This article is Part III of a four-part series on the Scottsboro Boys. In 1931, during the Great Depression, nine young Black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train in Scottsboro, Alabama. However, the U.S. Communist Party (CP) initiated and led a world-wide struggle involving millions of people fighting to prevent their execution and to free the “Scottsboro boys.
This series of articles will analyze the role of the two major defense strategies in this case, the International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the NAACP. We will study the different strategies as they relate to the questions of mass protest, institutional racism, the fight for legal reforms, and the use of the courtroom to raise the level of political consciousness and struggle.
Parts III and IV coincide with our annual summer project. This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Boston’s 1975 Summer Project. That summer, the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played a pivotal role in the struggle against local Nazis and their racist political allies from attacking young Black youth who were being bussed in effort to desegregate, all-white schools in Boston. The movement mobilized working-class youth and community members in an unforgettable, militant struggle against gutter racist capitalism and state-sanctioned violence.
After the second guilty verdict and death sentence for Patterson, the International Labor Defense (ILD) mass campaign escalated. A large march to Washington was planned for May 6-7 along with the presentation of civil rights petitions demanding enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and freedom for the defendants. Again, mass meetings and demonstrations were held. As in 1931, it was not uncommon for these various meetings and demonstrations to be attended by at least one thousand people.
The ILD planned to continue this mass strategy if the case was appealed on two major grounds: unfair trial and exclusion of Black jurors. The first step was a motion for a new trial before Judge Horton. Between April 16, the date of the motion, and June 22, the day of the decision, the ILD mass activity for 1933 was at its peak. This time, however, there was a real effort to link the trial to the issue of non-enforcement of civil rights by the judicial system. This brought the issue of racism to the fore.
ILD broadens struggle without resorting to United Front
The ILD leadership did not propose unity with the leaders of reformist organizations, who were still seen as obstacles to a mass campaign; but they did propose exposing the reformist leaders by inviting the organizations to form united fronts. By 1933, even major Southern newspapers outside Alabama were beginning to admit the defendants were being framed.
All this made for a broader campaign. By June 1933, according to the ILD, 500,000 people had signed petitions for a new trial, and the total number of people attending meetings or demonstrations worldwide since 1931 was well over one million. In addition, at least 150,000 telegrams of protest had been mailed to Governor Miller of Alabama.
The mass campaign in the South grew also. A publicity tour led by ILD lawyer Allan Taub visited 50 Southern churches in four months and spoke at ILD meetings of 1100 in New Orleans and hundreds in Birmingham. A leaflet was issued in April 1933, to Southern white workers calling for Black and white unity and pointing out how the exclusion of Blacks from juries and voting worked to justify exclusion of poor whites.
The climax of the organizing effort was in Washington, D.C. on May 8, 1933, where 4,000 people marched for freedom for the Scottsboro boys and enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Civil rights petitions with 200,000 signatures were presented to Congress. Attempts were made to obtain congressional intervention in the case, which were refused.
ILD takes on the kkk, racist dems, & kkkourts
“Justice” Callahan, who, according to the ILD, had some associations with the KKK, opened as the Judge for the third round of trials in November 1933.
It is important to remember the climate of the period. In 1924, the Democratic Party, in its national convention, after a long and bitter debate, refused to condemn lynching. In 1928, no attempt was made to condemn lynching. Southern congressmen and senators openly endorsed lynching without any fear of reprisals from the national government.
Yet the Communist Party, a small party of no more than 7500 men and women, was able to put the Southern racists on the defensive, to force new trials and eventual freedom for nine impoverished Black people, and to make a “rape case” the great widely discussed “celebrated case” among workers throughout the world.
They were able to do this, first, because of their organization, democratic centralism. Although there was resistance once the party made it a priority. Communists all over the nation were able to organize a massive struggle.
Second, their line was correct. By linking up the fight to save the Scottsboro defendants with the struggle against the Southern ruling class and its allies in Wall Street and Washington, communists won support from both Northern and Southern workers and the freedom of the defendants.
None of this comes through in most accounts of the Scottsboro case. Instead, we are given a liberal judge— Horton— as hero, some Southern redneck spectators as villains, and a condescending if not outright racist view of the defendants. Their parents, who played major roles in the campaign to save their lives, speaking all over Europe and the United States, are totally ignored. Communists are mentioned only here and there.
Building a defense strategy vs. racist kkkourts
The defense courtroom strategy in the third trial was almost the same as in the second. The courtroom circumstances changed, however. Judge Callahan much more openly identified himself with the prosecution. The appellants' brief to the Supreme Court of Alabama lists two separate instances in the Patterson and Norris trials where Callahan interrupted the defense counsel, stopped him from proceeding along a line of questioning, or declared a question illegal or improper. In most of these instances, the State did not even have to make an objection before the court intervened.
In the instructions to the jury, the trial judge made the ridiculous and vicious statement that there is a strong presumption against white women having voluntary intercourse with Black men. He further stated the prosecutor's testimony did not have to be corroborated. He concluded the charge to the jury by “forgetting” to give instructions on how to render an acquittal.
Despite this vitriolic racism, Leibowitz and the ILD generally played within the rules of the game. But in a situation like this the argument that a strong political defense would antagonize the judge and jury is not convincing. A stronger effort to link the case to the organizing done by the ILD in Birmingham and New Orleans could have been attempted.
Look out for Part IV in our July 16th issue, where we explore how the ILD’s new organizing strategies helped shape the Communist Party—and learn what lessons we draw from the fight to save the Scottsboro Boys in the present.
