SummaryIn March of 1931 in Alabama, seven white youths claimed they had been thrown off a freight train by a group of young black men. When the train made a stop, it was met by a posse that pulled off the nine black men as well as two white women who were dressed in men's clothing. During their interrogations, the two women claimed they had been raped by the group of blacks. Almost immediately, several hundred local citizens banded together in an attempt at a mass lynching, but they were repelled by local authorities with help from the National Guard.
By the time the trials ended, eight of the nine youths were convicted, despite one woman's recantation of her story and testimony by doctors that neither woman showed evidence of violent physical or sexual attack. On retrial, charges against five of the boys were dropped; the other four were convicted.
The case was one of the first to focus major national attention on the political and social forces at work in the furtherance of racism.
