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. 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. 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." His mother died when he was four, and only one other of his seven siblings survived childhood. Roberson's six years in jail were difficult. Olen was born in Monroe, Georgia in 1913. Support The National Registry of Exonerations —, DNA and Non-DNA Exonerations by You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Those five - Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams and Roy Wright - were ineligible for pardons because their cases were dropped, the … Montgomery,_Olen_C1931.jpg ‎ (83 × 112 pixels, file size: 3 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons . 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. Scottsboro Boys × Check-out the new Famous Trials website at ... Olen Montgomery. 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. After his release, Roberson lived in New York City where he found steady work. Montgomery bounced back and forth between New York City and Georgia, drinking heavily, and rarely holding a job for more than a few months. The deputy hit Powell on his head. 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. The case involved nine black young men from Tennessee and Georgia, and two young white women from Alabama. Court is called to order, and the Boys are provided with a drunk, incompetent public After his parents divorced, he was raised by his mother, Viola, who supported the family on only $1.50 a week. Norris was the second of eleven children born to Georgia sharecroppers. 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. The primary evidence against the defendants was the testimony of Price and Bates. Three of them were paroled in 1943 and 1944, and the fourth escaped from prison in the 1940s. Charles Weems, at age nineteen was the oldest of the Scottsboro Boys when he was arrested in March, 1931. 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." Montgomery was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937. 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 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. we missed, Tell Several weeks after their arrest, in early April 1931, the nine were divided into four groups for trial. Wright moved to New York, living for times in Albany and New York City. He was the brother of Andy Wright, who was also arrested upon disembarking the Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, 1931. 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. In February of 1936, after testifying at Haywood Patterson's fourth trial, Powell was loaded into a car with Clarence Norris and Roy Wright. The cause of the Scottsboro Boys was quickly backed by the International Labor Defense, a group affiliated with the Communist party, and the NAACP. 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. On board with them were approximately twenty black teenage boys and young men who were also hitching rides on the train. 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). He moved to New York in violation of his parole, and was returned to prison. (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. He was the only one of the Scottsboro Boys known to be alive by that time. 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. 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. 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. Throughout the several trials in which he testified, Roberson stuck to his story. 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. 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. He wrote that "It seems as though I've been in here for century an century.". He dropped out of school in the fifth grade to help his mother work. Prison life was also difficult for Weems. 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. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were transported by police and interviewed. In July 1937, the charges against Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell and Eugene Williams (as well as Roy Wright) were finally dismissed. The Scottsboro Trials were among the most infamous episodes of legal injustice in the Jim Crow South. (BACK). (BACK). but unlike most black men Olen was literate and even wrote books when he was in prison. 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. 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. us about an exoneration that we may have missed, Correct an error or add information about an exoneration 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. After his release he told Samuel Liebowitz that he hoped to land a job someday in a jazz orchestra. the charges against Olen Montgomery and Willie Roberson dropped on the grounds that the state no longer believes the men to be guilty. Behind them, left to right, are: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems and Roy Wright. He moved to back to Georgia. 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 got a job shoveling coal in Cleveland for three years, then moved to New York City. He was also said to be mistrustful, something of a loner, and to have a mean streak. 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. A successful full-scale campaign was mounted, and in 1976 Norris received his pardon from Governor George Wallace. He was very nearsighted and blind in one eye from a cataract. Wright went over a year without getting fresh air. (BACK). 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. 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." Unemployed in 1956, Norris visited Samuel Liebowitz who arranged a job for him as a dishwasher. 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. Powell and the deputy got into an argument. 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. He kept a clean prison record and was paroled in 1943. 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. The cases again went back to the U.S. Supreme Court. Another incident brought on a beating with a leather strap. 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 … Price testified that Roberson held her legs apart while other boys yelled "pour it to her." ", The state dropped charges against Williams in July, 1937, citing his youth at the time of the alleged incident. 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. A 1937 Life Magazine article described Williams as "a sullen, shifty mulatto" who "tries to impress interviewers with his piety. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was accused of rape by Mayella Ewell. 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. Please enable scripts and reload this page. At trial, Williams admitted that he fought with white boys on the train, but denied having seen Price or Bates until after his arrest. Age 17. Olen Montgomery was the accused, he was a poor black man from Monroe, Georgia. Finally, even prosecutors came to believe him, and Roberson was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937. 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. August-December 31: Agitation for the freedom of the five in prison continues. Charles WeemsClarence NorrisAndy WrightOzie PowellOlen MontgomeryEugene WilliamsWillie RobersonRoy WrightHaywood Patterson. In 1959, after returning from an extended stay at sea, Wright became convinced that his wife had been unfaithful. 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 left Kilby prison for good on June 6, 1950, the last Scottsboro Boy to be freed. 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. He died of Alzheimer's disease on January 23, 1989. information about the Registry, Perjury or False Accusation, Inadequate Legal Defense. He attended school only to second grade, then at age seven began working in the cotton fields. Weems was age nineteen and the oldest of the Scottsboro boys he was from Atlanta. It was founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. After his release in 1943, Weems moved back to Atlanta where he married and took a job in a laundry. (BACK). He was never tried again, but he remained in jail until the charges against him were dropped in 1937. He took a job, which he held for two years, driving a grocery delivery truck. Wright shot and killed his wife, then killed himself. Also in January 1932, accuser Ruby Bates wrote a letter in which she denied that she had been raped by the Scottsboro Boys.