Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

CLOSE UP 275 Recall the facts: March 25, 1931, white and black hoboes are hidden up and down the length of a freight-train going from Chattanooga to Memphis, Tennessee. All penniless, no fares, looking for work. A row breaks out in one of the trucks — the white tramps object to the black tramps traveUing with them and try to throw them off. (This is " white superiority "). The whites don't get the best of it, so they jump off (all but one Orville Gilley, who is pulled back by one of the Negroes to save his life as the train is speeding up). The whites telephone the next station, " stop the niggers who've dared to fight with us." At the station the train is searched, nine Negro lads are found in it, in different cars, some of them don't know there's been a fight. Three white boys are found as well. All are charged with vagrancy, told to get out of that county at once. And then, suddenly . . . two of the white boys, when searched, are found to be girls in men's overalls. The race-hatred bursts out, the stock accusation. It is " rape." Questioned, examined by doctors, these two girls deny and show no signs of it. But they were wretchedly ill-paid mill hands, and well-known prostitutes as well. A night in jail — grilling by the police — next day, realising they will get sentences anyway, they admit the rape. The nine Negroes have been savagely beaten ; this is visible at the " trial " which takes place 10 days later. Prevented from communicating with parents, no lawyer to defend them other than a Ku Klux Klan state attorney and one assigned by the court who tells them to plead guilty, they continue to protest their innocence. Victoria Price, the most hard-boiled of the two girls, now comes out with a wealth of detail — she points to the boys who assaulted her, to those who attacked Ruby Bates. Knives and guns, she says, were at their throats ; but no knives or guns were found. And Orville Gilley who was along with them all the time ? The state won't call his evidence (it might not tally with the rape lie) ; the state says he is weak-minded, etc. Orville Gilley disappears. And Victoria Price is now jubilant ; the judge commends her as a good witness. Ruby Bates, however, is so confused in her testimony, it rings so false, that they tell her to shut up. The boys are tried in pairs — the little court-room at Scottsboro bristles with the lynch spirit. And outside, because this trial is held purposely on " horseswapping day," a fair-day, a mob of 10,000 is howling and drinking around a brass band that is playing " There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night," bursting into cheers as each expected verdict is announced. This verdict is the death penalty The boys are all under 20. Roy Wright, aged 13, gets a life sentence. The trials have been rushed through. Doctors' evidence (sufficient in itself to prove the rape story an entire fabrication) is totally disregarded, and none of the white boys in the fight on the train is called as witness. Legally speaking, this trial is unconstitutional. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments passed after abolition in 1865 state that Negroes must serve on juries, but in the southern states not one Negro ever serves on juries. The " legal lynching " triumphs, the frame-up is complete. And the mob is told there's " enough juice in the power-house to burn up the niggers " ; electrocution is fixed for July, and the case is one more purely local southern affair.