Is the official story about the Scottsboro boys case true, and they were innocent victims of White racism, or a race hoax, in which case they were guilty as heck?! You’d never expect who suggests that it was a hoax

By Nicholas Stix

As everyone knows, the Scottsboro boys were eight black teenagers and one black young man, who were all framed for rape, and convicted and sentenced to death, due to the false accusations and perjured testimony of two White prostitutes in 1931.

According to the official story, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price were prostitutes who had journeyed by freight train from Arkansas to Alabama, in violation of the Mann act, in order to ply “the world’s oldest profession.”

Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems and Roy Wright were also on the train, and had fought back against a racially motivated riot caused by an evil White boy who had stepped on one of the boys’ hands.

The Whites were thrown off the train, and lied about what had happened, blaming the blacks. The two prostitutes, who were liable to be arrested, concocted their rape hoax, in order to stay out of jail.

The boys were maliciously prosecuted and convicted, on the weight of perjured testimony Bates and Price were pressured into giving.

The U.S. supreme court threw out the initial jury verdict in 1932, and the communist party usa paid for the defendants’ attorneys in a series of re-trials, but racist juries convicted them, anyway, and again sentenced them to die.

A political movement mobilized to free the by now young men, and one escaped from prison, in a dramatic jailbreak. Eventually, White politicians at the highest levels pardoned them.

Well. Until a few weeks ago, I bought the official story without question. But then I read a report which casts serious doubts upon it.

The new story is that one of the female accusers, Victoria Price (1911-1982), never changed her story, while the other, Ruby Bates (1915-1976) did, but under dubious circumstances.

Victoria Price

Victoria Price:

“I didn’t lie in Scottsboro. I didn’t lie in Decatur and I ain’t lied here. I’ve told the truth all the way through and I’m a’ gonna go on fighting ‘til my dying day or ‘til justice is done.”

-- after her lawsuit against nbc, 1976

Ruby Bates

Ruby Bates:

“In 1934 lawyers for the International Labor Defense tried to bribe [Price] to change her testimony, but she revealed the plot to the police.”

“In 1932, during an unrelated arrest, police found a letter that Bates had written to a boyfriend. In the letter, she denied having been raped. The man who had the letter on his person claimed that he had been paid by the International Labor Defense to get Bates drunk and have her write the letter.

“[In a 1933 re-trial], Bates appeared as a surprise witness for the defense. She testified that there was never any rape, and that the evidence of sexual activity from the examination of herself and Price was from the night before, when they had been with their boyfriends. Under cross-examination, she was confronted with the conflicts in her testimony at Scottsboro, and becoming flustered, proved to be a poor witness. Furthermore, she was asked about how she had paid for the new dress she had on, and where she had been. Her answer, that her new possessions were bought for her in New York, convinced many that her testimony had been bought as well.”

The article must have been published by some White supremacist media organ, no? Indeed. The report was commissioned and published by that notorious, White supremacist media organ, national public radio (npr)!