  Location within Alabama | |
| Established | 2010 |
|---|---|
| Location | Scottsboro, Alabama |
| Coordinates | 34°40′26″N86°02′29″W / 34.67394°N 86.04129°W |
| Type | Public |
| Website | scottsboroboysmuseum |
The Scottsboro Boys Museum is located at 428 West Willow Street in Scottsboro, Alabama, in the United States. Its focus is on the Scottsboro Boys case, which involved nine young African American men falsely accused in 1931 of raping two white women while hoboing aboard a freight train.
The museum was founded by Sheila Washington. [1] In 1977, when she was 17, she found a paperback book about the Scottsboro Boys hidden under her parents' bed. Her stepfather forbade her from reading it, saying it was too traumatic for a young girl. [1] She later obtained the book on her own, and the story haunted her. In 1978, her brother was killed in Kilby Prison, the same facility where the Scottsboro Boys were incarcerated decades earlier. [2] She told herself, "One day, when I get older, I'm going to find a place and honor the Scottsboro Boys and put this book on a table and burn a candle in their memory". [3]
Washington first raised the idea of a Scottsboro Boys museum in 2000 as part of a public discussion local officials had about created a historic walking trail in the area. [2] She faced resistance from many in the Scottsboro area, who felt the incident was over and wanted to forget it. [1] [3] Even a former mayor of Scottsboro advised her not to try. [1] [lower-alpha 1] Washington established the Scottsboro-Jackson County Multicultural Heritage Foundation to build community and financial support for the museum. [4]
The museum opened on February 1, 2010. [4]
The Scottsboro Boys Museum is located in the former Joyce Chapel United Methodist Church, a former African American church. [5] The oldest surviving African American church in the county, [2] the congregation dissolved in January 2009 and leased its building to the museum. [6] The building is located near the railroad tracks that carried the train on which the Scottsboro Boys hoboed. [1]
Shortly after the museum opened, the United Methodist Church put the building up for sale. The museum quickly raised $75,000 ($100,000 in 2023 dollars) to purchase the site [7] —half from the Jackson County Commission (the county legislative body) and half from a foundation with ties to the family of Samuel Leibowitz (the white Jewish attorney who defended the Scottsboro Boys). [8] [lower-alpha 2]
The museum is receives financial support from the Scottsboro-Jackson County Multicultural Heritage Foundation, whose primary mission is to raise funds for the museum and cultural center. Major donors include the Jackson County Commission, the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, the Ford Foundation, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.< [9]
Much of the museum's initial collection was assembled by Washington herself, [9] with later assistance from Black Heritage Council of the Alabama Historical Commission. [3] Local historian Garry Morgan helped by securing the donation of some items and personally buying others at auction or online. [10] Morgan created the initial exhibits. [10]
According to Sarah Stahl, a spokesperson for the Mountain Lakes Chamber of Commerce, the museum not only documents the Scottsboro Boys case but also shows how the trial helped to initiate the modern American civil rights movement. [8] Part of the museum's collection includes physical objects, such as the metal table used by the Scottsboro Boys in their cell at the Jackson County Jail, a chair used by a member of the jury during the trial, and stamps sold by International Labor Defense to raise money for the defense, [lower-alpha 3] photographs of the trial, and original newspaper articles about the case. [1] [4] [9] The museum also contains a number of scrapbooks put together by local residents, [1] nearly all of which had never been examined by historians before. [9] The museum's major exhibit upon opening was a timeline of the events of the case from until the death of the last Scottsboro Boy in 1989. [10]
Since its founding, Sheila Washington served as the museum's director and tour guide. [8] She died of a heart attack on January 29, 2021. [1]
The museum, which has limited hours twice a week, drew an estimated 1,200 visitors its first year, about two-thirds of them from northern states and two-thirds of them white. [7] It is one of eight locations in Alabama on the United States National Civil Rights Trail. [2]
In the years since its opening, the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center has worked to create multimedia exhibits and programming with several prominent scholars of the case as well as colleges and universities, including the University of Alabama, Alabama A&M University, Auburn University, and Tuskegee University. [9]
In early 2020, the museum added a room recreating the courtroom. Every major player in the trial was depicted. The cost of the project was $40,000. [2]
The museum embarked on a $100,000 fundraising effort to celebrate its 10th anniversary. [2] The museum intended to use the money to pay for the courtroom recreation, add technological improvements to the museum, automate more exhibits, and add new exhibits showing how the case inspired a wide range of civil rights events. [8] [lower-alpha 4] Alabama State Senator Steve Livingston donated $62,500 to the renovation project, while a GoFundMe account had raised just over $4,700 as of February 25,2021 [update] . [13]
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement, best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".
Scottsboro is a city in and the county seat of Jackson County, Alabama, United States. The city was named for its founder Robert T. Scott. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city is 15,578.
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. The bombing was committed by a white supremacist terrorist group. Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter planted 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church.
The Scottsboro Boys were nine African-American male teenagers accused of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.
Walter Francis White was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a quarter of a century, from 1929 until 1955. He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist.
The Communist Party USA, ideologically committed to foster a socialist revolution in the United States, played a significant role in defending the civil rights of African Americans during its most influential years of the 1930s and 1940s. In that period, the African-American population was still concentrated in the South, where it was largely disenfranchised, excluded from the political system, and oppressed under Jim Crow laws.
Heavens Fall is a 2006 American film based on the Scottsboro Boys incident of 1931.
Samuel Simon Leibowitz was a Romanian-born American criminal defense attorney. He was best known for representing the Scottsboro Boys, and later became a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was an African American civil rights activist in Marion, Alabama, and a deacon in the Baptist church. On February 18, 1965, while unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his city, he was beaten by troopers and fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper. Jackson died eight days later in the hospital.
Judge James Edwin Horton was a Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit Court in Alabama. He was elected in 1922 and again in 1928.
Thomas E. Knight, Jr. was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 13th Lieutenant Governor of Alabama from 1935 to 1937, as well as the 19th Attorney General of Alabama from 1931 to 1935. He was a native of Greensboro, Alabama.
Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial group are legal in the United States and other countries. While the racial composition of juries is not dictated by law, racial discrimination in the selection of jurors is specifically prohibited. Depending on context, the phrases "all-white jury" or "all-black jury" can raise the expectation that deliberations may be unfair.
Johnnie Rebecca Daniels Carr was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from 1955 until her death.
Benjamin DeWayne Amis, known as B. D. Amis, was an African-American labor organizer and civil rights leader. Particularly influential in the fight for African Americans and workers during the period of official segregation in the South and informal discrimination throughout the country, Amis is most remembered for his militant Communist activism on behalf of the notable legal cases of the falsely-accused Scottsboro Boys, the African-American organizer Angelo Herndon, as well as the white labor leader Tom Mooney.
Thomas Edwin Drake was an American attorney, professional wrestler, politician, and member of the athletic staff of legendary football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. He was a Democratic member of the Alabama House of Representatives, serving nine terms, and as Speaker from 1983 to 1987. He was a resident of Vinemont, Alabama; his wife of over 55 years, Christine Mckoy Drake – also an attorney, stateswoman and former member of the Alabama Board of Education – predeceased him on September 26, 2011, following a long battle with brain cancer.
The Scottsboro Boys is a musical with a book by David Thompson, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Based on the Scottsboro Boys trial, the musical is one of the last collaborations between Kander and Ebb prior to the latter's death. The musical has the framework of a minstrel show, altered to "create a musical social critique" with a company that, except for one, consists "entirely of African-American performers".
The International Labor Defense (ILD) (1925–1947) was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation. In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA. It intended to expand its appeal, especially to African Americans in the South. In several prominent cases in which blacks had been sentenced to death in the South, the CRC campaigned on behalf of black defendants. It had some conflict with former allies, such as the NAACP, and became increasingly isolated. Because of federal government pressure against organizations it considered subversive, such as the CRC, it became less useful in representing defendants in criminal justice cases. The CRC was dissolved in 1956. At the same time, in this period, black leaders were expanding the activities and reach of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, in a case managed by the NAACP, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
In the United States, a public defender is a lawyer appointed by the courts and provided by the state or federal governments to represent and advise those who cannot afford to hire a private attorney. Public defenders are full-time attorneys employed by the state or federal governments. The public defender program is one of several types of criminal legal aid in the United States.
The International Juridical Association was an association of socially minded American lawyers, established by Carol Weiss King and considered by the U.S. federal government as "another early (communist) front for lawyers. The principal concern about the IJA was that it "constituted itself an agent of a foreign principal hostile to the interests of the United States."
Joseph R. Brodsky, often known as Joseph Brodsky and Joe Brodsky, was an early 20th-century American civil rights lawyer, political activist, general counsel of the International Labor Defense (ILD), co-founder of the International Juridical Association (IJA), member of ILD defense team for members of the Scottsboro Boys Case of the 1930s, and general counsel for the International Workers Order (IWO).