Alabama grants pardons in 1931 Scottsboro Boys rape case

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

BY VERNA GATES
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama Thu Nov 21, 2013 11:19am EST

(Reuters) - Alabama granted posthumous pardons on Thursday to three of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of black teenagers whose fight against false charges that they raped two white women in 1931 helped spur the modern civil rights movement.

The three men exonerated by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles - Charles Weems, Andy Wright and Haywood Patterson - were among nine youths accused of gang-raping the two women aboard a freight train in Alabama, and convicted by all-white juries in the town of Scottsboro.

The group's legal journey to fight the convictions and win new trials sparked protests over racial injustice and two landmark rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Today, we were able to undo a black eye that has been held over Alabama for many years," said Eddie Cook, the board's assistant executive director.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/21/us-usa-alabama-scottsboro-idUSBRE9AK0X720131121

[lostincalifornia]

1. no, that black eye will remain as a memory to the racist policies that existed then, and still do

[deafskeptic]

2. I was thinking the same thing. n/t

[Mnemosyne]

3. K&R, because it still matters. nt

[JackRiddler]

4. You gotta be kidding me but... good!

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. Well, that's timely. At this rate, Alabama will join the 21st Century soon.

[Ken Burch]

17. They have to join the 20th Century first. n/t.

[bamacrat]

26. We recently got the ability to have microbreweries, so we have made it past prohibition!

There is a growing progressive movement here, especially in Huntsville and parts of Birmingham. But, until we shed the blanket of religion we will always follow and never lead.

[Pterodactyl]

6. It's a sad fact that Alabama was run by Democrats back then.

[Archae]

7. Who promptly jumped ship (those still alive that is,) to the GOP in 1964.

Just look at Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

[Pterodactyl]

8. No. The Gov was a Dem from 1874 to 1987. And no Rep senator until 1981.

And the 1964 election was an exception. They went back to voting for Wallace in 68.

[JI7]

9. do you know the history of the south, the dixiecrats ?

these people are all republicans now.

i know republicans love to try to claim those dixiecrats were part of the same democratic party as exists now but that wasn't true.

that's why they ran on their own segregationist tickets .

you see the same turn in the republican party with people like lincoln chafee leaving.

[Pterodactyl]

10. Yes, I know the history. Do you?

George Wallace was governor from '71 to '79 as a Democrat, leaving the chain unbroken since Reconstruction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_Alabama

[JI7]

11. and he was a dixiecrat , who do you think the "reagan democrats" were in 1980 ?

[Pterodactyl]

12. Funny that Wallace was a Dem gove from 63 to 67 and then from 71 to 79 & 83 to 87.

The guy was a Dem. We need to accept that. I know you are having trouble with it.

[JI7]

13. the dem party is today is mostly made

Up of minorities. While the republican party is made up of mostly white racists which include those who were registered dem before.

One needs to accept that it wasn't minorities who supported segregationand slavery.

It's fucking hilarious to see racist republicans blame Obama and other minorities for slavery because they rant to ignore history.

[olddad56]

15. the southern democrats of yesterday are the southern Republicans of today.

Maybe that is why the people of the south vote republican, Maybe they just haven't picked up on the change and they are voting against democrats of today because they still seem them as being who they were years ago. They obviously don't see the republican politicians for who they are.

[JI7]

16. black people in the south vote Democratic, it's the racist whites who mostly vote republican

and that's because the republican party embraced racism as part of their platform and strategy.

[Pterodactyl]

19. So it was black people who kept voting for George Wallace? Well I'll be!

[JI7]

20. black people did support george wallace during earlier times before he became a national

segregationist figure.

but the same racist whites who support wallace and other racist dems are the ones who turned into today's republicans.

learning history and using critical thinking can be helpful when trying to understand things.

[Pterodactyl]

22. So the racists Ds turned R after Wallace left office in 87? Just want make sure I get your timeline.

[JI7]

23. they turned at different times, you probably think black people became fully equal

as soon as civil rights laws were passed.

[Pterodactyl]

24. I believe black people were fully equal from the moment of their creation.

It took a long time for the law and society to catch up. But I'm sure you disagree.

[JI7]

25. of course i disagree, i don't deal in bs, black people are not fully equal now

neither are women , gays and many other minorities.

[Pterodactyl]

27. Wow. So, are you one of those folks who thinks they are only worth 3/5 of a person?

[JI7]

28. I'm a minority myself

I don't deal in feel good b.s.. reality is things are still not equal and i sure don't blame black people for racism.

[kwassa]

30. You need to get to a history class. A good one.

You didn't understand a single historical reference in this thread.

Learn what a Dixiecrat is. Learn about Strom Thurmond running as a Dixiecrat for President in 1948. Learn about the Democratic party's stance on civil rights was over the long haul. The Democratic Party came late, but they did come. The Dixiecrats, the segregationists, became Republicans with the Southern Strategy of Reagan.

The Republican party, the party of Lincoln, and of freeing the slaves, abandoned African Americans and reconstruction in the 1870s. The only American party that truly supported civil rights in the first half of the 20th century was the American Communist Party, which paid for the legal defense of the Scottsboro boys.

[Pterodactyl]

31. So you agree that the Dems were racists during that period?

[kwassa]

32. No, I don't. Some Democrats were racist during that period.

"Some" is an important distinction to make.

[Pterodactyl]

33. Yeah, but the others were OK with benefitting from racist votes.

[kwassa]

34. How did they benefit from racist votes?

Most were strictly locally elected officials.

[Pterodactyl]

35. The governors and senators and reps to to Congress. Like Wallace, the multiple-elected governor.

And Kennedy and LBJ, of course.

[kwassa]

37. No. FDR benefited from racist Southern Democrats.

Kennedy, and most of all Johnson, alienated them completely. Johnson, a Texan, brought about the great civil rights legislation of the 60s.

Which is why they all became Republicans when cultivated by Nixon and Reagan. The Southern Strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party strategy of gaining political support for certain candidates in the Southern United States by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3][4][5]

Though the "Solid South" had been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery before the American Civil War and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixiecrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation.

The strategy was first adopted under future Republican President Richard Nixon and Republican Senator Barry Goldwater[6][7] in the late 1960s.[8] The strategy was successful in winning 5 formerly Confederate states in both the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections. It contributed to the electoral realignment of some Southern states to the Republican Party, but at the expense of losing more than 90 percent of black voters to the Democratic Party. As the twentieth century came to a close, the Republican Party began trying to appeal again to black voters, though with little success.[8]

In 2005, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman formally apologized to the NAACP for ignoring the black vote and exploiting racial conflicts.[9][10]

[Pterodactyl]

38. So why did they keep electing Wallace as a Dem governor after 1968?

[kwassa]

39. This is before they became Republicans, and this is local to Alabama, as well.

Wallace would qualify as a Dixiecrat.

Wallace also ran for President that year for a third party, not Democratic, the American Independent Party.

The result of that?

In Wallace's 1998 obituary, The Huntsville Times political editor John Anderson summarized the impact from the 1968 campaign: "His startling appeal to millions of alienated white voters was not lost on Richard Nixon and other GOP strategists. First Nixon, then Ronald Reagan, and finally George Herbert Walker Bush successfully adopted toned-down versions of Wallace's anti-busing, anti-federal government platform to pry low- and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition."[15] Dan Carter, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta added: "George Wallace laid the foundation for the dominance of the Republican Party in American society through the manipulation of racial and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the master teacher, and Richard Nixon and the Republican leadership that followed were his students."[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace

[Pterodactyl]

40. What about presidential, senatorial and congressional elections?

[El_Johns]

41. Support him how?

[Ken Burch]

18. We all know what his party registration was.

That doesn't make the Democratic Party of today culpable in the actions of those monsters. And it doesn't let the party the ideological descendants of said monsters joined as a bloc after 1964 off the hook.

So stop acting like you're the only person here who's ever read a history book.

[Art_from_Ark]

21. By his 1983-87 stint, Wallace had changed his stance

"Wallace's final term as governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of black appointments to state positions.[54] In his fourth term, Wallace became the first governor to appoint two black members in the same cabinet, a number that has been equaled but never surpassed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace

[Blue_Tires]

14. Dixiecrats of 1931 have little to do with the party of today...

Ironically, there were a few New England republicans of past eras whose positions on social issues were to the left of Castro...

[Ash_F]

29. Much time has passed. The philosophy and make-up of both parties has changed. /nt

[Pterodactyl]

36. Except for Robert Byrd. He was always a racist.

But he's dead now, so there's that.