The Trials of The Scottsboro Boys. Biographical Sketches of Key Figures in the Scottsboro Boys Trials. The First Scottsboro Trials. Hollace Ransdell was a young teacher, journalist, economist, and activist asked by ACLU officials to go to Alabama to investigate and report on the controversial trials of the Scottsboro Boys that had just taken place.
Ransdell spent ten days in early May of 1931 travelling around northern Alabama and southern Tennessee learning all she could about the case. She asked everyone she met provocative questions about the trials, racial attitudes, and economic and social conditions. She talked to doctors, social workers, college professors, black ministers, judges, mayors, and the accusers, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. Her report is easily the best contemporaneous account of attitudes as they existed at the time of the trial. Ransdell's unpublished report is balanced, insightful, and fascinating reading. Report on the Scottsboro, Alabama Case (by Miss Hollace Ransdall for ACLU) Complete Ransdall report in PDF Format REPORT ON THE SCOTTSBORO, ALA.
The Return to Huntsville The Alleged Rape Dr. To Kill A Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Boys Trial: Profiles in Courage. In an August 1960 book review, The Atlantic Monthly’s Phoebe Adams described To Kill A Mockingbird as “sugar-water served with humor ...”
Sugar-water? Far from it. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird highlights instances of heroism and courage in a small Alabama town riddled with the poverty and racial tensions characteristic of the south in 1935. The novel focuses on the Finch family over the course of two years—lawyer and father Atticus Finch; his ten-year-old son, Jem; and his six-year-old daughter, Jean Louise, aka Scout. Scout serves as the narrator of the book; her narration is based on her memories of the events leading up to, during, and after her father’s defense of a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell.
In short, To Kill A Mockingbird reveals the heroic nature of acting with moral courage when adhering to social mores would be far less dangerous. PAT1935. Westlaw Publication 55 S.Ct. 575 79 L.Ed. 1082 (Cite as: 294 U.S. 600, 55 S.Ct. 575) PATTERSON v.
STATE OF ALABAMA. No. 554. Argued Feb. 15--18, 1935. Decided April 1, 1935. On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of the Stateof Alabama. Judgment vacated and case remanded. Mr. At the beginning of the last trial, as on the previous trial, a motion was made on Patterson's behalf to quash the indictment upon the ground of the exclusion of negroes from juries in Jackson county where the indictment was found. The question arises from the action of the Supreme Court of the state in striking defendant's bill of exceptions, which contained the evidence taken by the trial court on the motions to quash, upon the ground that the bill had not been presented in time. FN1 In the Morris Case the verdict and judgment were of December 19, 1924; the motion for a new trial was of December 27, 1924, after the term had expired; and the motion had been passed to January 5, 1925, for hearing. Mr. Excerpts from the 1933 Scottsboro Boys trial before Judge Horton.