The Scottsboro Boys

by James Haskins

Documents the 1931 case in which nine black youths were accused of assaulting two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama, and brought to an infamous trial, in a blatant, racially motivated miscarriage of justice.

Genres: Nonfiction

118 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Haskins, James (1941–2005), author of nonfiction books for juveniles and adults, biographer, educator, critic, editor, and educational consultant. Born into a large family in a racially segregated middle-class section of Demopolis, Alabama, where he was not allowed to visit the town's public library, James S. Haskins was deeply affected by the swirl of events related to the mid-century civil rights movement. He received his bachelor's degree in history at Alabama State College, but limited career opportunities in the South in the early 1960s led him to seek employment in New York City. Two years of selling newspaper advertisements and working as a Wall Street stockbroker brought him to the realization that he was better suited for a career in education and thus he applied for a position in the New York City public school system. After teaching music at several locations, he found a job teaching a special education class at P.S. 92. Obsessed with the plight of his inner-city pupils, he was glad to discuss their problems with anyone who would listen, including a social worker who encouraged him to write his thoughts and experiences in a diary. This resulted in the publication of his first book, Diary of a Harlem Schoolteacher (1969), which was widely acclaimed. This initial success attracted the attention of major publishers who approached him to write books for children and adolescents.

An admitted need to reconcile social disparities and a desire to interpret events to young people and to motivate them to read and be influenced by accomplished individuals—particularly deprived youth whom he felt had far too few role models to read about—led him to author more than one hundred books on a diverse array of topics. Written for a general audience of juveniles, his titles include The War and the Protest: Viet Nam (1971), Religions (1973), Jobs in Business and Office (1974), The Consumer Movement (1975), Your Rights, Past and Present: A Guide for Young People (1975), Teen-age Alcoholism (1976), The Long Struggle: The Story of American Labor (1976), Who Are the Handicapped (1978), Gambling—Who Really Wins (1978), Werewolves (1981), and The New Americans: Cuban Boat People (1982).

Haskins launched his college teaching career in 1970 and continued lecturing on psychology, folklore, children's and young adult literature, and urban education at schools in New York and Indiana before landing a full-time professorship in the English department at the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1977. That same year he authored The Cotton Club, a pictorial and social history of the notorious Harlem night club, which seven years later was transformed into a motion picture of the same name directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Among his books intended for adults or college-level readers are The Psychology of Black Language (1973) with Dr. Hugh Butts; Black Manifesto for Education (1973), which he edited; Snow Sculpture and Ice Carving (1974); Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Rag-time (1978); Voodoo and Hoodoo: Their Tradition and Craft as Revealed by Actual Practitioners (1978); Richard Pryor, A Man and His Madness (1984); and Mabel Mercer: A Life (1988). He has contributed numerous critical essays and reviews to periodicals. Still, he is best known for his biographies, tailored for elementary and high school students. Most of these recount the triumphs of well-known contemporary African Americans, with whom many young people readily identify. The long list of persons he has profiled (often using the pen name Jim Haskins) include Colin Powell, Barbara Jordon, Thurgood Marshall, Sugar Ray Leonard, Magic Johnson, Diana Ross, Katherine Dunham, Guion Bluford, Andrew Young, Bill Cosby, Kareem Adbul-Jabbar, Shirley Chisholm, Lena Horne, and Rosa Parks. Biographies of prominent individuals who are not African American include Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Shirley Temple Black, Corazón Aquino, Winnie Mandela, and Christopher Columbus.

Reviews

[skketch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This true story about what the judicial system did to 9 African American young men in 1931 is a huge blemish on what the Constitution and what the Founding Fathers wanted for this country. The fact that a person's skin color gave people in power the idea that they could forego "due process" in the court room was appalling. I had not heard about the Scottsboro Boys until I heard music from the Broadway musical about their story and I had to know what it was all about. This book by James Haskins is the well researched factual literary documentary of the events of the long fight for their acquittal and release. While the rest of the country reacted with strong disbelief of what was going on in Alabama, the citizens of this small Alabama town felt that it was their obligation to defend the words, false as they might be, of two disreputable white women who accused these men of violating their honor, when in fact, they were trying to cover up their own unsavory behavior was just plain despicable. I was shocked to learn that the judges in the cases squashed the rights of the defendants and their lawyers to speak on behalf of their clients, to gather evidence and to speak to qualified experts and to present this evidence into the record. These judges gave broad berths to the prosecutors. While for several years, the lawyers of the Scottsboro Boys were able to get their objections heard all the way to the Supreme Court, once they got back to the backwater courtrooms of Alabama, they were met with the same roadblocks time and time again. There was no justice to be had for these men in the thirteen years they were held in jails and by the time they were paroled or released, they were hardened and mean. Since most of their young lives were lived in this setting, they had difficulty with trust and able to maintain solid relationships having had little to no outside 'normal' influence on how to do that. This is a powerful story of what hate, prejudice, racial profiling, and supremacy looks like in the USA in 1931 with the backdrop of Nazi Germany and WWII fast approaching. Is anyone else uncomfortable???

[Kat Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This important book is great reading, too.