Letter from Harry O. Glasser in Enid, Oklahoma, to His Excellency in Montgomery, Alabama.

Letter from Harry O. Glasser in Enid, Oklahoma, to His Excellency in Montgomery, Alabama.

Scottsboro Trial, Scottsboro, Ala., 1931; African Americans--Civil rights--Alabama; African Americans--Imprisonment--Alabama; Miller, Benjamin Meek, 1864-1944; Manchester Guardian

Harry O. Glasser, an attorney and former senator, hopes that Governor Miller will allow the Supreme Court of the United States to review the Scottsboro Boys' convictions and encloses a clipping from the Manchester [England] Guardian.

Glasser, Harry O.

Alabama Governor, Scottsboro Case appeals to the Governor, SG004237, Folder 5, Alabama Dept. of Archives and History

1932-05-25

Letter

English

United States--Oklahoma--Enid

<u>Scottsboro</u> HARRY O. GLASSER
ATTORNEY AT LAW
ENID, OKLAHOMA

May 25, 1932





His Excellency, the
Governor of Alabama,
Montgomery, Alabama.

Sir:

Am enclosing herewith an editorial
clipped from the Manchester Guardian of Manchester,
England.

I sincerely trust that you will allow
the opportunity of a review of these convictions by
the United States Supreme Court.

Very respectfully,

Harry O. Glasser

HG:LV Harry O. Glasser
Former State Senator of
the State of Oklahoma

Still Time for Justice

The world has just been profoundly
shocked by a particularly senseless and
cruel example of political assassination ;
unless the Governor of Alabama intervenes
with a reprieve which will allow
a much-discussed case to be carried to
the Supreme Court of the United States
there is the gravest risk that all those
who care for lar, order, and the
decencies of civilised life will suffer
another horrid shock. Friday, June 24,
has been fixed for the execution
of seven negro youths, not one of
them older than twenty years, who were
tried at Scottsboro, Alabama, a year
ago on a charge of having raped two
white girls of bad reputation. In the
beginning nine negro boys were
arraigned on the same charge of rape,
after being arrested in the first place
on a charge of vagrancy arising out of
a fight with some white youths. The
charge of rape was added later when
two of the negros' travelling companions
were found to be white girls of
the looser sort. In the case of one
boy - aged fourteen - the jury could
not agree ; the remaining eight were
sentenced to death. One of them - a
child of thirteen when he was charged -
has been put back for another trial ;
the remaining seven, whose sentence
has been confirmed by the Supreme
Court of Alabama, are to die on
June 24. It is a tangled and evil tale
of negros, "poor whites," and racial
jealousy, complicated by this time with
Communist propaganda and disputes
over the conduct of such defense as
there has been. But the main point is
this ; that in no other civilised country
could such a trial have been held and
such sentences pronounced. Even a
month ago the "Times" New York
correspondent was writing :

Outside the South the case is very generally
regarded as an example of "legal lynching" ;
and even in the South there are many
who admit that the evidence against the
boys is as flimsy as it well could be, and
political grounds.

The truth is that if these seven boys
are done to death next month a
blacker chapter will have been written
in the history of the Southern States
than any which records the numerous
mob lynchings in those regions, for this
lamentable affair has every appearance
of mass lynching by legal process.
There is still time for the world of
restraint - not from the voice of mercy,
but from the voice of reason, justice,
and self-respect.