1931

On March 25, 1931, nine Black teenagers — Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, Andy Wright, Roy Wright, and Olen Montgomery — were removed from a freight train in Alabama and accused by white women Victoria Price and Ruby Bates of rape. All nine were tried within two weeks; eight received death sentences. The trial lasted one day for some defendants. The case became an international cause célèbre. Ruby Bates later recanted her accusation entirely.

Nine Black teenagers — the youngest 12 years old — were pulled from a freight train in Alabama and charged with raping two white women. All-white juries convicted eight within days; one received a death sentence. The case became an international symbol of Southern racial injustice.

Nine Black teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama and rapidly convicted in a sham trial. The Scottsboro case became an international cause célèbre, drawing massive protest and multiple appeals that produced landmark Supreme Court rulings on due process and the right to counsel.

The Smithfield neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama — later dubbed 'Dynamite Hill' — experienced dozens of bombings of Black homes throughout the 1930s and 1940s as Black middle-class families attempted to move into formerly white-only neighborhoods adjacent to the Black district. The bombings were organized by the Klan and local real estate interests to enforce segregation. Birmingham police consistently failed to investigate. Between 1947 and 1965, Birmingham experienced over 50 bombings of Black homes and churches with near-zero prosecutions, establishing it as one of the most documented campaigns of terrorist real estate enforcement.

The International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of the Communist Party USA, seized control of the Scottsboro Boys' defense over the NAACP's objections in 1931. The ILD argued the NAACP was too moderate; the NAACP countered that Communist involvement would politically taint the defendants. The dispute split the Black community and left the defendants at the center of Cold War-era political battles. The ILD hired Samuel Leibowitz, who won key Supreme Court victories but could not secure final acquittals in Alabama's courts. The last defendant was not paroled until 1950.

Nine Black teenagers are falsely accused of rape in Alabama, a landmark of Jim Crow injustice.