Plea from the Scottsboro Prisoners, 1932
In 1931, nine black youths were arrested in Scottsboro, Alabama, and charged with raping two white women. They were quickly convicted, and eight were sentenced to death. (One of the nine, Roy Wright, was twelve years old, and the prosecution did not seek the death penalty.) In this letter to the editor of the Negro Worker, a Communist magazine, the Scottsboro Nine plead their innocence and ask for help. A year had passed since their arrest and trial, which would account for their ages in the following statement recorded as between thirteen to twenty. Only those sentenced to death signed the letter.
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Why do you think they mention their ages? What tactics did Alabama officials use on the prisoners? What was their purpose? Why do the Scottsboro prisoners repeatedly emphasize that they were workers? |
We have been sentenced to die for something we ain’t never done. Us poor boys have been sentenced to burn up on the electric chair for the reason that we is workers—and the color of our skin is black. We like any one of you workers is none of us older than 20. Two of us is 14 and one is 13 years old. What we guilty of? Nothing but being out of a job. Nothing but looking for work. Our kinfolk was starving for food. We wanted to help them out. So we hopped a freight—just like any one of you workers might a done—to go down to Mobile to hunt work. We was taken off the train by a mob and framed up on rape charges. At the trial they gave us in Scottsboro we could hear the crowd yelling, “Lynch the Niggers.” We could see them toting those big shotguns. Call ’at a fair trial? And while we lay here in jail, the boss-man make us watch ’em burning up other Negroes on the electric chair. “This is what you’ll get,” they say to us. Working class boys, we asks you to save us from being burnt on the electric chair. We’s only poor working class boys whose skin is black. . . . Help us boys. We ain’t done nothing wrong. [Signed] Andy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, Willie Robertson Source: “Scottsboro Boys Appeal from Death Cells to the ‘Toilers of the World,’” The Negro Worker 2, no. 5 (May 1932): 8–9. |
Put It in Context
Why was it unlikely that black men in Alabama could receive a fair trial on the charge of raping a white woman?
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