The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles voted today to finally pardon the last three members of a group of nine black men known as the Scottsboro Boys, who were accused of raping two white women on a train in 1931.
The board decided unanimously to wipe the case off of the records of Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems and Andy Wright following a hearing in Montgomery, reports The Montgomery Advertiser.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the case began in March 1931, when a freight train from Chattanooga, Tenn. to Memphis was stopped in Alabama. On one of the cars, a dozen people were traveling illegally. Several whites on the train told the sheriff that they were attacked by blacks in the car. There were also two white girls who accused nine black men of rape.
Since the case went to trial first in Scottsboro, they became known as the Scottsboro Boys. They had terrible representation and they were all convicted, save for Roy Wright, who was 13 at the time. All of them were in jail at one point, but five of them had the rape charges dropped. Patterson, Weems and Wright were convicted in 1937 and over six years, they were put through six trials. The U.S. Supreme Court even made two drastic rulings because of the case about representation and the make-up of jury pools.
Clarence Norris was also convicted and sentenced to death. In 1976, he was pardoned by Gov. George C. Wallace.
The case was revived last month by scholars, who petitioned for the pardons. Judges and DAs in the countries where the trials were also backed the petition.