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What Role Did Racism Play In The Scottsboro Trials

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Racism played a significant role in the Scottsboro Trials. Racism is where people are biased/prejudiced towards one race more so than others. Racism is evident most everywhere, and happens for many reasons. Racism can occur due to an individual's or group’s self-esteem, desire to be the most powerful/significant, need for structure, or purely out of dominance (Routledge). Racism was very evident in the Scottsboro trials. There were nine boys, each of them found guilty in a single day, because they were all black (Anderson). The two girls who accused the boys were inspected by a doctor, and he said there was no evidence of rape (Anderson). One of the girls had retracted her accusation, saying it was purely fictitious, and still the boys spent
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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

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Annotated Bibliography Altman, Susan. “Scottsboro Trial.” Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage, Second Edition, Facts On File, 2000. African-American History.

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He ask Mayella what happened first. Her response was that “Tom had raped me and afterwards beat me.” The judge already started to believe her over Tom because of two reasons. One was because she still had bruises on her face ,and the other reason is because Tom is black and Mayella is white.

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There were many cases like the Tom Robinson case, an important one is the Scottsboro Boys, which took over 20 years to solve. The court rulings in the early 1900’s were based on race and the trial of Tom Robinson in “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee gives us a glimpse of how horrific racial inequality was for African-Americans. In the book, Tom Robinson was found guilty of a crime just because of his skin color. He was accused

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Scottsboro Trial Two young women is all it takes to create one of the most tragic epoch's of African-American history after the abolishment of slavery. When Victoria Price, and Ruby Bates decide to ride the rails to look for some incentive in their lives, they witness an opportunity to ruin nine young black boy's life. A fight broke out after a gang of white boys agitated, and tried to force a gang of black boys to jump off a train.

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Soon enough, they did and there was the black boy they sought ("The Emmett Till Murder Trial: An Account."). As Emmett followed his relatives into the house, Roy and the other two men followed them onto the porch. They said they were looking for a fat Chicago city boy. Otha, Roy, and John all searched the house until they found Emmett. When they did, Otha forced him to get dressed and threatened the Wright family so that they would not tell who stopped by.

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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.

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Most Americans 65% including majorities across racial and ethnic groups say it has become more common for people to express racism toward other ethnicities. Throughout this essay, there will be two examples of racism that will be discussed. Number one the Scottsboro trial and number 2 the To Kill A Mockingbird novel . These examples genuinely show the negative factors of racism.

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The Scottsboro tragedy showed the world and the North of the U.S how bad the racism problem was in the South. That was all these trials were based on. Alabama wanted to kill these men just because of the color of their skin, no real evidence. These trials revealed that injustice and caused the civil rights movement to become more supported. Although this incident was a sad time for the U.S, it helped uncover a lot of problems in the South and helped our judicial system change to be more

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Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, racism was still a huge part in our society and this is demonstrated through the Scottsboro Trial and the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The first place this is shown, was after everybody heard about the supposed rape of the white girls. There were protests and tons of people showing hate towards the black men. Another example of this, was all the assumptions white people made, that the only logical explanation for the incident was that the black men raped the white girls. This assumption was without listening to the evidence or facts proving the man's innocence during the trial.

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In the history of the United States of America, there have been many situations in which a trial was unfair, both in the cases of state and federal indictments. However, none of these have measured up to the outrageous inequity and negligence by the Alabama legal system in 1930. This poses the question: to what extent did the Scottsboro Trial reveal the faults of the U.S. Judicial System? Going so far to tie back to the Constitution, the Scottsboro Trial violated many rights of these boys, regardless of race; even the judges and prosecution put the system to shame. Aside from years of trial, falsely incriminating evidence, and biased courts, the Scottsboro boys faced years of judges, prosecutors, and mobs trespassing on their basic human rights.

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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

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The Emancipation Proclamation was legislation signed in 1890’s, declaring that slavery had come to end. However, African-Americans were still unfairly treated within society. By the 1930s, the amount of lynching’s decreased in Southern America, but many of the same methods og racism led to a number of "legal lynchings” (Jacobson, 1992). These were judicial dealings missing the key aspects of fairness and justice. Following the Civil War, Southern communities used lynching as a way to maintain the strict segregation between whites and African-American’s.

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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.

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Topic: Scottsboro Trials Sources: Remembering Scottsboro: The legacy of an infamous trial, The Trials of the Scottsboro boys, and Scottsboro and its legacy: The cases that challenged american legal and social justice. Thesis: The Scottsboro Trials were an important piece of history because it was a huge stepping stone of the civil rights movement and it showed the racial inequality in America which was then taken to the supreme court. (support statement) No crime in American history, produced as many trials, convictions, reversals and retrials as did the alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers. (Supported Statement 2)

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