1930's Research Project
By Josh Tipton 2nd Period
Tom Robinson And The Scottsboro Boys
The Scottsboro Boys
On March 25th, 1931, the Scottsboro boys, Victoria Price, and Ruby Bates all boarded a train, but little did the boys know they would leave in handcuffs. The two women said they had been raped, all the boys but one were charged with rape and were placed on Death Row. On November 7th, 1932 the case reached the Supreme Court of Alabama and then later the U.S. Supreme Court. It was sent back to the lower courts and tried several more times with guilty verdicts each time. Charges were finally dropped for four of the nine boys, but the rest served a combined 77 years in jail for a crime that the victim Ruby Bates later said never happened.
Tom Robinson
Tom was wrongly sent to prison because a white woman said he raped her. Mayella Ewell's dad was the one who actually beat Mayella because she had kissed Tom, and it was unspoken of in the 1930's for a white woman to kiss a black man. Rape was a big deal, so Tom went to prison for life. Shortly after being imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Tom tried to escape, but was shot and killed just as he made it over the fence.
The Similarities And Differences
Similarities: Both of the defendants were African-Americans who were accused of rape, and also the people charging them were white women. These cases both ruled in favor of the accusers. Differences: In the Scottsboro case there were two girls in the and only one in Tom Robinson's case. In the Scottsboro trial Ruby Bates later admitted that she was never raped, but in Tom's case Mayella never confessed to anyone that Tom really didn't rape her.