Enrique Bautista Mrs. Rios English I C.P. 26 January 2015 The Scottsboro Boys Discrimination a big deal in the early 1900’s. Mostly towards the African Americans in the United States. Blacks were always separated from the whites. There would be white schools and colored schools, white restrooms and colored restrooms, white drinking fountains and colored drinking fountains, and so on. African Americans were treated very poorly and unfairly back then. The Scottsboro boys are an example of some young men who were discriminated against in the early 1900’s. The Scottsboro boys were nine black young men who were accused for rape by two young white woman while on a freight train traveling between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Memphis. The …show more content…
On a freight train passing through Chattanooga, Memphis, and Tennessee, were nine black young men who were hoboing in hope of finding a new job in Memphis or just for the transportation to Georgia. A few blacks who were in one car with some whites got into a fight. Since there was fewer whites the blacks were able to force off all the whites except one. The last white who did not get off the train was rescued by Haywood Patterson because he was hanging off the side of the train. The whites who were forced off the train reported to the stationmaster that they were assaulted by a gang of blacks. The stationmaster then wired to stop the train. The freight train ended up stopping in Paint Rock Alabama. There was a huge posse who got every black they could find on the train and rounded them up and sent them to jail for small charges. The posse then found two young white woman on the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. The posse pushed the young white girls to accuse the nine teenagers of rape. This changed minor charges into much more severe charges. Alabama’s governor, B. M. Miller, ordered the National Guard to protect the boys the night of their arrest because there was a huge crowd waiting for some lynching. There were trials for each of the Scottsboro boys with an all-white jury and an all white audience. All of the Scottsboro boys except for twelve-year old Leroy Right were convicted and sentenced to death. …show more content…
An example of where discrimination is seen is when the posse pushed the two young white woman to accuse the young black men of rape. When the posse was rounding up all the black men they could find on the freight train, they found two young white woman. They then forced them to accuse the nine men of rape, which made the nine young blacks have a severe charge of rape rather than assault. This shows discrimination because in the early 1900s most whites hated blacks and would do anything just to make it harder for them. This is exactly what the officials did to the Scottsboro boys. He forced the young woman to accuse them of rape making the charges more severe. This made all the boys except for Roy Wright sentenced to death, and for Roy, life imprisonment. Another event where discrimination is seen is when the Scottsboro boys were convicted of rape by an all-white jury with an all-white audience. When they were in court, the all-white jury convicted the nine of rape and sentenced them to death and life imprisonment. This shows discrimination because whites did not like blacks in the past. The jury was all-white so that can mean that they did not care about blacks so they just convicted the Scottsboro