The Arrests.

On 25 March 1931 a white youth, one of several who had picked a fight with a group of young black men aboard a Memphis-bound freight train, filed a complaint with local authorities in the town of Stevenson, Alabama. The police in neighboring Scottsboro were contacted and asked to stop the train, but it had already passed through. The Jackson County sheriff called a deputy near the next stop, Paint Rock, and had him deputize every available man to stop the train, arrest every black man on it, and return them to Scottsboro. Nine black youths, all transients and ranging in age from thirteen to twenty, were taken at gunpoint from the freight car in which they were found and arrested. Also discovered aboard were two white female mill workers, Victoria Price, age nineteen, and Ruby Bates, age seventeen. Fearful that they, too, would be arrested, they reported how they had been repeatedly raped by the black men in custody and...