Questions about deaths from lynching and continued slavery into the 1900s

[jeffrey_X]

I just finished reading a book (Scottsborough Boy) about about the Scottsborough Boys case back in Alabama during the 30's and 40's.

Here's a quick recap for those that don't know the case:

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Hoboeing was a common pastime in the Depression year of 1931. For some, riding freights was an appealing adventure compared to the drudgery and dreariness of their daily lives. Others hopped rail cars to move from one fruitless job search to the next. Two dozen or so mainly male--and mainly young--whites and blacks rode the Southern Railroad's Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, 1931. Among them were four black Chattanooga teenagers hoping to investigate a rumor of government jobs in Memphis hauling logs on the river and five other black teens from various parts of Georgia. Four young whites, two males and two females dressed in overalls, also rode the train, returning to Huntsville from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of Chattanooga.

Soon after the train crossed the Alabama border, a white youth walked across the top of a tank car. He stepped on the hand of a black youth named Haywood Patterson, who was hanging on to its side. Patterson had friends aboard the train. A stone-throwing fight erupted between white youths and a larger group of black youths. Eventually, the blacks succeeded in forcing all but one of the members of the white gang off the train. Patterson pulled the one remaining white youth, Orville Gilley, back onto the train after it had accelerated to a life-endangering speed. Some of the whites forced off the train went to the stationmaster in Stevenson to report what they described as an assault by a gang of blacks. The stationmaster wired ahead. A posse in Paint Rock, Alabama stopped the train. Dozens of men with guns rushed at the train as it ground to a halt. The armed men rounded up every black youth they could find. Nine captured blacks, soon to be called "The Scottsboro Boys," were tied together with plow line, loaded on a flatback truck, and taken to a jail in Scottsboro.
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Basically, the guys were accused of rape by a fabricated story and lies from the two white girls. Just their word was enough to land them in prison. Later, one of the girls recanted her story and admitted it was all a lie. This however was not enough to stop Haywood Patterson and 3 of the othter boys from heading to prison.

The book is written about the life of Haywood Patterson and most of it details his 18 or so years in the Alabama prison system. After reading the book and shaking my head at the horrific and outrageous details, I have some questions and comments that struck me as profound.

According to Patterson, many of the blacks in the prison system were innocent of any crimes (big surprise here), yet were put away based on hearsay and testimony from any white with a pulse. Much of his time was spent on the prison farms, cotton mills and canning plants. So here you've got innocent blacks doing free labor for the state of Alabama, for profit. This is slavery.

The other issue I wondered about was the number of deaths and murders in the prison system. I know we hear the number of people that were lynched during the Jim Crow era, but I wonder if any research or investigations have ever been done on the south's prison systems (specifically Alabama and Mississippi)??? Patterson was wittness to dozens of murders at 2 or 3 different prisons, some were guards killing inmates, others were inmates killing inmates. The bottom line is that innocent people were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit and ended up dead or insane. If they did not get killed or maimed in prison, they were destroyed as human beings. They were beat down and dehumanized...the details in the book had me shaking my head for days.

[Ironcandle]

1. That's a terrible story,

but it was probably more common than not. One of the good things that came from integration is the fact that there are ALOT of black officers on the street and in the prison system. I don't have any numbers, but black law enforcement officers here in Atlanta are the norm rather than the exception. Maybe this fact can prevent such horrbible things like that from happening anymore.