Yeah, sure: Trump, Scottsboro Boys have a lot in common

Aug. 31—The Santa Fe school board stirred division and invited derision by entertaining a badly timed proposal to outlaw the Fiesta Court from select history classes.

Board members could learn about the importance of teaching painful history from none other than reformed politician Donald Trump.

In what surely must be a selfless act to enlighten America's schoolchildren, Trump is comparing himself to the Scottsboro Boys.

His reference to defendants in a 92-year-old criminal case has Americans rushing to Google and poring over history books. What a special guy Trump must be to highlight a pivotal case of the Civil Rights Movement in his time of trouble.

Though Trump no doubt is altruistic, his defense lawyers cited the Scottsboro case, Powell v. Alabama, as reason to delay one of the former president's criminal trials until 2026.

The Powell case centered on nine Black teenagers who were charged on March 30, 1931, with raping two white women on a freight train as it rumbled toward the Alabama town of Scottsboro.

Angry white Alabamians assembled with the intent of abducting the Scottsboro Boys from jail and lynching them. The governor called in the National Guard to hold off the mob.

But, as Trump's legal giants observed, no one stopped prosecutors and a judge from rushing the accused to trial.

Within 10 days of their indictments, eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white, all-male juries.

A judge declared a mistrial in the case of the youngest defendant, 13-year-old Roy Wright, after jurors voted 11-1 to convict and execute the lad.

With his keen insight, Trump sees similarities most people missed when comparing his case to that of the Scottsboro Boys.

Some will quibble by pointing out Trump is a rich white guy, and the Scottsboro case involved impoverished Black kids fighting for their lives in a time of runaway racism.

The jaded in our midst also will call Trump a hypocrite for claiming he's the victim of a rushed prosecution.

As a real estate developer in 1989, Trump bought full-page newspaper advertisements calling for reinstitution of the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers who were charged with raping a female jogger in New York's Central Park.

The youths were wrongly convicted. DNA evidence in 2002 pinpointed the real rapist.

But should those horrifying details detract from Trump's remarkable transformation? As a criminal defendant at age 77, he learned it's not fair to condemn teenagers to death without knowing the facts of a case.

Instead of buying advertisements filled with venom toward defendants awaiting trial, Trump now advocates for patience and reason in court pleadings.

True, many find it difficult to believe Trump identifies with downtrodden Black kids when he's on the golf course of a resort. But being booked on criminal charges has been known to soften hardheaded con artists.

In the Scottsboro case Trump embraces, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the nine teenagers were denied sufficient time to meet with counsel to prepare their defense.

"To do that is not to proceed promptly in the calm spirit of regulated justice but to go forward with the haste of the mob," the justices decided.

Trump's lawyers seized on the mention of a mob. They portray the former president as the victim of just such a posse, though its members wear pinstripe suits and black robes.

Overly skeptical Americans will still find fault with Trump's analysis.

They say Trump, defeated in his bid for reelection as president, incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. After an attempt to overthrow the government through thuggery, how can Trump claim a mob is after him?

Trump's lawyers say it's simple enough. The Scottsboro Boys couldn't get a decent investigation or fair trials because of the color of their skin. Poor, intrepid Trump says he can't hold off prosecutors who are tools of President Joe Biden.

The Scottsboro Boys eventually got a dedicated lawyer in Samuel Leibowitz of New York. He worked on their case without pay for six years.

Leibowitz impeached the testimony of the two women who said the Scottsboro Boys raped them. One of the women, Ruby Bates, recanted her story in 1933. The other stood accused of perjury by a judge.

At one point, Alabama Judge James E. Horton wrote "absolutely no evidence" existed to prove any of the Scottsboro Boys guilty. Nonetheless, the legal trials of the most of the Scottsboro Boys dragged for years.

Leibowitz said the women lied when they told authorities they were raped. He contended the women were prostitutes crossing state lines, and they leveled false allegations against the Black kids to protect themselves from being charged under the Mann Act.

One of the Scottsboro Boys, Clarence Norris, served 15 years in prison, including five on death row.

Norris had a modified version of Leibowitz's allegation about the women. Norris wrote in his autobiography, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys, the two accusers feared retribution for being spotted talking to Black kids.

Not long ago, the Scottsboro Boys were just the sort of defendants Trump demonized. Now this remarkable man has changed, his eyes opened by history.

The development gives Trump's backers and bashers one piece of common ground. Most can agree his turnabout is an unbelievable story.

Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.