On This Day in History: July 24

The Scottsboro Boys

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Welcome to another euphemism-o-rama to describe white people being shitty. If some bleached bastard so much as imagined a Black man raped a low-melanin woman, his life would be at risk. And not just from lynching. In the not-too-old days, Black men could be sentenced to death by the state for sexually assaulting sunscreen slatherers.  

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 24, 1937--

The Scottsboro Boys were nine Black teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 19. In 1931 Alabama they were falsely accused of raping two Wonder Bread women on a train. A racially mixed group of people was riding the rails on the train traveling through Tennessee. Some boys with a high degree of caucasity tried to push a Black boy from the train, proclaiming the car for the cauliflower crowd only. He and several other Black teens fought back, and the lads with the lotion-like skin ended up jumping from the train.

And then the toilet-paper teens had a sad, cuz embarrassed. So, they went full BBQ Becky and called the cops, saying they were assaulted by the Black boys. The sheriff got a posse together and stopped the train in Paint Rock, Alabama and arrested the Black teens. Then two young mayosapien maidens on the train said the Black teens had raped them.

There was no sign or medical evidence of rape. The two women were suspected sex workers and it’s surmised they made false accusations to deflect attention away from them breaking the law by crossing state lines “for immoral purposes.” Considering the time and location, they probably hated Black people too.

There was an attempted lynch mob, because of course, but the case was heard in Scottsboro, Alabama, and in three rushed trials with shit legal representation eight of the nine boys were found guilty and sentenced to death.

Communist Party USA and the NAACP got involved and launched appeals, during which one of the women recanted, saying none of the boys had touched either of them. But the cases weren’t thrown out. Appeals dragged on for years. The end result was that none of them were put to death, but several were still found guilty in 1937 and received prison sentences ranging from 75 to 105 years, although they were all paroled within a decade.

On July 24, 1937, the four remaining Scottsboro boys, who had spent six years on death row, had the charges against them dropped. The cases are commonly cited as a prime example of a miscarriage of justice against Black people in the United States.

Get the book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.