THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS
Episode 209 | Historical Events
In this History episode we focus on the Scottsboro Boys — nine Black teenagers arrested in Alabama in 1931, falsely accused of rape, convicted by all-white juries, sentenced to death, and never fully exonerated until 2013, eighty-two years after their arrests. Their cases produced two landmark Supreme Court rulings: Powell v. Alabama establishing the right to competent counsel in capital cases, and Norris v. Alabama establishing that Black citizens cannot be systematically excluded from juries. Constitutional protections that Americans exercise today were…
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