of reach of many young black men.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964

Main article: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a Freedom Ballot in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 80,000 people registered and voted in the mock election, which pitted an integrated slate of candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates.[187]

President Lyndon B. Johnson (center) meets with civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer, January 1964

In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white official party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary. They selected Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray to run for Congress, and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.[179]

The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers. They had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over raism within the Democratic Party. All-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated. Johnson was worried about the inroads that Republican Barry Goldwater's campaign was making in what previously had been the white Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as support that George Wallace had received in the North during the Democratic primaries.

Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There Fannie Lou Hamer testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others endured and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"

Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the "compromise."

The MFDP kept up its agitation at the convention after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the official Mississippi delegates. National party organizers removed them. When they returned the next day, they found convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before. They stayed and sang "freedom songs".

The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the civil rights movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited Malcolm X to speak at one of its conventions and opposed the war in Vietnam.

Selma Voting Rights Movement

Main articles: Selma to Montgomery marches and Voting Rights Act

President Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965

"Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act" (20:39)

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Statement before the United States Congress by Johnson on August 6, 1965, about the Voting Rights Act

"Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act" (21:02)

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SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in Selma, Alabama, in 1963, but by 1965 little headway had been made in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from the police. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a resident of nearby Marion, was killed by police at a later march on February 17, 1965. Jackson's death prompted James Bevel, director of the Selma Movement, to initiate and organize a plan to march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital.

On March 7, 1965, acting on Bevel's plan, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk the 54 miles (87 km) from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Six blocks into the march, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the marchers left the city and moved into the county, state troopers, and local county law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire, and bullwhips. They drove the marchers back into Selma. Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety. At least 16 other marchers were hospitalized. Among those gassed and beaten was Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was at the center of civil rights activity at the time.

Police attack non-violent marchers on "Bloody Sunday", the first day of the Selma to Montgomery marches.

The national broadcast of the news footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote provoked a national response and hundreds of people from all over the country came for a second march. These marchers were turned around by King at the last minute so as not to violate a federal injunction. This displeased many demonstrators, especially those who resented King's nonviolence (such as James Forman and Robert F. Williams).

That night, local Whites attacked James Reeb, a voting rights supporter. He died of his injuries in a Birmingham hospital on March 11. Due to the national outcry at a White minister being murdered so brazenly (as well as the subsequent civil disobedience led by Gorman and other SNCC leaders all over the country, especially in Montgomery and at the White House), the marchers were able to lift the injunction and obtain protection from federal troops, permitting them to make the march across Alabama without incident two weeks later; during the march, Gorman, Williams, and other more militant protesters carried bricks and sticks of their own.

Four Klansmen shot and killed Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo as she drove marchers back to Selma that night.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Eight days after the first march, but before the final march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated:

Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

On August 6, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended literacy tests and other subjective voter registration tests. It authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used and where African Americans were historically under-represented in voting rolls compared to the eligible population. African Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to taking suits to local or state courts, which had seldom prosecuted their cases to success. If discrimination in voter registration occurred, the 1965 act authorized the Attorney General of the United States to send Federal examiners to replace local registrars.

Within months of the bill's passage, 250,000 new black voters had been registered, one-third of them by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout at 74% and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout among black voters; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%.

Several whites who had opposed the Voting Rights Act paid a quick price. In 1966 Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma, Alabama, infamous for using cattle prods against civil rights marchers, was up for reelection. Although he took off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform, he was defeated. At the election, Clark lost as blacks voted to get him out of office.

Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every county where populations were majority black in Alabama had a black sheriff. Southern blacks held top positions in city, county, and state governments.

Atlanta elected a black mayor, Andrew Young, as did Jackson, Mississippi, with Harvey Johnson Jr., and New Orleans, with Ernest Morial. Black politicians on the national level included Barbara Jordan, elected as a Representative from Texas in Congress, and President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1965, although political reaction to his public opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War prevented him from taking his seat until 1967. John Lewis was first elected in 1986 to represent Georgia's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1987 until his death in 2020.

Watts riot of 1965

Main article: Watts Riots

Police arrest a man during the Watts riots in Los Angeles, August 1965

The new Voting Rights Act of 1965 had no immediate effect on living conditions for poor blacks. A few days after the act became law, a riot broke out in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Like Harlem, Watts was a majority-black neighborhood with very high unemployment and associated poverty. Its residents confronted a largely white police department that had a history of abuse against blacks.[188]

While arresting a young man for drunk driving, police officers argued with the suspect's mother before onlookers. The spark triggered massive destruction of property through six days of rioting in Los Angeles. Thirty-four people were killed,[189] and property valued at about $40 million was destroyed, making the Watts riots among the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.[190][191]

With black militancy on the rise, ghetto residents directed acts of anger at the police. Black residents growing tired of police brutality continued to riot. Some young people joined groups such as the Black Panthers, whose popularity was based in part on their reputation for confronting police officers. Riots among blacks occurred in 1966 and 1967 in cities such as Atlanta, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, Seattle, Tacoma, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Newark, Chicago, New York City (specifically in Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx), and worst of all in Detroit.

Fair housing movements, 1966–1968

The first major blow against housing segregation in the era, the Rumford Fair Housing Act, was passed in California in 1963. It was overturned by white California voters and real estate lobbyists the following year with Proposition 14, a move which helped precipitate the Watts riots.[192][193] In 1966, the California Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act.[194]

Working and organizing for fair housing laws became a major project of the movement over the next two years, with Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and Al Raby leading the Chicago Freedom Movement around the issue in 1966. In the following year, Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council also attracted national attention with a fair housing campaign in Milwaukee.[195][196] Both movements faced violent resistance from white homeowners and legal opposition from conservative politicians.

The Fair Housing Bill was the most contentious civil rights legislation of the era. Senator Walter Mondale, who advocated for the bill, noted that over successive years, it was the most filibustered legislation in U.S. history. It was opposed by most Northern and Southern senators, as well as the National Association of Real Estate Boards. A proposed "Civil Rights Act of 1966" had collapsed completely because of its fair housing provision.[197] Mondale commented that:

A lot of civil rights [legislation] was about making the South behave and taking the teeth from George Wallace, [but] this came right to the neighborhoods across the country. This was civil rights getting personal.[198]

Nationwide riots of 1967

Main article: Long Hot Summer of 1967

Further information: Detroit Riot of 1967, 1967 Newark riots, and 1967 Plainfield riots

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Film on the riots created by the White House Naval Photographic Unit

In 1967 riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 100 U.S. cities, including Detroit, Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.[199] The largest of these was the 1967 Detroit riot.

In Detroit, a large black middle class had begun to develop among those African Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the automotive industry. These workers complained of persisting racist practices, limiting the jobs they could have and opportunities for promotion. The United Auto Workers channeled these complaints into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures.[200] Violent white mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s.[201] Blacks who were not upwardly mobile were living in substandard conditions, subject to the same problems as poor African Americans in Watts and Harlem.

When white Detroit Police Department (DPD) officers shut down an illegal bar and arrested a large group of patrons during the hot summer, furious black residents rioted. Rioters looted and destroyed property while snipers engaged in firefights from rooftops and windows, undermining the DPD's ability to curtail the disorder. In response, the Michigan Army National Guard and U.S. Army paratroopers were deployed to reinforce the DPD and protect Detroit Fire Department (DFD) firefighters from attacks while putting out fires. Residents reported that police officers and National Guardsmen shot at black civilians and suspects indiscriminately. After five days, 43 people had been killed, hundreds injured, and thousands left homeless; $40 to $45 million worth of damage was caused.[201][202]

State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring.[203] In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce also launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black.[204] Governor George Romney immediately responded to the riot of 1967 with a special session of the Michigan legislature where he forwarded sweeping housing proposals that included not only fair housing, but "important relocation, tenants' rights and code enforcement legislation." Romney had supported such proposals in 1965 but abandoned them in the face of organized opposition. The laws passed both houses of the legislature. Historian Sidney Fine wrote that:

The Michigan Fair Housing Act, which took effect on November 15, 1968, was stronger than the federal fair housing law...It is probably more than a coincidence that the state that had experienced the most severe racial disorder of the 1960s also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts.[205]

President Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in response to a nationwide wave of riots. The commission's final report called for major reforms in employment and public policy in black communities. It warned that the United States was moving toward separate white and black societies.

Memphis, King assassination, and Civil Rights Act of 1968

Main articles: Poor People's Campaign, Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and Civil Rights Act of 1968