Social & Political Conditions ~

1850-1935

Emancipation ~ A common mistake that is made when viewing the Harlem Renaissance is chronological presentism, the belief that the events leading to the Renaissance were chronologically further past than is actually the case. One must remember that emancipation came only sixty some years before the beginning of the renaissance, which is commonly viewed as the 1920’s. Many of the people who participated in the events in Harlem had grandparents and even parents who had been slaves. Slavery was not far from the minds of people in the country.

The Southern Diaspora ~ One of the main events that precipitated the Harlem Renaissance was the displacement and migration of Southern Blacks from the south to the industrialized north. Many former slaves left the south looking for work and to escape the institutionalized racism that fueled the southern economy. Since industrial jobs in the North were abundant and well-paying, many blacks relocated there. As more people moved into cities, segregation led to the creation of predominantly Black neighborhoods with a culture and identity that was unhindered by the restraints of slavery. Cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Flint, and especially New York, received large numbers of blacks to work in factories.

The abundance of jobs and amalgamation of people into neighborhoods catalyzed the development of areas like Harlem. The proximity of people to each other and the development of neighborhoods allowed many blacks to form their own networks, publications, and organizations. This development of organizational strength would allow for the continued development of cultural and political ideas in Harlem and across the country.

The Politics of Oppression ~ Blacks during the Renaissance probably never felt more free than they did in Harlem. Malcolm X reminisced in his autobiography, “In one night, New York-Harlem- had just about narcotized me.” However, throughout the country an atmosphere of institutionalized racism and hatred abounded. Racism was not only confined to the white community. Many Blacks in Harlem were under the spell of the West Indian caste system, which has three groups, white, yellow and black. In-group racism was common in Harlem and still persists to this day. Marcus Garvey alludes to this system in many of his writings. While Harlem was as close to heaven as possible as far as freedom from daily racism goes, the rest of the country and especially the South was oppressive and violent. The case of “The Scottsboro Boys” as it came to be called is especially instructive in viewing this reality.

The Scottsboro Nine

March 25, 1931. Paint Rock, Alabama. Nine black boys are forced off of a train they had been riding on. The boys were looking for rumored government work. Tied to each other with plowshare rope, they are escorted off the train and to a jail in Scottsboro. Later in the evening a lynch mob consisting of several hundred men surround the jail. The National Guard is called to protect the boys. No one who participated in the events of that day could foresee the convictions, reversals, and retrials that would become the “Scottsboro Boys” case. Over the next twenty years the case would make people famous, launch and end careers, open southern juries to blacks, and change the way the country viewed southern justice.
First, the crime. The boys were accused by Ruby Bates and Victoria Price of forcibly gang raping them. Six boys supposedly raped Price and the other three Bates. The events that led up to the accusation are important. At some point on the train ride a gang of whites got into a stone throwing fight with a larger group of blacks. The whites were summarily thrown off the train by the blacks. The white boys then went to a stationmaster and complained that a gang of blacks had assaulted them. A posse was formed and the train was stopped at the next station. The train was searched and all black youths on the train were rounded up. Two men who escorted Price and Bates then met the Posse, the girls accused the blacks of raping them and Price even identified six of the boys. The police simply assumed that the other three had raped Bates. The trial would begin twelve days later.
The First Trial. Stephen Roddy and Milo Moody represented the boys in the first trial. Moody was a senile seventy years old attorney who had not tried a case in twenty years. Roddy was a real estate attorney who was so drunk on the first day of trial he had a hard time negotiating the walkway to the defense table. The boys were tried in groups of two or three to avoid a reversible error that might set all nine free. The defense only offered the testimony of the boys as their defense. Six boys denied the rape, but three boys admitted raping the girls. They later claimed that they had been threatened and beaten. The prosecutor closed the first trial with these words, "Guilty or not, let’s get rid of these niggers.” The guilty verdict was announced in the first trial while the second trial was still underway. The jurors could hear the cheers from outside. After four trials all of the boys had been convicted except 12-year-old Roy Wright who was granted a mistrial since eleven of the twelve jurors wanted the death penalty and the prosecution only sought life imprisonment.
The leading proponent of Blacks in America the NAACP did not react to the trial in the manner that many expected. Instead of quickly mounting a legal defense fund the NAACP, with its measured bureaucracy, believed that the case was too incendiary. Rape by a Black man of a White woman was one of the most unthinkable crimes in the South. Fearing long-term damage to their cause the NAACP failed to act in a timely manner. Conversely, the American Communist Party and its legal department the International Labor Defense quickly began to lobby to become the boys legal counsel. Only when it was clear that the communists would be representing the boys did the NAACP act. The NAACP was able to persuade Clarence Darrow to represent the boys. However, it was too late. The boys threw in their lots with Communists who were “(in the South) treated with only slightly more courtesy than a gang of Rapists.”
The ILD appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court and in 1932 all but one of the convictions was upheld (Eugene Williams’s, age 13, conviction was overturned by the court citing that he should have been tried as a juvenile.) The cases then went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned their convictions, 7-2, in the groundbreaking case of Powell V. Alabama. The Court ruled that the defendants had been deprived of their rights under the fourteenth amendment (Due Process). The boys had not been entitled to competent legal counsel. All of the boys would be granted new trials.
The ILD selected Samuel Liebowitz to be lead counsel in the new trials. Liebowitz was a Jewish criminal attorney from NYC who had attained an astonishing record of seventy-seven acquittals and one hung jury in his career. He had no prior connection to the Communist party, yet by virtue of his religion was as unpopular in the South as the Communists themselves. In closing arguments one of the prosecutors suggested that “. . .justice in this case is going to be bought and sold with Jew money from New York.”

In the trials that followed, five of the boys were convicted again and charges against the remaining four were dropped. Through parole or by escape all of the boys were out of prison in 1950.