BGuthrie Photos: AL -- Scottsboro

AL -- Scottsboro:

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[1] SCOTTS_170602_001.JPG	[2] SCOTTS_170602_005.JPG	[3] SCOTTS_170602_009.JPG
[4] SCOTTS_170602_012.JPG	[5] SCOTTS_170602_015.JPG	[6] SCOTTS_170602_018.JPG
[7] SCOTTS_170602_021.JPG	[8] SCOTTS_170602_025.JPG	[9] SCOTTS_170602_028.JPG
[10] SCOTTS_170602_031.JPG	[11] SCOTTS_170602_036.JPG	[12] SCOTTS_170602_037.JPG
[13] SCOTTS_170602_041.JPG	[14] SCOTTS_170602_044.JPG	[15] SCOTTS_170602_051.JPG
[16] SCOTTS_170602_057.JPG	[17] SCOTTS_170602_060.JPG	[18] SCOTTS_170602_063.JPG
[19] SCOTTS_170602_071.JPG	[20] SCOTTS_170602_072.JPG	[21] SCOTTS_170602_076.JPG
[22] SCOTTS_170602_079.JPG	[23] SCOTTS_170602_083.JPG	[24] SCOTTS_170602_084.JPG
[25] SCOTTS_170602_091.JPG	[26] SCOTTS_170602_094.JPG	[27] SCOTTS_170602_097.JPG
[28] SCOTTS_170602_100.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SCOTTS_170602_001.JPG: Jackson County Courthouse and the Scottsboro Boys Constructed in 1911-1912 and designed by architect Richard H. Hunt, the Jackson County Courthouse is a Neo-Classical, brick building situated on a town square in Scottsboro, the county seat of Jackson County. The front, two-story portico is supported by four stone columns of the Doric order. A cupola on the top contains a Seth Thomas clock. This courthouse was the site of the first of the Scottsboro Boys trials. Two white women accused nine black teenagers of rape on March 25, 1931, while riding a freight train as it passed through Jackson County. In April 1931, at the first of four trials, a jury convicted eight of the nine defendants and sentenced them to death. The judge declared a mistrial in the case of one defendant. Soon after the guilty verdicts, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the International Labor Defense (ILD) came to the defense of the "Scottsboro Boys," contending the trials were unconstitutional.
2. SCOTTS_170602_005.JPG: Jackson County Courthouse and the Scottsboro Boys The United States Supreme Court overturned the verdicts and new trials were held in Decatur, Alabama. After a series of trials, convictions, and overturned decisions, a compromise was reached in 1938, with some of the "Scottsboro Boys" freed immediately and the others released by 1950. In 1976, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace pardoned the last living "Scottsboro Boy." Two landmark United States Supreme Court decisions arose directly from the case. In Patterson vs. Alabama (1932), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the defendants were denied the right to effective legal counsel, and in Norris vs Alabama (1935), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the defendants had not received equal protection under the law because Jackson County juror rolls excluded African Americans. Many consider the Scottsboro Case and its aftermath one of the beginnings of the civil rights movement in America.
3. SCOTTS_170602_021.JPG: City Hall J.D. Snodgrass 19 - Mayor - 30
4. SCOTTS_170602_060.JPG: Gen. Andrew Jackson Soldier Statesman 7th President USA Jackson County was created by the state legislature on December 13, 1819 while in session in Huntsville, Ala. The county was named in honor of Gen. Andrew Jackson who was visiting in Huntsville at the time time. This statue was presented by the citizens of Jackson County during the year of the bicentennial 1776 * 1976
5. SCOTTS_170602_076.JPG: Robert Thomas Scott 1800-1863 Planter, tavern operator, newspaper editor, legislator, and land developer, he sought in vain to have the Jackson County seat moved from Bellefont to the settlement that bore his name. After his death in 1863, his widow reached an agreement in 1868 with the county government whereby the site for the courthouse and jail was deeded to Jackson County on condition that Scottsboro become the county seat. Incorporated by the state legislature on January 20, 1870, the town became an important commercial center and shipping point on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.
Wikipedia Description: Scottsboro, Alabama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scottsboro is a city in Jackson County, Alabama, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city is 14,770. Named for its founder Robert Scott, the city is the county seat of Jackson County.

From its incorporation in 1870 until 1890, it was the largest community in Jackson County, losing the distinction from 1900 to 1920 to Bridgeport, but reclaiming the title in 1930 and holding it since that time.

It is located 30 miles each from the state boundaries of Georgia to the east (Dade County) and Tennessee to the north, about 45 miles from Huntsville, Alabama to the west and about 55 miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee to the northeast.

History

Early history

Prior to Scottsboro's founding, the area surrounding the present-day city was inhabited by the Cherokee Indians. While the Tennessee Valley did not have large Native American settlements at the time of the first white settlers, there was a Cherokee town named "Crow Town" near where Scottsboro is located today.

As settlers began pouring into the Tennessee region, they found the Tennessee River to be an excellent source of food, water, and a way of shipping goods to the big cities. John Hunt, in 1805, decided to migrate to the area and built a small log cabin in the woods near the river. More people settled in the area and Huntsville was formally incorporated in 1811.

More settlers moved into the Mississippi Territory, resulting in the statehood of Mississippi, and the creation of the Alabama Territory in 1818. Delegates from Tennessee and the newly formed Madison County met in Sauta Cave and decided to admit a new county.

On December 13, 1819, Jackson County was formed. Then, only one day later, the State of Alabama was admitted into the Union as the 22nd state on December 14, 1819.

The first county seat of Jackson County was at Sauta, a former native town, near present-day Scottsboro. Early county meetings were held in Sauta cave. Sauta did not survive after the courthouse was moved to Bellefonte in 1821.

Since Bellefonte had better access to the Tennessee River than Sauta, more settlers started moving to the area. They were also attracted by it being the county seat.

Scottsboro's founder, Robert Thomas Scott, served in the Alabama Legislature for almost 20 years and later ran a hotel in Bellefonte. Since he and his wife, Elizabeth, wanted a place to call their own and were not very fond of Bellefonte, they moved to Scottsboro around 1850–53. The town was called Scottsville, Scott's Mill, or Sage Town until 1868. In 1853, the newly formed Memphis and Charleston Railroad (a stretch of railroad that starts at Memphis, TN, and ends in Charleston, SC) decided to build a station at Scottsboro and did so in 1857. In the same year, passengers started disembarking at Scott's Station. On January 20, 1870, Scottsboro was incorporated by the Alabama Legislature. A. Snodgrass was the first mayor. Scottsboro got its first telegraph office in 1872.

Bellefonte citizens rejected the railroad because they did not want train travel to interfere with the town's thriving river trade and the low riverside land was not suitable for tracks.

In 1861/1863, the Bellefonte courthouse was set ablaze and charred. The area was heavily damaged during the U.S. Civil War.

Selection of the new county seat began in 1860 by having a contest to see which towns were suitable.

Many of the county's towns pushed for their selection, but the leading candidates were Hollywood, Stevenson, Larkinsville, and Scotts-borough (Scottsboro). To narrow the nominees, the county council decided that:

The town must be within 8 miles (13 km) of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad line.
The town must be near the center of the county.

The second requirement eliminated Stevenson and Larkinsville, and the County Commissioners ultimately selected Scottsboro as the county seat. Courthouse construction began in 1868 with the jail following two years later. County commissioners sited the courthouse at its current location in the public square.

The 20th century would bring great changes to Scottsboro. In 1902, two cases of smallpox were found but, fortunately, the disease did not spread more widely. In 1903, the first car that came to the town drove through the square en route from Ohio to Florida. In 1906, local blacksmith H.C. Payne built Scottsboro's first homemade automobile, which was made with a wooden frame, four sprocket wheels and hand-powered cranks. In 1911, the courthouse was set ablaze and was rebuilt. In 1912, the courthouse was demolished and an election was held to determine whether the courthouse would be moved to Stevenson or stay in Scottsboro (some Stevenson residents did not think Scottsboro deserved the role of county seat). Scottsboro won the vote and the present courthouse was built (before the renovation and expansion in 1954.)

Scottsboro Boys

The Scottsboro Boys case was among the most important cases in the history of American jurisprudence. It went to the United States Supreme Court twice and established forever the principles that, in the United States, criminal defendants are entitled to effective assistance of counsel and that people may not be de facto excluded from juries due to their race. The case of the Scottsboro Boys arose in Scottsboro in 1931, when nine black youths, ranging in age from twelve to twenty, were accused of raping two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, one of whom would later recant. The victims and accused alike had all hitched rides on a passing train on the Southern Railroad freight route from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931, which just happened to stop in Jackson County, Alabama where these women made their accusations to the local officials against these black youths. The defendants were brought to Scottsboro for trial because it was the seat of Jackson County.

The four trials, during the course of which most of the youths were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries despite the weak and contradictory testimonies of the witnesses, are now widely regarded (including in Scottsboro) as one of the worst travesties of justice perpetrated against blacks in the post-Reconstruction South. Only the first trials were held in Scottsboro. Of the original nine young black defendants (some of them minors), accused of gang raping two fellow hobo white women on a freight train, eight were quickly convicted and sentenced to death in quick succession in trials occurring in a mob atmosphere in Scottsboro by all-white juries. The only two attorneys who were willing to take the cases had few qualifications for criminal defense work. They were unable to put up much of a defense when the judge gave them no time to prepare their defenses before the trials. He started the first trial as soon as they agreed to take the cases and then began each next case as soon the jury had gone out on the previous one.

Fortunately, the Scottsboro defendants benefited from their two landmark triumphs in the United States Supreme Court, mostly from the fact that they were all relieved from the death sentences they had received at their first trial in Scottsboro. The Supreme Court ruled both times only that the way their convictions were obtained was improper and not that they were innocent. Those convicted spent at least six years and as many as nineteen years incarcerated in harsh jails and prisons. The Scottsboro Boys had served long prison sentences when Governor George Wallace partially mitigated this widely accepted injustice (after the United States Supreme Court had failed to do so twice) by issuing a pardon in 1976 for the one remaining Scottsboro defendant still subject to the Alabama penal system.

"In January, 2004, amidst television cameras and radio and newspaper reporters, a crowd gathered near the Jackson County Court House in Scottsboro to dedicate a historical marker commemorating the Scottsboro Boys' trial and their struggle for justice." "An 87-year-old black man who attended the ceremony, one of the few who could remember the cases firsthand, recalled that the mob scene following the Boys' arrest 'was frightening' and that death threats were leveled against the jailed suspects. He applauded the town's move to install the plaque on the courthouse yard. 'I think it will bring the races closer together,' he said, 'to understand each other better.'"

The Scottsboro Boys Museum was opened in February 2010.
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