And they resented that. Of course it was over ruled. By the early 1930s, with the nation mired in the Great Depression, many But for all its historical significance, the Scottsboro story is at its core a riveting drama about the struggles of nine innocent young men for their lives-and a cautionary tale about using human beings as fodder for political causes. CARTER: He thought with each attack he was strengthening his case. The brutal manner in which Leibowitz cross-examines Mrs. Price makes one feel like reaching for his gun. BRYAN STEVENSON, Attorney: What Scottsboro teaches us is that you cannot underestimate the power of our history as it relates to race, as it relates to poverty, as it relates to sectionalism, in the struggle for justice. There was already poles outside that they were going to break the door down with. Clarence Norris. I got all excited all over again. In fifteen years, he had won 77 out of 78 murder cases -- the 78th resulted in a hung jury. Polly Kosko In January, 1933, Joseph Brodsky, one of the leaders of the International Labor Defense, asked Leibowitz to take over as chief defense attorney. But Horton was a man of the South, and the South was speaking in a single voice. The train stops. Because of his impeccable record, criminal defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz was hired by the International Labor Defense to defend the young black men accused at Scottsboro. James Goodman To prove that they had, Leibowitz brought with him the huge jury rolls from Decatur. CARTER: Understandably they're terrified. The tragedy of this are nine boys lives hopelessly, eternally interrupted, sent cascading down roads of terror and imprisonment. THORNTON: The advent of the Depression had made it possible for the Communists to gain a hearing among people who just a few years before would have dismissed their claims. Alabama would entrust the prosecution of the case to its highest-ranking lawyer -- Attorney General Thomas Knight. If you don't quieten' down I'll take you around to that gallows and hang you myself.' X. A few minutes out of Lookout Mountain, the train dipped into the Northeastern corner of Alabama. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy exposes dramatically some of the deepest stains in American life and how in the rush to exploit the situation for their own ends, many on both sides of the battle forgot that the lives of nine young men hung in the balance. BROWN: "Black and white unite and fight". She had made her way to New York, until finally representatives of the ILD tracked her down and convinced her to return to Alabama and testify. HORTON: At one point I remember he arose from his chair, went and sat down on the bench and watched the manner in which Victoria Price testified. Cinematographer Tom Hurwitz talks about documentary filmmaking and his unique experience filming in Scottsboro, Alabama where his father, documentarian Leo Hurwitz, had shot nearly 70 years before. In effect it was a kind of relationship in which Victoria totally dominated Ruby Bates. Their blackness convicted them. "An American tragedy" 9 young men was accused of raping Two White women and didn't get a fair trail. Nine young black Alabama youths – ranging in age from 12 to 19 – But everyone convinced him that that's what he had to do. Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! MARY LICHT, Communist Organizer: I told them if the International Labor Defense comes we don't believe in just having a trial. He was simply saying: 'Come on boys! Not to back Alabamians off but to harden and toughen the resistance to any kind of fair trial. Leibowitz soldiered on with one last appeal to stop the scheduled execution of his clients. I have every confidence in the world that we shall win there. One of them had syphilis and simply couldn't have had sexual intercourse. GOODMAN: In the minds of many Alabamians, by the middle of the trial in Judge Horton's court, this case is not so much about what happened on that freight train. Throw this body of death away from Alabama. DOSS: Here is a man that sees himself as having to go against much of what has been his life, much of a system that he's been a part of, that he's benefited from, that's been good to him and now he's gonna have to stand up and say uh-uh. Suddenly a large group of Blacks comes hopping over on to the car that she is on, quickly dispatches with her White companions, beats them up, throws them off the train, and then en masse holds her up, rips her clothes off, and rapes her. Harriett Glickman National Archives CBS News Archives Voice of Schwartzbart: They had been in a very bad psychological condition. The switch is thrown. But world's forgetfulness proved to be the Scottsboro prisoners' greatest ally. The twelve men filed out of the courthouse, less than two weeks after they had been sworn in. And no state was hurting worse than Alabama. FLYNT: Alabamians have never backed away from a fight. Rules are different. In November, 1943, the Alabama Parole Board met for a fourth time. In 1946, Ozie Powell, 33, was let go. A look at the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" case that occurred in Alabama in 1931, in which nine young black men were arrested, tried and quickly convicted in the rape of two white women, despite overwhelming evidence that showed their accusers had falsely accused them and the fact that one of the women later admitted that no rape had in fact occurred (although both had had … In November 1932, Communists took their public protests to the steps of the Capitol, where they were routed by the police. They had shotguns, pistols, sticks, pieces a' iron, everything. Fifteen minutes later, when twenty policemen had replaced their nightsticks and the screams of women in the crowd had died down, the sidewalk was strewn with communist banners. Ozie Powell had been found riding alone. There were nine prisoners in all. CARTER: Victoria Price was tough, a survivor in every way. They labored up to 14 hours a day in deafening noise, air choked with cotton lint, and near complete darkness. CARTER: When that jury brought in that verdict of guilty, everyone said he looked like someone had struck him. Take my word on it. William Watts and Family We believe in masses of people being behind the causes you're fighting for, and that's how the International Labor Defense Works. But Leibowitz' motion now forced him to confront his own doubts about the case. They were scared but they were they were delighted to see us. Louder: No! Price: No sir, we never have been on the railroad together. Someone who was Jewish, totally foreign to their religion. Because his own clients had told him where and it did not coincide with where she claimed she was. LEIBOWITZ: My father had set up this Lionel train set in the courtroom in order to demonstrate where the alleged rape took place. One month free trial! Roger Haydock Bob Aumon, Norfolk-Southern Railroad GOODMAN: So Bates essentially says that she made the whole thing up. Finally, Leibowitz said of Price's testimony: "It is the foul, contemptible lie of an abandoned, brazen woman.". Repeatedly, throughout the trial in Callahan's courtroom, the judge frustrated Leibowitz' defense -- overruling his objections, and excluding crucial evidence to his case. Alabama authorities immediately resolved to retry, reconvict, and execute the nine defendants. Clarence Norris had left behind ten brothers and sisters in rural Georgia. Alan Knight Chalmers Collection, Boston University Glen Shauer, Film Processing Since the days of slavery and before, what was presumed to be the black man's insatiable sexual appetite for white women had struck fear in the hearts of Southern whites. As it opened in April, 1933, three hundred spectators crowded the hallways waiting to enter the courtroom. We will not!" They unfastened my overalls while I was standing up and then they threw me down on the gravel and finished pulling them off my feet. Scottsboro: an American Tragedy In March 1931, two white women in Alabama made the shocking accusation that they had been raped by nine black teenagers on a train. Judge James Horton. Janie Patterson, who had never traveled more than 100 miles from her home, led a protest march on the White House. Afro-American Newspaper Archives and Research Center Stop! Leibowitz: If you can't say, why do you say it is different? Not him. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (2000) TMDb Score. Music by L.E. Leibowitz managed to postpone the trials of the other seven, but with little hope of a different outcome. She hardly fit the stereotype of the young Southern lady -- hard-talking, tobacco chewing, but a kind of feistiness to her. VOICE: It is only the Communist Party which day in and day out fights for every demand and need of the Negroes in the terror and lynch-ridden South. We herewith suggest and urge that the State now move for a decent, dignified compromise. The abolition of slavery had not been really fulfilled we now had sharecropping. Archive Photos Scottsboro: An American Tragedy. What was she doing in New York? The Jackson County Sentinel. Frank Ferrigno For years, the Communist Party had devoted special attention to the American South, and to Southern blacks in particular. Norris, audio: The place was surrounded with a mob. Offers. He had a responsibility now to make sure that the world understood that those nine defendants in 1931 were innocent and that it was racism, only racism, that in fact forced them to spend all those years in prison. New York Daily News Yet he was Leibowitz' equal in the courtroom; and like Leibowitz, he was highly ambitious. Frustrated, Leibowitz finally shouted: "You're a pretty good little actress aren't you?". Leibowitz's outburst elicited howls of protest throughout the South. All you Nigger bastards unload.' WOODSTOCK- THREE DAYS THAT DEFINED A GENERATION (2019) - Official Trailer HD - PBS DistributionDocumentary WOODSTOCK: THREE DAYS THAT DEFINED A GENERATION from the Oscar nominated and Emmy-winning director Barak Goodman (Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, American Experience, Oklahoma City) and written by Goodman and Don Kleszy (Last Days in Vietnam, American … On the top of a campaign speech he had scrawled a note to himself: "Yea Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make you Free.". FLYNT: I think when that trial began he thought the nine boys were guilty. Susan Pennybacker Price: I told you, I never seen Lester Carter before. Tamiment Library, New York University. They're in one of the most brutal prisons in the United States. That was a standard in all of the demonstrations. The last to take the stand was Haywood Patterson. Raise your voices and raise your fists and scream. He began his cross-examination by setting out an exact replica of the freight train which he had procured from the Lionel Toy Corporation. WGBH Educational Foundation All nine Scottsboro defendants were convicted of rape. One of them was 19 year-old Clarence Norris. They would not have been non-motile if six Negroes had ejaculated into her an hour to an hour-and-a-half before she was examined by the doctor. Scottsboro helped forge a new kind of movement: whites and blacks marched side by side for the first time since the days of abolition. They saw someone who was defending accused black rapists, someone totally contrary to their racial values. when you spend $25 on participating products. Knight hammered away at her: GOODMAN: He asks her where she got her pocket book, where she got her hat, where she got her coat. The communists seized on Scottsboro's notoriety to reach a wider audience. Antonio Rossi, Additional Music And the sentence: death by electrocution. Until she was made angry, and then she would shout, 'I don't know anything. Knight was jittery; he turned red. Voice: Two hundred communists undertook to march down Lenox Avenue through the center of Harlem yesterday afternoon in defiance of the police. THORNTON: While blacks felt that they were oppressed by Southern whites, Southern whites had a strong sense of their own oppression. Morgan Country Archives He went to the courthouse and called the governor. This Negro grabbed me by the legs and pulled them open and then one of them put a knife on my throat, and one got on top of me. Patterson and Norris feuded constantly over gambling debts; Norris once stabbing Patterson with a prison shank. ROBERT WANN, Sheriff's son: On March 25, 1931, a friend and I were playing basketball on the side of the Jackson County jail. The sheriff said to me: 'see that gallows, nigger. Of showing to the world that they were capable of giving equal and fair justice to prisoners in the most emotional and threatening kinds of conditions. And you know they say you can tell a lot from the way a person speaks. Hear the rattle of gravel as it rides whistling through the day and night. Mills Thornton. And it's the classic reaction of people trapped in a world where they know they're not gonna be believed; where they have no resources. The only reason she's doing this is because she's been bought and paid for. I just thought that I was gonna die. Leibowitz: Haywood Patterson: Did you have anything to do with a white girl? He was sent to Atmore Prison Farm, where he worked in the hot sun for 12 hours a day, chained to other prisoners. With Patterson's testimony over, many thought Leibowitz would rest his case. But there were other organizations, principally the venerable NAACP, eager to defend the Scottsboro boys, for whom the Communist Party's public demonstrations seemed self-serving, even dangerous. A short time after it crossed into Alabama, a fight erupted between two groups of hoboes, one black and one white. Had the sperm he had seen in his microscope been moving? To break you. It was a state that was in calamitous conditions, families were disintegrating. LEIBOWITZ: He objected. There was demonstrations in Spain. COOK: That's very true, it would have been the Huntsville boys instead of the Scottsboro boys and we would have been very glad of that. They were intent on mayhem. In the months following the verdict, he began to appear at Scottsboro rallies in Harlem, where he promised to carry on the struggle in the South. Norris says well the other eight did it but I didn't do it. When help did come, it was from the most unlikely of sources: the Communist Party of the United States. Not Yet Rated 1 hr 30 min Jan 31st, 2000 Documentary. A look at the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" … And there are really are serious questions here and maybe the best thing to do is to settle this case. But Leibowitz believed he could explain the semen found in Price and Bates: not by rape on the day of the train ride, but by consensual sex the night before. Their supporters continued to push for their release. GOODMAN: He wanted to make a name for himself that was larger than the criminal's lawyer. For a moment, the freed defendants were treated like celebrities; they were taken on a speaking tour and booked into the Apollo Theater where they sang, danced, and took part in a reenactment of their trial. They saw it as an attack on Southern womanhood. Rerecording Mixer Amanda Harberg Release In Spanish, enjoy Disclaimer: This site does not store any files on its server. Voice: If you ever saw those creatures those bigots whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes popped out at you like frogs, whose chins dripped tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it. But just as suddenly the fanfare died down. Bridges, the Scottsboro physician who had examined Price and Bates hours after they'd been taken from the train. With the Scottsboro trials, the anti-lynching forces hoped to prove that in Alabama the rule of law would prevail against the passions of the mob. Raymond Fraley Music by Leadbelly By 1941, the Alabama Parole board met three times; each time refusing to free the prisoners. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library And then he quietly goes up to the Judge and says I'm going to have one more witness. This film reconstructs the events that led to the climax of the Civil Rights Movement. Everything was rumbling. We felt that the system was maintained only in one way: by terror. Haywood Patterson killed a man in self-defense in a bar fight and died in a Michigan Penitentiary at the age of 39. Very conscious of proper procedure in a courtroom. We brought them cigarettes and chocolate. Because Haywood Patterson was the exemplar of the bad Negro. Clarence Norris had left behind ten brothers and sisters in rural Georgia. Back in New York, Mr. Leibowitz tells of the appeals. It was bigger, lots bigger -- that is a toy. Throughout everything, he would later write, Scottsboro haunted his dreams. Raise your voices. She told the truth the first time, now she's lying for the money and for the clothing. Not all the other extraneous influences in the case. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy Andre Braugher Frances McDormand Stanley Tucci (2001) Filmmakers Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker examine the 1931 case of nine black males accused of raping two white women. Beside him, in an unmarked grave, lies his brother, Andy. Read by Conrad Lynn, Special Thanks to Ada Wright, mother of Roy and Andy Wright, embarked on a six-month tour of Europe ending in Moscow, where she spoke before crowds of thousands. Leibowitz: What sort of food, what did you do in the evening, what sort of bed or room? By 1931, wages in the mills had dropped so low that Victoria and Ruby could only afford to live in the black section of Huntsville where they occasionally traded sex with both black and white men for food and clothing. But Leibowitz had scoured Chattanooga and found no Callie Brochie anywhere. But one of the young women said, 'we've been raped. Leibowitz: Isn't it a fact that the night before you left Chattanooga you and your boyfriend and Ruby and Lester Carter went walking along the railroad tracks? John Cadell On June 22nd, 1933, in a crowded courtroom Horton set aside the guilty verdict. Of the nine, only four had known each other before their arrest. There was demonstrations in Moscow. Tom Hurwitz The crowd gasped: "there's Ruby Bates testifying for the defense". Leibowitz: And you saw the Negroes had been captured by the people at Paint Rock and you thought you would be arrested for vagrancy for being a hobo on a train in company with Negroes and at that time you determined to say they raped you to save yourself?! VAN GLASSCOCK, Former National Guardsman: Patterson was mean. That one sitting behind the defendants' counsel took my overalls off. Two to a cell, the boys looked out on 50 foot walls topped by gun turrets on each corner. BROWN: We were propagandizing. On many stages, the mothers were joined by Ruby Bates. Lyrics by Abron And so in a sense this national reaction works against the Scottsboro Boys. CLYDE BARCLAY, Paint Rock Resident: A bunch of people here got the guys off the train, marched them up here about where this old building, right across from where the white wrecked car is there -- lined them up against the wall there. CARTER: And of course you had the reporters writing it down. AP/Wideworld Photos The prisoners were loaded onto a truck and driven to the nearby town of Scottsboro. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy Synopsis. Product Information SCOTTSBORO: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY recounts a disturbing chapter in American history. Synopsis. No! Two retired New York City police detectives began to accompany Leibowitz everywhere he went. Peoples' Weekly World Willie Roberson suffered from syphilis so severe he could barely walk. It was a traditional trading day in town, but the usual crowd was swelled by thousands more from hundreds of miles around. When Charlie Weems was discovered reading Communist literature, guards dragged him from his cell and beat him until he begged for mercy. Jeffrey demunn Receive a $10 Reward. As the rancorous attacks on Alabama ended, the state at last bowed to reason and exhaustion. They immediately send word of this up to party headquarters in New York saying this is a wonderful opportunity to publicize all the things we're trying to publicize in the South. Irene Selver GOODMAN: So he asked her dozens of questions about Ms. Callie Brochie and where she lived and what she looked like and had she ever met her before. On an October day in 1976, Norris received word that Governor George Wallace had pardoned him. Produced by It was that he'd never had a witness that said over and over I 'can't remember'. For months, he had waited for this moment: the chance to confront Victoria Price in a court of law. Had the girls been hysterical, breathing heavily, with elevated pulses? Then, in 1976, she surfaced to sue NBC for broadcasting a television movie that portrayed her as a prostitute and a liar. Usually a witness is defensive when they say 'I I can't remember.' Carried away, he vented his anger at the verdict. Read Full Synopsis Cast + Crew Previous Cast Members More Cast Members. But Leibowitz was unconcerned. If you do, it will destroy you politically.'. Roger Phenix Anna Useem And that was it. Everything the individual who was who was going to be executed Norris hears the last words. But the communists had found Southern blacks deeply rooted in the system. It was the Scottsboro case that met that issue head on. Carter: Victoria Price said she knew where we could go and see fun, take a walk for instance. GOODMAN: There was demonstrations in Germany. They have a death sentence hanging over them and they're like drowning individuals, grasping for a life raft, grasping for a life preserver, grasping for straws. All nine boys were sent back to Kilby's death house. Leibowitz: Was it one floor or two floor? Rachel Dretzin Throughout Patterson's trial, the other eight defendants had been kept locked away in the Decatur jail, unaware of the proceedings. But it aburptly dropped the charges against the other four: Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Roy Wright and Eugene Williams. I saw Tennessee tags and Georgia tags. Marion Carter Unable to get a lawyer in Scottsboro, the nine accused rapists were being represented by a Chattanooga real estate attorney hired with $60 scraped together by their parents. Frank and Joan Goodman CARTER: The NAACP's position is these people are revolutionaries. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets

In her book, “Stranger at the Party,” Lawrenson writes about the time he left a steak dinner for a shootout on the street. The posse goes up and down the train looking in all the cars. And so that's the way they explode. When we entered the courtroom, we were not told the way to go, we knew the way to go: because it was black on one side and white on the other. After their release from prison, most of the Scottsboro defendants led troubled lives in the North. The jury could not decide whether to sentence thirteen year-old Roy Wright to life-in-prison or death. The places and events of the fatal journey of the Scottsboro Boys. Virtually every man in Paint Rock with a gun or a rope shows up. Samuel Leibowitz. ARCHIE STEWART, Scottsboro Resident: They had strings up so the mob could not get up beyond the string. And the next morning there it's in the newspapers all over Alabama. While the trials had been going on in the South, outrage over the Scottsboro affair had migrated from radical circles to ordinary people. For Leibowitz, the notion that he shared blame for the convictions of his own clients was almost too bitter to swallow. I'll take care of him.' Leibowitz, SOT: The appeals are now being rushed to the Alabama Supreme Court. DAN CARTER, Historian: At first they weren't even aware that they were women. And the last thing you wanna do is enrage and inflame local juries by raising the specter of communism and the class struggle and social equality. Stop! Eventually, the largest crowd in Scottsboro's history squeezed into the courthouse square, as a brass band played "Dixie" and "Hail, hail, the gang's all here.". Essential American history, painstakingly assembled but painful to watch. Much of that resentment was directed at Leibowitz himself. So began one of the most significant legal fights of the twentieth century. Elizabeth Prohasto They saw someone who was allegedly a communist, totally foreign to their political values. This is "Scottsboro: An American Tragedy - Trailer" by API FILMS on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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