Weems, of Atlanta, was involved in the fight aboard the Southern Railroad freight. In November 2013, more than eighty years after the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles granted posthumous pardons to Charlie Weems, Andy Wright and Haywood Patterson in order to formally exonerate them as well. After his parents divorced, he was raised by his mother, Viola, who supported the family on only $1.50 a week. we missed, Tell Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems and Roy Wright were searching for work when a racially-charged fight broke out between passengers. The Court reversed the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys based on its determination that the defendants had been deprived of their constitutional right to due process when they were not provided adequate legal representation at their trials. Norris fought often in prison. When the train stopped, the group of white males jumped off, though the reasons for this are disputed. He kept a clean prison record and was paroled in 1943. Roberson's six years in jail were difficult. The Later Scottsboro Boys Trials (1933 - 1937) The First Scottsboro Trials (April, 1931) Report on the First Scottsboro Trial (Hollace Ransdall for the ACLU, 4/31) He later said that he did so after having been threatened and severely beaten by authorities. Court is called to order, and the Boys are provided with a drunk, incompetent public July 26: The five remaining Scottsboro defendants are taken to Kilby Prison. The sheriff stopped the car, got out, and fired a bullet at Powell (who, along with the others, had his hands in the air) which lodged in his brain. (BACK), The Trials of "The Scottsboro Boys": An Account, Without Fear or Favor: Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, Diagram of the Chattanooga to Memphis Freight Train, Biographies of Key Figures in "The Scottsboro Boys" Trials, Excerpts from the trial of Alabama v. Patterson, March - April, 1933, The Later Scottsboro Boys Trials (1933 - 1937), The First Scottsboro Trials (April, 1931), Report on the First Scottsboro Trial (Hollace Ransdall for the ACLU, 4/31), The Trials Of "the Scottsboro Boys": A Bibliography. None of the Scottsboro Boys received compensation for their wrongful convictions and incarcerations. The cases again went back to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the first trials in Scottsboro, Wright testified that he saw other defendants rape the white girls. He was, as the title of a book he helped write suggested, the last of the Scottsboro Boys. In 1937, the State of Alabama dropped the rape charges against five of the defendants, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright. We welcome new information from any source about exonerations already on our list and about cases not in the Registry that might be exonerations. Support The National Registry of Exonerations —, DNA and Non-DNA Exonerations by In 1937, the state dropped all charges for Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright, who had already been in prison for six years. 1989 - 2012, Tell us about an Exoneration that In 1951, he was accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl (NAACP investigators viewed the charges as false; Wright had been dating the girl's mother and his accuser), but acquitted by an all-white jury. He married a woman from Mobile later that year. Powell, whose IQ was measured at "64-plus," could write only his name. Montgomery stuck consistently to his story, and by 1937 every prosecutor connected with the Scottsboro cases agreed Montgomery was innocent. Subject Headings In prison, Williams said that "getting out is the main thing I think about." Montgomery was riding alone in a tank car near the rear of the train when the fight and alleged rape took place on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight. From left are Deputy Sheriff Charles McComb, Leibowitz, and defendants, Roy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Robertson, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright. (The sheriff and deputy described the incident as an escape attempt). Norris was convicted a third time in 1937 (in what Norris termed "a Kangaroo Court"), and again sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison by Governor Graves. Norris's second conviction was overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Norris vs Alabama, which found Alabama's system of excluding blacks from jury rolls to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. In this July 26, 1937 file photo, police escort two of the five recently freed "Scottsboro Boys," Olen Montgomery, wearing glasses, third left, and Eugene Williams, wearing suspenders, forth left through the crowd greeting them upon their arrival at Penn Station in New York. He had spent most of the three years prior to his arrest working in lumber camps. Finally, even prosecutors came to believe him, and Roberson was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937. He moved to back to Georgia. Olen Montgomery was also convicted for rape and sentenced to death. Wright shot and killed his wife, then killed himself. Graves decided not to parole Powell. The defendants in the Scottboro trial and their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, at a Decatur jail. Character description, analysis and casting breakdown for Olen Montgomery from The Scottsboro Boys Join StageAgent today and unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. A 1937 Life Magazine article described Williams as "a sullen, shifty mulatto" who "tries to impress interviewers with his piety. When Norris, who had been one of those involved in the train fight with white boys, was accused of rape he thought he "was as good as dead." Haywood Patterson is seated next to Leibowitz. He wrote that "It seems as though I've been in here for century an century.". Over the course of the following year, Bates formally recanted her rape and assault claims in court, admitting that the story in which she accused the Scottsboro Boys of these crimes was completely false. He believed that he was paying the price for their freedom. He took a job, which he held for two years, driving a grocery delivery truck. Behind them, left to right, are: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems and Roy Wright. Wright was first paroled in January, 1944. August-December 31: Agitation for the freedom of the five in prison continues. The cases were tried and appealed in Alabama and twice argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Three of them were paroled in 1943 and 1944, and the fourth escaped from prison in the 1940s. He moved to New York in violation of his parole, and was returned to prison. In February of 1936, after testifying at Haywood Patterson's fourth trial, Powell was loaded into a car with Clarence Norris and Roy Wright. Throughout the several trials in which he testified, Roberson stuck to his story. In a letter to his mother he wrote, "I am all lonely and thinking of you...I feel like I can eat some of your cooking Mom." The cause of the Scottsboro Boys was quickly backed by the International Labor Defense, a group affiliated with the Communist party, and the NAACP. Wright was beaten by both prison guards and other inmates, on more than one occassion severely enough to require hospitalization. In fact, Roberson was no where near the scene of the alleged rape, but alone in a boxcar near the caboose. He was diagnosed (as were four other Scottsboro Boys) with "prison neurosis." In 1946, he was a paroled a second time. He was also said to be mistrustful, something of a loner, and to have a mean streak. In 1959, after returning from an extended stay at sea, Wright became convinced that his wife had been unfaithful. Haywood Patterson is sent to Atmore State Prison Farm. He died of Alzheimer's disease on January 23, 1989. Wright went over a year without getting fresh air. Police escort two of the five recently freed "Scottsboro Boys," Olen Montgomery and Eugene Williams, through the crowd greeting them upon their arrival at Penn Station in New York on July 26, 1937 (Photo: AP Photo, File). In July 1937, the charges against Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell and Eugene Williams (as well as Roy Wright) were finally dismissed. After jumping off the train, they reported to the nearby train stationmaster that two white women and a group of black men were riding on the train, and the train was then stopped in Paint Rock. The Scottsboro Boys with defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz in the Decatur, Alabama, jail (1933). Roberson settled in Brooklyn and found steady work. On the operating table Powell told his mother, "I done give up...cause everybody in Alabama is down on me and is mad at me. The fight is said to have started when a young white man stepped on the hand of one of the Scottsboro Boys. He was very nearsighted and blind in one eye from a cataract. Olen Montgomery, who was nearly blind, was tried together with several of the other Scottsboro Boys, all of whom were found guilty by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. He was the only one of the Scottsboro Boys known to be alive by that time. Powell who was born in rural Georgia, had only one year of schooling. but unlike most black men Olen was literate and even wrote books when he was in prison. Andy Wright, nineteen at the time of his arrest, was the older brother of Scottsboro Boy Roy Wright. (BACK). Four men were released, but Powell pled guilty to assaulting a deputy sheriff and was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Roberson suffered from asthma, and the lack of fresh air available aggravated his condition. Prison life was also difficult for Weems. He attended school only to second grade, then at age seven began working in the cotton fields. Two white females, Victoria Price, age 21, and Ruby Bates, age 17, both mill workers, hopped on a train to hitch a ride from Chattanooga to Huntsville, Alabama, early in the morning of March 25, 1931. He started driving a truck for a produce distributor at age twelve, a job he kept up for seven years until the distributor's insurance company learned of his young age and raised rates. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade to help his mother work. In January 1932, the NAACP withdrew from the case because of the great tension that had developed between the NAACP and the ILD as each group attempted to gain control of the representation and legal strategy of the Scottsboro Boys. on our list, Other Patterson was eighteen at the time he was born in Georgia but later moved to Chattanooga. The Scottsboro Nine survived for one reason—the intervention of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA). Olen was born in Monroe, Georgia in 1913. information about the Registry, Perjury or False Accusation, Inadequate Legal Defense. (BACK). Crime, Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent, Witness Recantations: Preliminary Also in January 1932, accuser Ruby Bates wrote a letter in which she denied that she had been raped by the Scottsboro Boys. (BACK). Wright moved to New York, living for times in Albany and New York City. Alabama dropped all charges against Wright in 1937. (BACK). (BACK). The Scottsboro Boys olen montgomery.....David Bazemore willie roberson .....Cornelius Bethea eugene williams .....Nile Bullock ... Olen Montgomery accuses the other boys in hopes the guards will let him go. Another incident brought on a beating with a leather strap. In March of 1931, the two Wrights, Patterson, and Williams all boarded the Southern Railroad freight, planning to ride it to Memphis where they heard government jobs hauling logs on the Mississippi might be available. At trial, Williams admitted that he fought with white boys on the train, but denied having seen Price or Bates until after his arrest. He did not know any of the other Scottsboro Boys prior to his arrest. Price testified that Roberson held her legs apart while other boys yelled "pour it to her." Moreover, Roberson was unable to walk without a cane, and clearly was in in no condition to leap from railroad car to railroad car, as his accusers alleged. Weems was age nineteen and the oldest of the Scottsboro boys he was from Atlanta. Norris published an autobiography, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys (1979). He complained about being "half fed" and said he spent a lot of time thinking about "the ladies out in the world and I'm shut in here." Olen Montgomery Olen Montgomery, seventeen at the time of his arrest, was born in Monroe, Georgia, where he attended school through the fifth grade. Findings, May 2013, Exonerations in the United States: The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence. Standing, left to right: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson (front), Andrew Wright (partially obscured), Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems and Roy Wright. Created / Published 1937 July 26. He had left his job as a hotel busboy in Georgia to go to Chattanooga in search of better work. His only trial ended in a mistrial when eleven jurors held out for death, even though, in view of his age, the prosecution had only asked for a life sentence. He described himself as quiet, shy, and bashful. Scottsboro Boys Travesty 1938 Warped Arc … Weems had a hard childhood. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Powell was not involved in the train fight, but said that he witnessed it. Charles Weems, at age nineteen was the oldest of the Scottsboro Boys when he was arrested in March, 1931. In 1934, he was beaten and tear-gassed for reading Communist literature that had been sent to him. During his six years in jail, Montgomery, who was severely nearsighted in both eyes and nearly blind in one, wrote frequent letters to his supporters asking for such things as six-string guitars (Montgomery hoped to be "the Blues King" after his release) and money to buy a night with a woman. Within a span of three days, eight of the Scottsboro Boys, all under age 21, had been convicted and sentenced to death, with their execution date set for July 10, 1931. Scottsboro Boys × Check-out the new Famous Trials website at ... Olen Montgomery. He was finally released from prison in June, 1946. After his release, Roberson lived in New York City where he found steady work. The defendants in the Scottboro trial and their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, at a Decatur jail. Norris had violated parole when he left Alabama and was a fugitive subject to parole revocation and a return to prison. Price and Bates claimed the black teens had attacked and raped the two of them after forcing the group of white teens to jump from the train. Montgomery bounced back and forth between New York City and Georgia, drinking heavily, and rarely holding a job for more than a few months. Charles WeemsClarence NorrisAndy WrightOzie PowellOlen MontgomeryEugene WilliamsWillie RobersonRoy WrightHaywood Patterson. Montgomery stuck consistently to his story, and by 1937 every prosecutor connected with the Scottsboro cases agreed Montgomery … Please enable scripts and reload this page. (BACK). Eugene Williams was thirteen when arrested along with his friends the Wright brothers and Haywood Patterson in March, 1931. Finding none available, he boarded the freight for Memphis. Norris was the second of eleven children born to Georgia sharecroppers. Age 17. The appeal reached the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1932. A group of white boys of about the same age were in the train car as well. Montgomery bought a saxophone, then a guitar, and practiced as much as possible. The prosecution even managed to use Roberson's syphillitic condition to its advantage, suggesting that the syphillis Ruby Bates contracted in 1931 was caused by his having had sex with her. In 1938, he was stabbed by a prison guard who had mistaken him for his intended target, Andy Wright. He needed whatever comfort he could find. They don’t. In 1931, nine young black men, ages 13 to 21, were arrested and falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train traveling through Scottsboro en route to Memphis, Tennessee. Haywood Patterson is sitting with Leibowitz. Wright kept a Bible with him at all times in jail, where he was held six years without retrial. ", The state dropped charges against Williams in July, 1937, citing his youth at the time of the alleged incident. Wright was on his first trip away from his home in Chattanooga, where he worked in a grocery store. Within a span of three days, eight of the Scottsboro Boys, all under age 21, had been convicted and sentenced to death, with their execution date set for July 10, 1931. Letter from Olen Montgomery to George Chamlee (5/25/31) Letter from Roy Wright to his mother (6/19/31) Letter from Haywood Patterson to Louis Engdahl (12/10/31) Letter from Ruby Bates to Earl Streetman (1/5/32) Ozie Powell, sixteen when arrested, was from Atlanta. At the first trial in Scottsboro, Norris testified that theother blacks raped Price and Bates and that he alone was innocent: "They all raped her, everyone of them.". It is estimated that a crowd of 8,000 to 10,000 spectators gathered in small Scottsboro for the trials, with armed soldiers on hand to keep the crowds at bay. Standing, left to right: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson (front), Andrew Wright (partially obscured), Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems, and Roy Wright. Freed Scottsboro boys cheered Summary Photograph shows Olen Montgomery and Eugene Williams being led through the street by police officers with crowd following. While their appeal was pending in court, they received a stay of their executions. He got a job shoveling coal in Cleveland for three years, then moved to New York City. Powell survived, but suffered permanent brain damage. He moved to St. Louis where he had relatives, and where his sponsors hoped that he would enroll in a Baptist seminary. Wright left Alabama in violation of his parole in 1946, was arrested, and for the next four years was in and out of the Alabama prison system. With his one free hand, Powell took a pen knife that had escaped detection during a search out of his pants and slashed the deputy's throat, wounding him. One incident in 1943 landed him ten days in the hole with only a blanket, bread, and water. Wright admitted to having fought with white boys on the train, but denied ever having seen Price or Bates until he got off the train. The deputy hit Powell on his head. The Scottsboro Trials were among the most infamous episodes of legal injustice in the Jim Crow South. Despite the assistance of the Scottsboro Defense Committee, however, none of his career dreams were realized. The other four Scottsboro Boys – Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Charlie Weems and Haywood Patterson – remained in prison, having been labeled by the prosecution as the ringleaders of the alleged assault on Bates and Price. The trial of the ninth boy – 14-year-old Roy Wright – ended in a mistrial. Crime, Contributing Factors and Type of He had trouble speaking and hearing, memory loss, and weakness in his right leg and arm. In 1976, Clarence Norris was pardoned by the Alabama Governor George Wallace, formally exonerating him. The case involved nine black young men from Tennessee and Georgia, and two young white women from Alabama. When Willie Roberson, age seventeen, allegedly raped Ruby Bates aboard the Chattanooga to Memphis freight we was suffering from a serious case of syphillis, with sores all over his genitals, that would have made intercourse very painful. In the 1960's, Norris asked the help of the NAACP in obtaining a pardon from the State of Alabama. Olen Montgomery was the accused, he was a poor black man from Monroe, Georgia. He was convicted of rape first in 1931, then in a second trial in 1937. The gassing caused permanent eye injuries. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were transported by police and interviewed. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was accused of rape by Mayella Ewell. Olen Montgomery, who was nearly blind, was tried together with several of the other Scottsboro Boys, all of whom were found guilty by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. After his release in 1943, Weems moved back to Atlanta where he married and took a job in a laundry. ", According to those who knew him, like Clarence Norris, Powell was never the same again. He was the brother of Andy Wright, who was also arrested upon disembarking the Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, 1931. May 25, 1931 From Olen Montgomery Kilby Prison Montgomery, Ala. My Dear Frind Mr. George. The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. Olen Montgomery Montgomery was riding alone in a tank car near the rear of the train when the fight and alleged rape took place on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight. The nine Scottsboro Boys were each charged with rape. MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama's parole board wrote a new ending for the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" rape case Thursday morning by approving posthumous pardons more than 80 … Once the train stopped, 17-year-old Olen Montgomery (also referenced as Olin Montgomery) along with eight other young black men (referred to collectively as the “Scottsboro Boys”) were found aboard the train and arrested. In what was to be his pre-parole interview with Governor Graves in 1938, Powell refused to answer the Governor's questions saying, "I don't want to say nothing to you." The Scottsboro Boys were nine young black men, falsely accused of raping two white women on board a train near Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. The three were handcuffed together in the backseat, while a sherrif and his deputy rode in front. In 1937, he contracted tuberculosis. Prior to boarding the Southern Railroad freight, Williams had worked as a dishwasher in a Chattanooga cafe. Sometime after 1960, Montgomery settled for good in Georgia. After his release in 1937, Montgomery said that he wanted to be a lawyer or musician. After breaking with their manager, Roy and Olen Montgomery went on a two and a half month tour organized by the Scottsboro Defense Committee, speaking in … The trial of Roy Wright ends in a mistrial when some jurors hold out for a death sentence even though the prosecution asked for life imprisonment. Those five - Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams and Roy Wright - were ineligible for pardons because their cases were dropped, the … Montgomery was riding alone in a tank car near the rear of the train when the fight and alleged rape took place on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight. Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, and Andy Wright are tried and convicted, and sentenced to death. After going on a national tour for the Scottsboro Defense Committee, Wright served in the army, got married, and took a job with the merchant marine. us about an exoneration that we may have missed, Correct an error or add information about an exoneration October 26, 1937: the US Supreme Court declined to review the Haywood Patterson and Clarence Norris convictions. In prison, despite a 1937 Life Magazine piece which described him as "the best natured" of the Scottsboro Boys, Wright was frequently ill and depressed. Montgomery,_Olen_C1931.jpg ‎ (83 × 112 pixels, file size: 3 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons . Weems finished the fifth grade, then took a jobs in a pharmacy. According to Norris, on the night before the first trial, he was removed from his cell, beaten and told to turn state's evidence if he wanted to save his life. the charges against Olen Montgomery and Willie Roberson dropped on the grounds that the state no longer believes the men to be guilty. Roy Wright, twelve or thirteen when arrested, was the youngest of the Scottsboro Boys. And in the Scottsboro trial Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozie Powelll, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, Roy Wright, and Haywood Patterson were accused of rape by Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, a known prostitute. He said of his situation, "If I don't get free I just rather they give me the electric chair and be dead out of my misery." April -Dec., 1931 Montgomery was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937. August 16: Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Roy Wright, and Willie Roberson appear in a show in Harlem. Learn He did agree to tour the country with Roy Wright for the Defense Committee and spoke at a number of SDC-arranged meetings. 1938 Olen Montgomery, seventeen at the time of his arrest, was born in Monroe, Georgia, where he attended school through the fifth grade. if the women weren't poor and weren't hookers than the case would have played out completely different that is how the social economic status of the women effected the case. (BACK). The Scottsboro boys consisted Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, and Roy Wright. It was founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. Clarence Norris died in Bronx Community Hospital on Janurary 23, 1989 at the age of seventy-six. He left Kilby prison for good on June 6, 1950, the last Scottsboro Boy to be freed. Nonetheless, on the strength of Price's and Bate's allegations Roberson was prosecuted and convicted. After his release, he told Samuel Leibowitz that wanted to be a lawyer or a teacher. The events that culminated in the trials began in the early spring of 1931, when nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train. By the early 1930s, with the nation mired in the Great Depression, many His mother died when he was four, and only one other of his seven siblings survived childhood. Powell and the deputy got into an argument. History 1931 March 25th: In the midst of the Great Depression, nine black boys hop the Southern Railway line from Chattanooga to Memphis: Olen Montgomery (age 17) Clarence Norris (age 19) Haywood Patterson (age 18) Ozie Powell (age 16) Willie Roberson (age 16) Charlie Weems (age 16) Eugene Williams (age 13) Brothers Andy (age 19) […] Most of the job opportunities that came his way-- dishwasher, porter, laborer-- Montgomery despised, believing they just were getting in the way of his musical calling. The State Attorney announced that the prosecution was “convinced they were not guilty.” This group was released from prison, except for Powell, who remained incarcerated on charges relating to an altercation with a prison guard. Olen Montgomery. Wright attended school, doing well, in Chattanooga until the sixth grade, when his father died and he quit to help his mother support the family. Norris was first paroled in 1944. The Registry also maintains a more limited database of known exonerations prior to 1989.