March 25, 1931

Local law enforcement arrested nine young black men ranging in age from 13 to 20 under false accusations of raping two white women on a train in Jackson County. Despite overwhelming evidence of the Scottsboro Boys’ innocence, the arrests sparked a long series of trials that included multiple death sentences and two U.S. Supreme Court cases that improved black legal rights in court. Ultimately, all nine men served at least six years in prison, with the last surviving defendant serving until his pardon in 1976. In 2013, Gov. Robert Bentley signed legislation at the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center exonerating the men of all guilt.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

The defendants in the Scottboro trial and their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, at a Decatur jail. Standing, left to right: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson (front), Andrew Wright (partially obscured), Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems, and Roy Wright. Haywood Patterson is seated next to Leibowitz. (Photograph by the Brown Brothers, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Scottsboro boys museum in Scottsboro, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.