In 1931, nine
black juveniles were charged with raping two
white girls in a
train car in
Alabama. Indicted in
Scottsboro, all nine were sentenced to terms ranging from 75 years to death. The
Supreme Court overturned the convictions on the basis of
6th and
7th Amendment violations. One of the girls recanted her story for the second trial, and the
trial court judge set aside the
jury's guilty verdict as contrary to the
weight of the evidence. After that trial, charges were dropped against five of the defendants, three more were offered
parole, and the ninth escaped to
Michigan. (Michigan refused to
extradite him.)
The case became an emblem of the racial problems of the South, since both the charges and the sentences were thought to be directly a result of the defendants' race. On Oct. 25, 1976, Gov. George Wallace and the Alabama parole board pardoned Clarence Norris, the last surviving “Scottsboro boy,” who had broken parole and fled the state.