SCOTTSBORO

A film by DANIEL ANKER and BARAK GOODMAN
A PBS American Experience Presentation
 
Oscar Nomination
 
| USA | 2000 | 84 minutes |

In 1931, a freight train crowded with homeless hoboes was making its way through Alabama when it was stopped close to the small town of Scottsboro. Nine black boys, suspected of having scuffled with whites aboard the train were arrested. Then two young women stepped forward with a shocking accusation: they had been gang-raped, so they claimed, by these boys.

So began one of the most significant and dramatic legal controversies of the Twentieth Century, which divided Americans along racial, political, and geographic lines and for the first time focused international outrage on the treatment of blacks in the American South.

The Scottsboro trials took six years and a further four years of legal maneuverings to free the defendants. During this time more than 100 Southern jurors pronounced the sentence of death for the crime of rape. These verdicts were overturned three times. By the end of the tortuous affair, the Scottsboro boys were not the only ones put on trial, but Southern attitudes, conventions, and institutions as well.

SCOTTSBORO, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY dramatically exposes some of the deepest stains in American life and how in the rush to exploit the situation for their own ends, many overlooked that the lives of nine young men hung in the balance. But the film also shows how the case brought out the best in some Americans: A flamboyant defense lawyer, whose previous clients were primarily gangsters became passionately committed to freeing the boys, and a Southern judge risked the scorn of his beloved state and his entire career to deliver justice.