In 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression, when thousands of Americans “hopped boxcars,” and rode the freight rails around the county in search of work, camping in “hobo jungles” that grew up around railroad yards, nine black teenagers, mostly in their late teens, one only thirteen years old, found themselves accused of a crime that later trials would show beyond a shadow of a doubt had never occurred. The case was no doubt similar to many others that took place in the Jim Crow South, some ending in lynchings, others in what amounted in judicial lynchings.

The “Scottsboro Boys,” as unlucky as they were to be accused, were more fortunate than many others whose stories never became known to a wider public. Their cases became an international cause célèbre. The case, in some ways, did not end until 2013, when the state of Alabama posthumously exonerated all nine of the Scottsboro defendants.

This CLE course will recount the dramatic trial in which defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz of New York, often referred to at the time as the “next Clarence Darrow,” demolished the prosecution’s case. It will review the three trips to the Supreme Court occasioned by the Scottsboro trials, including the landmark decision in Norris v. Alabama, which found Alabama’s exclusion of black citizens from the jury rolls to be in violation of the 14th Amendment. Finally, it will briefly explore how, from colonial times to the 1930’s, racial prejudice was exploited as a tool for blunting class conflict among whites and deflecting economic grievance, and class-based resentment, onto the African-American minority.