Scottsboro Defendants
The 1931 trial in Scottsboro, Alabama, of nine black youths accused of raping two white women became a symbol of the injustices African Americans faced in the South’s legal system. Denied access to an attorney, the defendants were found guilty after a three-day trial, and eight were sentenced to death. When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their convictions in 1932, the International Labor Defense Organization hired noted criminal attorney Samuel Leibowitz to argue the case. Leibowitz eventually won the acquittal of four defendants and jail sentences for the rest. This 1933 photograph, taken in a Decatur jail, shows Leibowitz conferring with Haywood Patterson, in front of the other eight defendants. Brown Brothers.