Haywood Patterson: Scottsboro Boy

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: In what ways was the Scottsboro boys case similar to the events surrounding the 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, detailed in Walter F. White’s “The Eruption of Tulsa”?
• 2.: In what sense was the Scottsboro boys case a product of the Great Depression? What impact did economics have on the events surrounding the case?
• 3.: The Scottsboro boys case had at least one important judicial outcome that improved the criminal justice system for African Americans. What was that outcome, and why was it important?
• 4.: Scottsboro Boy is a firsthand account of one man’s encounter with a criminal justice system that was stacked against him. In what sense was his account a twentieth-century version of a slave narrative published in the nineteenth century? Consider the document in connection with, for example, The Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself or Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup.
• 5.: Scottsboro Boy was published on the eve of the civil rights movement in the United States. In what ways might the publication of this book have helped fuel the civil rights movement?