Scottsboro Argumentative Essay: Rough Draft Crimes happen everyday. Many criminals are incarcerated for their actions. Everyone has a different opinion on certain topics, everyone is entitled to their opinion as long as they know the true facts behind it. During the Scottsboro cases in the 1930’s, there were more people who thought of the accused to be guilty than innocent because of the unjust racism that had become a popular concept. Olen Montgomery was not guilty of raping 2 women. Obviously, he was guilty of hoboing, but he should not be convicted for the assault of 2 women who could be lying about their side of the story. Just 2 hours after the train ride, the 2 women were examined by a doctor to search for injuries from the event they had explained. The examiner was expecting to find many serious injuries. On the contrary, “he had only found small bruises on one of their backs” (Linder “Bridges”). These bruises possibly could have been unrelated to the event because the women had spent the previous night in a house with other men and presumed to have intercourse(“Facts Sheet”). Thus, the women's side of the story had started to become questionable. Furthermore, Montgomery did have physical …show more content…
Montgomery had been seated in a different train car. To hide the fact that he had been hoboing, he had been alone in one of the passenger cars, thus avoided contact with the women for the rest of the trip until he came across his arresting officer. Not only did they travel in different locations, there cars had been on the opposite ends of each other (“Diagram”). The women had not even seen Montgomery for the whole train ride, in which where they had been asked to identify the men, only Ruby Bates could not recognize him (Linder, “Trials”). Undoubtedly, Olen had been thrown in a trap where there was no way out because of the racism that had been a popular concept in Alabama at the
How would you feel if you were falsely accused of a terrible crime? That’s right, Ozie Powell and the Scottsboro Boys were accused of rape and sent to jail for many years, a crime of which they didn't even commit. In the case of Scottsboro, Ozie Powell was clearly innocent of rape. Ozie wasn’t on the same car as the woman who accused the boys of raping them, and Ozie didn't even know the other men on the train until the day of the accusations. The woman who accused the boys of the crime were prostitutes, and had had intercourse only a little while before entering the train, explaining why the sperm found in their system was dead.
The man accused in a deadly shooting outside an Evansville Gentleman’s Club will not go to trial after this month as scheduled. Clarence Miller’s trial was set for October 16th, but it’s been moved to January 22nd in Vanderburgh County. That shooting happened outside the Pony Gentleman’s Club in April of this year. Miller is accused of shooting and killing Aaron Jennings of Sebree and injuring a second
Annotated Bibliography Altman, Susan. “Scottsboro Trial.” Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage, Second Edition, Facts On File, 2000. African-American History.
Scottsboro argumentative response Ignorance and prejudice seems to plague the Southerners and this idea of ignorance and prejudice is exemplified in this case. In 1931, Haywood Patterson and eight other African American teenagers were falsely charged for rape and all the boys also received the death sentence after accommodating a train with the victims Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. Haywood Patterson is innocent due to three reasons, no evidence of rape from the doctor’s notes, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were prostitutes, and Ruby Bates claimed that Victoria and her were lying the whole time. Admittedly, Haywood Patterson is guilty.
There are many racist caucasian people that serve in juries. They believe that African Americans should be in a position under them so they would do whatever they could to keep them down. During the Scottsboro Trials nine African American men were arrested for something that they did not do. They were accused of raping two white girls
The Scootsboro trials were trails the happened in Scottsboro, Alabama. Nine black boys got into a fight on the train with the white boys and when they got off of the train two white women got off after them and yelled rape. The nine boys were not even on the same cart as those two women, so that means they couldn’t have raped those women. There wasn’t any evidence that they raped the women either. One of the women who yelled rape confessed that they did not even get raped and that they were just trying to save themselves from getting in trouble because they were prostitutes and they weren’t supposed to cross the border, but they did so they decided to yell rape to try and get them in trouble.
Though the Alabama Constitution of 1875 came seven short years after the adoption of the previous state constitution, it came under much different circumstances. The Alabama Constitution of 1868 is known as the “reconstruction constitution” because Congress unofficially required the proper changes to be made to the 1865 constitution to be granted their seats in Congress. However, the Constitution of 1875 undid most of this progress as it came just shortly after the federal troops had left the state. The 1875 Constitution showed the desire for Alabama citizens to return to their style of government before the Civil War. Though the 1875 Constitution was not a complete overhaul of the 1868 Constitution, the changes that were made showed the strong
During the second trial of Haywood Patterson in March 1933, Victoria Price was again questioned as a witness, but her testimony was slightly different than in the original trial; she reacted to the questioning and accusations against her with “angry defiance” (1). Price’s testimony was further weakened after Ruby Bates testified. She denied that any of the Scottsboro boys had attacked or raped them at all, explaining that Price told her to make up a story to avoid charges being put against them (7). However, her testimony was not considered by the jury, and Patterson was sentenced to death, like in the original trial. In June 1933, a few months after Patterson’s second trial, Judge James Horton ordered a new trial for the case.
Jeffery was previously imprisoned for firearms offences. This time he was not even guilty on his crimes, thus Judge decided to slam him for his conduct by giving him a life sentence. The barbaric person should not roam in public as his a threat to their life and
Scottsboro Racism Paragraph The Scottsboro trials were a long horrific eighteen-year-long trial about eight black boys in Scottsboro, Alabama. According to Anderson in the video lecture “Scottsboro Boys” a large group of people had gotten on a train to find work when a large fight broke out on the train. The fight was between eight black men and a few white men, the train stopped in Scottsboro when two white women got off the train and accused the eight black men of rape. The eight boys were brought into court and trialed. There were multiple cases of racism in the Scottsboro trials, one included that all the boys were trialed together and in only one day.
Goldsboro is unexplainable. Everyone has gone through the phase of “Goldsboro is so boring! There’s nothing to do around here!” because I have. But, I’ve noticed there’s a twist to it.
Rabina Mainali Sign 111 Dr. Dulan 3 November, 2015 Witnesses of the Scottsboro trials The Scottsboro trials came about during the year 1931 when Great Depression had hit the South hard. In search of work several individuals boarded a freight train from Chattanooga to Memphis, Tennessee not knowing their future ahead wasn’t so bright. While in the train a white man stepped on a black man’s hand, later identified as belonging to Haywood Patterson. A fight between the white youths and Patterson’s
Nine boys Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, and Andrew and Roy Wright were accused of raping two white women on a freight train, on March 24, 1931. The boys were caught for illegally riding on a freight train, and were originally charged with that until one of the police found the two white women VIctoria Price, and Ruby Bates and pressured them into saying that the boys had raped them on the freight tra in. All the Scottsboro boys were sentenced to death in the first trial, except Roy Wright who was only 13 was sentenced to life in prison. After two more trials with an all white jury, got the attention of the nation because it was showing how racist the U.S court system was. Ruby Bates eventually went out and retold her statement saying that she was pressured into telling the jury that the Scottsboro boys had raped them.
Freedom. The importance of freedom is often forgotten as Americans live day by day taking this gift for granted. In this day and age, freedom seems as a “simple gift’ obtained by every American, but one forgets to think about those who were once unable to enjoy the freedoms one is promised daily. Back in the day, freedom seemed as nothing more than a dream to those of color. Everyday of a colored person’s life consisted of harassment and discrimination as no one cared to treat them as equals.
The Ronald Cotton case is a primary example of an innocent citizen being sentenced to jail by a mistaken eyewitness testimony. The reliability of eyewitness testimonies to what actually occurred is slim. With the help of the justice system, Ronald Cotton was released and compensated, and the number of cases of mistaken eyewitness testimonies decreased. In July of 1984, an attacker entered the apartment of Jennifer Thompson and proceeded to rape and rob her.