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The advantages and disadvantages of segregation
The advantages and disadvantages of segregation
Positive and negative impacts of segregation
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On March 25, 1931, nine men hopped on to a freight train. Little did they know the events that would ensue. Unjust and racist, the Scottsboro Trials were not just ordinary cases. The Scottsboro Trials changed how America viewed segregation. The nine young men, who hopped onto that train that day, were innocent and harmless. The Scottsboro Trials revealed the unjust treatment that African Americans faced and changed views on segregation. In the 1930’s segregation was strongly enforced and whites were superior to blacks. So when white girls accuse blacks of raping them, the white girls are usually believed. The Scottsboro trials were meant to only take a few days, and it turned into months, and soon it became years. The Scottsboro Trials were conducted in a way that gave us long-lasting effects. Hoboes hitched rides on freight trains and did as they pleased during the 1930’s (Carter 3). When the train pulled away from the station at Stevenson, the station master was approached by a group of pale hoboes. The only white guy in the group was grasping the back of his head which appeare...
Before jumping into the comparisons, the story of the Scottsboro Trials is needed to know what is being compared.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the most successful works of fiction in American Literature. Although To Kill a Mockingbird is classified as a work of fiction, there is evidence to support the claim that To Kill a Mockingbird was modeled after the Scottsboro Trials of 1931. There are many parallels between the trial of Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro Trials. The Scottsboro Boys were nine, young, African American men who were falsely accused of raping two white women while illegally riding a train in Alabama. Harper Lee was also about six years old when these trials took place. This is the reason why Harper Lee chose to write her novel through the eyes of a six year old. The trials inspired her to write To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper
While segregation of the races between Blacks and Whites, de facto race discrimination, had been widespread across the United States by the 1930s, nine African-American Scottsboro Boys whose names are Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems, Willie Robeson, Olen Montgomery, Roy and Andy Wright, Clarence Norris and Heywood Paterson were accused of raping two young white women named Victoria Price and Ruby Bates in Alabama in 1931. Along with the dominant influences of the Scottsboro cases on American civil rights history, the landmark case has substantial impacts on the U.S. Constitution primarily in that U.S. Supreme Court ascertained a defendant’s right to effective counsel.
On March 25, 1931, Victoria Price, a known prostitute, and Ruby Bates accused nine Negroes of raping them on a train in Northern Alabama. The trial took place in Scottsboro, amid much anti-black sentiment. An all white jury sentenced eight of the nine to death, despite the fact that one was blind and one could...
On March 25, 1931 nine African American youths were falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of two white girls. Over the next six consecutive years, trials were held to attempt to prove the innocence of these nine young men. The court battles ranged from the U.S Supreme court to the Scottsboro county court with almost every decision the same---guilty. Finally, with the proceedings draining Alabama financially and politically, four of the boys ...
“…and on the charge that the prisoner did with others to conspire to destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States in violation of the laws and customs of war-Guilty” were the words that soared out of Wallace’s mouth at the end of the trial. It was then that Henry Wirz was found guilty. Why? Why was he found guilty? This decision was based on the emotional aspect of the witnesses, and not by the actual guilt. Not only my defense, but also the defense of Wirz’s attorney, Baker, the testimony of the defendant, Henry Wirz, shows that Wirz should not have been found guilty.
Although the trial of People v. Sweet was a clear legal victory for Ossian, his wife, his friends and all others involved in the defense, the story as a whole was a heart wrenching and grim calamity for the Sweets. Not to mention the NAACP’s failed initiative to champion the case in hopes that it would foreshadow a bigger, nation-wide residential segregation victory in the Supreme Court and maybe even a civil rights movement. After Henry’s acquittal none of the men spent day in jail for the night of September 9th 1925 but both trials didn’t have the effect the NAACP planned and ended playing an insignificant role in the big picture of residential segregation and minority rights as a whole. After the trial of Henry Sweet, Robert Toms announced the end of the trials, People v. Sweet would never see another day in court. However much relief it was to hear that, it was small victory compared to the permanent damage the trials inflicted on the lives of the defendants, especially Ossian Sweet.
Few things have impacted the United States throughout its history like the fight for racial equality. It has caused divisions between the American people, and many name it as the root of the Civil War. This issue also sparked the Civil Rights Movement, leading to advancements towards true equality among all Americans. When speaking of racial inequality and America’s struggle against it, people forget some of the key turning points in it’s history. Some of the more obvious ones are the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the North, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington D.C. in 1963. However, people fail to recount a prominent legal matter that paved the way for further strides towards equality.
Although abolition of slavery in the South coincided with the conclusion of the Civil War, a century of institutionalized racism was widespread in the former Confederacy. This institutionalized racism came in the form of the Jim Crow laws. It was a social norm to look at African Americans as inferior or even harmful to the White population. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan roamed around "defending" the white population from the African Americans. This defense came in forms of public executions (lynching) or intimidation. Another fear the White Southerners had was the fear of black men exploiting white women. This fear led to many imprisonments and murders of falsely accused African American men. On March 25th, 1931, nine young African American boys were accused of raping two young white women on a train. These nine eventually became known as the Scottsboro Boys, named after the town where they were arrested. Although the boys had a lawyer fighting for them, the trial was over and the guilty verdict came automatically due to the Jim Crow mindsets of the citizens of Alabama. The unfair trials that the Scottsboro boys received are the results of the institutionalized racism in the South; this case revealed the injustice that prevailed in the American South.
Emmett Till made the ultimate sacrifice and has shown what could lie in the future if a change is not made (Latson). Rosa Parks’s resistance to the racial segregation of the buses has inspired action in the NAACP and has shown the potential of what they could accomplish if blacks continue to defy racism. The prejudice among the white jury members clouded their judgment in the Scottsboro Trials, leaving them unable to fairly deduce a reasonable punishment or verdict. These trials making national news has made African Americans eager to combat and uncover the malpractices in the court. Till’s, Parks’s, and the Scottsboro Boys’s sacrifices were not in vain. They exposed the circumstances that African Americans had to endure and rallied them to protest the inequalities between races. Their actions were the impetus of the Civil Rights
This term paper is on one of the most controversy discussion known as Capital Punishment. This is a topic in which the writer believes does not have a positive effect on decreasing crime in the world. For almost three years now, the writer has grown a passion for criminal behavior in some of the notoriety of a few crime cases that resulted in Capital Punishment and Wrongful Executions. One of my personal favorite crime cases in history is the Scottsboro Boys. This case represents an incident where five innocent African American men nearly faced execution after being accused and convicted of raping two white females on the back of a train back in 1931. This case is one of many reasons I am against capital punishment because it can lead to wrongful deaths of innocent men and women without justified evidences and witnesses. The writer is also
The Freedom Rides took place in the early May, 1961 where two groups of students riding in integrated Greyhound buses would stop at rest stops and blacks would go into white only bathrooms and whites would go into black only bathrooms. These bus rides were supposed to start at Washington DC and go on straight through the Deep South. These students were trying to protest interstate segregation laws and put an end to them. The trip went smoothly at first, but later everything went south as one bus got burned and the people inside were beaten. The second bus was stopped not to long after and everyone onboard was beaten and put in a hospital. Neither bus made it to their destination but it did put an immense amount of attention on them as a multitude of people followed in their footsteps and over a hundred buses became dragged into a freedom ride. (A Time for Justice )This shows how much these students were willing to take as in being beaten without fighting back and it also shows the amount of dedication involved.
For many years after the Civil War many African-Americans did not truly enjoy the freedoms that were granted to them by the US constitution. This was especially true in the southern states, because segregation flourished in the south wwhere African-Americans were treated as second class citizens. This racial segregation was characterized by separation of different races in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. In addition, Blacks were not afforded justice and fair trials, such as the case of the murder of Emmet Till. This unjust treatment would not be tolerated in America any more, which spurred the civil rights movement.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee seems like a complete replica of the lives of people living in a small Southern U.S. town. The themes expressed in this novel are as relevant today as when this novel was written, and also the most significant literary devices used by Lee. The novel brings forward many important themes, such as the importance of education, recognition of inner courage, and the misfortunes of prejudice. This novel was written in the 1930s. This was the period of the “Great Depression” when it was very common to see people without jobs, homes and food. In those days, the rivalry between the whites and the blacks deepened even more due to the competition for the few available jobs. A very famous court case at that time was the Scottsboro trials. These trials were based on the accusation against nine black men for raping two white women. These trials began on March 25, 1931. The Scottsboro trials were very similar to Tom Robinson’s trial. The similarities include the time factor and also the fact that in both cases, white women accused black men.
The Dred Scott Case had a huge impact on the United States as it is today. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments have called it the worst Supreme Court decision ever rendered and was later overturned. The Dred Scott Decision was a key case regarding the issue of slavery; the case started as a slave seeking his rightful freedom and mushroomed into a whole lot more. 65