Browse Items (95 total)

The Mme. C. J. Walker Club of San Francisco joins the NAACP in asking for the release of the Scottsboro Boys.

N. Henshaw writes to Governor Miller that the Scottsboro Boys should have been burned or skinned, makes veiled references to lynching in mentioning that in the past it "wasn't necessary to tax the state with the expense of a trial in a thing of this…

Signed by "Dr. George G. Mehlen" and representing 1,161 members, this letter from the Negro Businessmen's League (NBL) of Corona, New York, protests the 1933 verdicts from Judge Callahan's court and declares the Scottsboro defendants' innocence. It…

Paulina Antonuk, "Chairman of Meeting, Lithuanian Working Women's Alliance Branch No. 13," calls for a new trial for the Scottsboro Boys with a "half negro" jury and frames their fate in terms of race and class.

The Phyllis Wheatley Club asks why rape is punishable by death in Alabama and why the state disregards constitutional law by refusing to allow African Americans to serve on juries. The club asks about other specifics of the case and urges Governor…

From the director of the Pioneer Youth of America, Inc., this letter includes a copy of a statement about the Scottsboro case, produced from a meeting of representatives of national agencies in New York. The director writes that the case of the…

Albert W. Kauffman, the minister of Plymouth Methodist Protestant Church, writes that, given the evidence, the Scottsboro case seems to be a miscarriage of justice and that cases like it undermine public confidence in the justice system. He hopes…

Rev. A. V. Pierce, a World War I veteran, wonders why African Americans in the United States may fight for justice but receive none at home. He asks Governor Miller to give justice to African Americans.

Rev. Burckhardt writes that he believes in "justice and fair play for all men" and hopes that Governor Miller will treat the Scottsboro Boys as innocent until proven guilty, or else there will be "a black mark" on his administration and the state of…

Tuskegee Institute president Robert R. Moton writes to the Governor of Alabama on the school's letterhead, applauding the orderly punishment of crime, but stating that he hopes the courts will be equally just with African Americans as with whites.