Scottsboro Trial Research Paper

A small African-American boy sees his friend in the park, but can't spend time with him because they are not the same skin color. Maybe his parents did not want everyone in the town knowing that they were letting their child play with white folk, or he was afraid of what his parents would say if they were getting along, regardless of what the rest of the town thinks. Little did this boy know that he would soon be accused of a crime he never committed. This was the life of those with a different skin color in the 1930s. In To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro trials, racism not only affected those involved, but also the town of where it was held. It would even affect the chances of those accused, which led them to try escape from a penitentiary during this time.

The Scottsboro trials all began on a train crossing the Alabama border on March 25, 1931. Haywood Patterson, one of nine black males involved, had his hand stepped on by Orville Gilley, a white male. This group of nine males included Olen Montgomery, Clarence

The defendants in the trial of Scottsboro had support from more people than Tom had in his whole town. Supporters of the nine Boys established marches, had petitions passed around, and many more events to finally free the defendants from the harsh treatment they were receiving in Alabama. (Horne 36). The legal appeals and the protests that were made into a worldwide campaign by the ILD, the International Labor Defense, even caused the executions for the boys to be postponed (Horne 30). In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee states "They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep" (Lee 285). This further exemplifies that not much of the town excluding the blacks, Atticus, and his children supported him throughout the