Last Three Scottsboro Boys Get Pardon
Eighty-two years and eight months after they were arrested and framed for raping two white women on board a freight train heading to Memphis, justice has finally been served for all of the Scottsboro Nine, though none are alive to enjoy the bittersweet moment. (The men’s story is told in the Kander and Ebb musical, “The Scottsboro Boys.”) Alabama’s parole board granted posthumous pardons on Thursday for the three remaining members of the group who had yet to have their convictions rescinded – finally laying to rest one of the great miscarriages of the civil rights era. The pardons were issued for Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems and Andy Wright, all of whom were initially sentenced to death and who served long prison sentences having been found guilty by all-white juries on trumped-up charges.
