NAACP Leader DuBois in Washington: 1932
W. E. B. DuBois (center, in suit) at Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity banquet in Washington, D.C. in April 1932. DuBois was a founder and the first leader of the NAACP.
He was editor of the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine when the campaign to free the “Scottsboro Boys” began. The youths were nine African American youths charged with raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. They were all initially convicted and sentenced to death.
The NAACP was initially reluctant to take on an appeal. However, once the communists brought public attention to the youths through mass meetings, demonstrations and telegrams to the judge, prosecutor and elected officials, the NAACP fought bitterly to regain control of the case.
DuBois blasted the Communist Party in a 1931 article, “If the communists want these lads murdered, then their antics of threatening judges and yelling for mass action. . . is calculated to insure this.”
But the tactics freed four of the youths and saved the others from death sentences and established that mass action could effect change for African Americans, although the fight over civil rights strategy and tactics would continue for decades.
The case twice came before the U.S. Supreme Court, which established precedents that states couldn’t exclude African Americans from juries and that defendants had a right to competent defense counsel.
DuBois left the NAACP in 1934 and his views evolved over the years, making a leftward turn in the late 1940s. In 1961, at age 93, he joined the Communist Party. Dubois died in 1963.
For an article on the Scottsboro marches and rallies in Washington, see washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/scottsboro-boys-...
For more images related to the Scottsboro campaign in Washington, see flic.kr/s/aHsjE3vopE
Photo: Addison Scurlock, courtesy of the Archives Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
NAACP Leader DuBois in Washington: 1932
W. E. B. DuBois (center, in suit) at Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity banquet in Washington, D.C. in April 1932. DuBois was a founder and the first leader of the NAACP.
He was editor of the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine when the campaign to free the “Scottsboro Boys” began. The youths were nine African American youths charged with raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. They were all initially convicted and sentenced to death.
The NAACP was initially reluctant to take on an appeal. However, once the communists brought public attention to the youths through mass meetings, demonstrations and telegrams to the judge, prosecutor and elected officials, the NAACP fought bitterly to regain control of the case.
DuBois blasted the Communist Party in a 1931 article, “If the communists want these lads murdered, then their antics of threatening judges and yelling for mass action. . . is calculated to insure this.”
But the tactics freed four of the youths and saved the others from death sentences and established that mass action could effect change for African Americans, although the fight over civil rights strategy and tactics would continue for decades.
The case twice came before the U.S. Supreme Court, which established precedents that states couldn’t exclude African Americans from juries and that defendants had a right to competent defense counsel.
DuBois left the NAACP in 1934 and his views evolved over the years, making a leftward turn in the late 1940s. In 1961, at age 93, he joined the Communist Party. Dubois died in 1963.
For an article on the Scottsboro marches and rallies in Washington, see washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/scottsboro-boys-...
For more images related to the Scottsboro campaign in Washington, see flic.kr/s/aHsjE3vopE
Photo: Addison Scurlock, courtesy of the Archives Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.