Scottsboro Boys - A Long Ride

It was early spring in 1931 and the Southern Railroad freight train had just crossed the border into Alabama. It stopped for water in Stevenson where a fight broke out between two groups of young men who were riding the train. One group was black and one was white. The outnumbered white teenagers either jumped or were thrown from the train as it pulled out of the station.

Some of the white youths sought revenge and told the Stevenson train master about the rape of two white women who were still on the train. The train master telegraphed ahead to have the train stopped at the next station. Law enforcement officers boarded the forty-two-car train at Paint Rock, Alabama, and arrested every black youth they could find. They were loaded on a flatbed truck and taken to the jail in Scottsboro, Alabama.

That night word spread of the alleged crime. Governor B. M. Miller called out the National Guard to protect the prison where the youths were held. The next day they were taken by the state militia to Gadsden, Alabama, for safekeeping. Many local newspapers had already run condemning headlines before the case even went to trial.