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It's all in the reporting
Topic Started: Mar 3 2014, 10:40 PM (60 Views)
Quasimodo


Remember this hypothetical account, if at some time attempts are
made to revise history and blame the victims of a crime instead of the perpetrators...



Quote:
 

The Scottsboro Observer
(no URL)

THEY WERE NO ANGELS

Scottsboro boys do not deserve our sympathy


(snip)

They were caught riding the rails. Decent people buy a ticket when they want to go somewhere. To do otherwise is theft.

Consider Haywood Patterson. He dropped out of third grade. He had ridden the rails since he was fourteen. He had already been arrested once for this previously, in 1931. Obviously he hadn't learned his lesson.

The Scottsboro incident began when a carfull of blacks and whites got into a brawl, which began when someone stepped on Patterson's hand as he was clinging to the car. Now, maybe Patterson could have overlooked this incident, but his past (and future) history shows he had a combative and aggressive nature. A fight ensued--which resulted in the blacks throwing the whites out of the car. (The white women remained behind.)

Does this sort of brawl happen in ordinary passenger cars?

The white youths then reported their thrashing to the police. The police, investigating, found the white women--who, to avoid being charged with associating lewdly with black men, then claimed to have been raped.

Again, had the Scottsboro boys been riding as they should, with proper tickets, they would never have associated with such low-lifes as those who accused them. Nor would there have been a fight.

That Patterson was indeed a brawler can be shown by what happened after he got out of prison and resided in Michigan. There, he got into another brawl, this time in a bar, and killed a man. For this he was sentenced to prison again, for manslaughter.

The Scottsboro boys may not have been guilty of rape; but who can deny that they brought their troubles on themselves, or that overmuch sympathy for them is misplaced?

As yet they have not apologized for any of their misbehavior. They have not offered to recompense the train company for their unbought tickets. They have not so much as admitted any responsibility for the original fight, nor apologized--as gentlemen would have--for fighting at all. They acted as rowdy misbehaving toughs who thought they were entitled to exploit the railroad--the fruit of other men's toil--and use it for their own.

In short, they were bullies. In can hardly be doubted that they may at least have bullied the two girls with them afterward in the car. They were black and the women were white and after a fight with whites it would have been almost natural for them to disrespect the women. Something happened in that car; perhaps not a rape, but something nearly as threatening.

Picture the two women--having seen a vicious fight, and all the whites expelled, they must have been fearful for their own safety. Did the Scottsboro boys do anything to reassure them?

Perhaps the two women were not angels, either. They led hard lives, as working poor. If they took friendships where they would find them, are they to be condemned forever for this, or made the objects of disrespect? Are they not the victims of a cruel situtation, and are they to be criticized because they were not born into wealth? Were they fair game on this account to be terrorized?

All in all, if the Scottsboro boys did not commit the rape, they must have done nearly everything else. And they ought not to be the objects of sympathy, nor turned into martyrs.
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