During the course of four trials, most of the youths were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries, although witnesses provided weak and contradictory testimonies. The case is now widely regarded (including in Scottsboro) as one of the worst travesties of justice perpetrated against blacks in the post-Reconstruction South. Only the first trials were held in Scottsboro. Of the original nine young black defendants (some of them minors at the time of arrest), accused of gang raping two fellow hobo white women on a freight train, eight were quickly convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries in trials occurring in a mob atmosphere in Scottsboro.
During the course of four trials, most of the youths were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries, although witnesses provided weak and contradictory testimonies. The case is now widely regarded (including in Scottsboro) as one of the worst travesties of justice perpetrated against blacks in the post-Reconstruction South. Only the first trials were held in Scottsboro. Of the original nine young black defendants (some of them minors at the time of arrest), accused of gang raping two fellow hobo white women on a freight train, eight were quickly convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries in trials occurring in a mob atmosphere in Scottsboro.