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Scottsboro III: How communists exposed Jim Crow courts
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- 21 June 2025 794 hits
This article is Part III of a four-part series on the Scottsboro Boys. In 1931, during the Great Depression, nine young Black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train in Scottsboro, Alabama. However, the U.S. Communist Party (CP) initiated and led a world-wide struggle involving millions of people fighting to prevent their execution and to free the “Scottsboro boys.
This series of articles will analyze the role of the two major defense strategies in this case, the International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the NAACP. We will study the different strategies as they relate to the questions of mass protest, institutional racism, the fight for legal reforms, and the use of the courtroom to raise the level of political consciousness and struggle.
Parts III and IV coincide with our annual summer project. This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Boston’s 1975 Summer Project. That summer, the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played a pivotal role in the struggle against local Nazis and their racist political allies from attacking young Black youth who were being bussed in effort to desegregate, all-white schools in Boston. The movement mobilized working-class youth and community members in an unforgettable, militant struggle against gutter racist capitalism and state-sanctioned violence.
After the second guilty verdict and death sentence for Patterson, the International Labor Defense (ILD) mass campaign escalated. A large march to Washington was planned for May 6-7 along with the presentation of civil rights petitions demanding enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and freedom for the defendants. Again, mass meetings and demonstrations were held. As in 1931, it was not uncommon for these various meetings and demonstrations to be attended by at least one thousand people.
The ILD planned to continue this mass strategy if the case was appealed on two major grounds: unfair trial and exclusion of Black jurors. The first step was a motion for a new trial before Judge Horton. Between April 16, the date of the motion, and June 22, the day of the decision, the ILD mass activity for 1933 was at its peak. This time, however, there was a real effort to link the trial to the issue of non-enforcement of civil rights by the judicial system. This brought the issue of racism to the fore.
ILD broadens struggle without resorting to United Front
The ILD leadership did not propose unity with the leaders of reformist organizations, who were still seen as obstacles to a mass campaign; but they did propose exposing the reformist leaders by inviting the organizations to form united fronts. By 1933, even major Southern newspapers outside Alabama were beginning to admit the defendants were being framed.
All this made for a broader campaign. By June 1933, according to the ILD, 500,000 people had signed petitions for a new trial, and the total number of people attending meetings or demonstrations worldwide since 1931 was well over one million. In addition, at least 150,000 telegrams of protest had been mailed to Governor Miller of Alabama.
The mass campaign in the South grew also. A publicity tour led by ILD lawyer Allan Taub visited 50 Southern churches in four months and spoke at ILD meetings of 1100 in New Orleans and hundreds in Birmingham. A leaflet was issued in April 1933, to Southern white workers calling for Black and white unity and pointing out how the exclusion of Blacks from juries and voting worked to justify exclusion of poor whites.
The climax of the organizing effort was in Washington, D.C. on May 8, 1933, where 4,000 people marched for freedom for the Scottsboro boys and enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Civil rights petitions with 200,000 signatures were presented to Congress. Attempts were made to obtain congressional intervention in the case, which were refused.
ILD takes on the kkk, racist dems, & kkkourts
“Justice” Callahan, who, according to the ILD, had some associations with the KKK, opened as the Judge for the third round of trials in November 1933.
It is important to remember the climate of the period. In 1924, the Democratic Party, in its national convention, after a long and bitter debate, refused to condemn lynching. In 1928, no attempt was made to condemn lynching. Southern congressmen and senators openly endorsed lynching without any fear of reprisals from the national government.
Yet the Communist Party, a small party of no more than 7500 men and women, was able to put the Southern racists on the defensive, to force new trials and eventual freedom for nine impoverished Black people, and to make a “rape case” the great widely discussed “celebrated case” among workers throughout the world.
They were able to do this, first, because of their organization, democratic centralism. Although there was resistance once the party made it a priority. Communists all over the nation were able to organize a massive struggle.
Second, their line was correct. By linking up the fight to save the Scottsboro defendants with the struggle against the Southern ruling class and its allies in Wall Street and Washington, communists won support from both Northern and Southern workers and the freedom of the defendants.
None of this comes through in most accounts of the Scottsboro case. Instead, we are given a liberal judge— Horton— as hero, some Southern redneck spectators as villains, and a condescending if not outright racist view of the defendants. Their parents, who played major roles in the campaign to save their lives, speaking all over Europe and the United States, are totally ignored. Communists are mentioned only here and there.
Building a defense strategy vs. racist kkkourts
The defense courtroom strategy in the third trial was almost the same as in the second. The courtroom circumstances changed, however. Judge Callahan much more openly identified himself with the prosecution. The appellants' brief to the Supreme Court of Alabama lists two separate instances in the Patterson and Norris trials where Callahan interrupted the defense counsel, stopped him from proceeding along a line of questioning, or declared a question illegal or improper. In most of these instances, the State did not even have to make an objection before the court intervened.
In the instructions to the jury, the trial judge made the ridiculous and vicious statement that there is a strong presumption against white women having voluntary intercourse with Black men. He further stated the prosecutor's testimony did not have to be corroborated. He concluded the charge to the jury by “forgetting” to give instructions on how to render an acquittal.
Despite this vitriolic racism, Leibowitz and the ILD generally played within the rules of the game. But in a situation like this the argument that a strong political defense would antagonize the judge and jury is not convincing. A stronger effort to link the case to the organizing done by the ILD in Birmingham and New Orleans could have been attempted.
Look out for Part IV in our July 16th issue, where we explore how the ILD’s new organizing strategies helped shape the Communist Party—and learn what lessons we draw from the fight to save the Scottsboro Boys in the present.
CHICAGO, June 10 – A multiracial group of over a dozen Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends united downtown this evening to inject communist internationalism and antiracism into the ongoing fight against the fascist Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A mass mobilization was called for today to show solidarity with the ongoing militant rebellion of workers in Los Angeles who are resisting open capitalist state terror in the struggle for a better world.
Workers and youth present were eager for our revolutionary energy and analysis, and we distributed 300 bilingual flyers and just as many copies of CHALLENGE newspaper. We led many communist chants in both Spanish and English, while giving speeches that blasted racist bloodsucking capitalism being at the root of deportations, imperialist war, and environmental devastation.
Antiracist uprisings like those were involved in now are necessary and justified responses to a wretched profit system that destroys countless lives every second. But rebellion alone, however bold, will not lead to our liberation as a working class. It’s essential to build a mass international communist PLP of millions of workers and soldiers who can elevate the fight from pitiful reforms to the revolutionary class war that finally creates a borderless communist society.
Workers fight back against fascist deception, attack
Although Los Angeles is being seen as the epicenter of national fightback against fascist deportations, resistance against raids and arrests has been ongoing across the country. Prior to today’s march, in Chicago on June 4th, there was a rapid mobilization to defend immigrant workers against a despicable attack from ICE.
On that day, several immigrant workers connected with a federal program called Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) received text messages ordering them to attend a “surprise check-in” about their legal proceedings. Upon getting to the office, however, at least ten were arrested and detained (Block Club Chicago, 6/9).
Dozens of antiracist fighters, including several PLP members, learned of the attack through rapid response networks and were on the scene promptly trying to de-arrest, document, and give whatever support possible. Upon getting there they squared off with the ICE neo-slave catchers armed with military-grade weapons and gear.
While the liberal politicians running Chicago proudly like to flout the city’s “sanctuary” status and how local kkkops won’t cooperate with ICE, we know they’ll never do anything significant to protect our class. Although it’s President Donald Trump and his faction of white nationalist bosses running the deportation machine today, we can never forget that it has been the racist liberal bosses who built and perfected that machine, from Clinton to Obama to Biden. Capitalism can’t maximize profit without dividing and terrorizing workers – It doesn’t matter who’s in office!
Take the streets, join the Party
It was this class-conscious understanding and anger that we brought with us today to share with the rebellious masses downtown. After realizing that there was no one giving much direction to the rally or march, we gladly took over political leadership.
Chants such as “Democrats, Republicans, All the Same – Racist Terror is the Name of their Game” and “Obreros unidos, jamás serán vencidos!” were picked up with enthusiasm by many others. We called out the kkkops flanking the march for their fundamental role in upholding the capitalist dictatorship, shouting “CPD (Chicago Police Department), KKK, IOF, they’re all the same!”
Some marchers tried to contrast our communist chant of “The workers united, will never be defeated” with the more liberal version “The people united, will never be defeated!” We pointed out that in the history of the working-class movement the term “people” has been used to include nationalist bosses and other exploiters who block the path to communist revolution. We proudly chant “workers” because we know that our class is truly the only progressive force that can bring about an egalitarian world.
At the conclusion of the march in Daley Plaza, a comrade addressed the crowd on our bullhorn attacking capitalism and inviting everyone there to join the Party. Many came up to us to get more literature and give contact information afterwards, and we will be following up with them in the weeks and months of struggle to come.
We need communism ASAP
Participating in recent antiracist struggles is showing that much of the working class is deeply enraged with the status quo of capitalism. Witnessing families being torn apart, as the world burns through imperialist wars and unchecked climate chaos, has our class seeking a real alternative. Let’s work even harder to build this movement and PLP to bring communist revolution on as soon as possible!
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Silencing Eid & calling it inclusion: Fight anti-Muslim racism, build solidarity
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- 21 June 2025 832 hits
BROOKLYN, June 4—The cancellation of not one—but two—student-demanded Eid celebrations at this majority-Black high school is a symptom of deepening racism inside the bosses’ institutions. This suppression unmasks a Black liberal administration using the rhetoric of inclusion (see bottom) to uphold racist divisions in a capitalist society.
In response, the working-class community is learning how to fight for antiracist solidarity under a chilling political climate. This small fightback has opened the doors to deeper political relationships and exposure to communist ideas through CHALLENGE. For many students, this struggle was their first step in questioning capitalist authority as part of an organized collective. Progressive Labor Party makes it clear multiracial and student-worker unity are mortal threats to the threads of this profit system. One way the bedrock for communism grows is through seeds of class struggle and solidarity.
Suppressing working-class unity
In 2025, we are bearing witness to an all-out assault on working-class people—migrants terrorized, kidnapped, and deported; students policed and suspended for minor infractions; healthcare, medicaid, and social security funding attacked; DEI programs gutted; antiracists doxxed and removed for fighting genocide; abortion effectively criminalized; and the equivalent of six atomic bombs dropped on Gaza, and more. The liberal school’s Black woman principal joins in to attack a majority-Black student population for organizing multiracial unity. That’s the political climate we are breathing in.
After the silencing of Eid in April, student organizers gathered to plan their response (see box). Even after multiple attempts—the issue was presented at a union meeting, in which ten teachers were openly supportive another Eid proposal was submitted—the administration stonewalled the effort.
This isn’t about stopping a celebration; it’s about how capitalist institutions deeply fear, and hence suppress, students and staff organizing independently. While the working class has yet to realize their potential power, the bosses shiver at the first sign of unity.
the bosses’ censorship, some students and staff independently organized a henna table, distributed stickers that decried Palestinian genocide, wished Eid Mubarak, and demanded “RESPECT” in four languages. We created informal spaces for Arab and Black students to mingle and build solidarity. These small actions are the seeds of a future communist society, one built on multiracial unity and working-class power.
The alternative to this profit-based system is to fight for a needs-based one, where every-day students and workers like ones at this school are the decision-makers. To see a glimpse of that, many were invited to May Day, the communist holiday. Through struggles like these, CHALLENGE readership increased by nine people.
An annual tradition of unity broken
At this mainly Black school, Eid celebrations without pushback date back to 2019, and students from all backgrounds participated with enthusiasm every time. Eid was a cultural moment of joy, food, and recognition for students who are so often asked to shrink themselves. It was always explicitly about creating a space of multiracial unity in a public school system that fails working-class, migrant, Black, and Brown youth.
So derailing Eid hits different. Students are not only grieving what they see in the news; now they’re being told that even a cultural celebration in their school is too much. It sends the message that certain students don’t fully belong.
Why the obsession to police celebrations? In a system that thrives on dehumanization and disunity, students independently organizing a cultural event is a declaration: we matter and an injustice to one is an injustice to all. Schools, institutions controlled by the ruling class, fear ideas that threaten to challenge this chokehold of capitalist isolation.
Bosses sow chaos, we can sow solidarity
The assault on Eid is no isolated matter. Many see a deeper pattern of canceling or delaying or last-minute changing initiatives that build unity—student events, advisories, clubs, field trips, and so on. The goal, it seems, is disorganization and demoralization. Because divided and disorganized we fall.
One thing is for sure: Black faces in high places don’t serve the working class. This mainly-Black administration clearly fears student organizing, teacher organizing, and family organizing. And what better way to keep us disconnected than by fostering chaos and confusion?
We need a different model rooted in collective organizing by students, families, and education workers. We need student-family-worker unity now—to fight back against anti-Muslim racism, against a dictatorship over school culture, and against the manufactured chaos meant to keep us apart.
And in this model is the seed for communist ideas, for that’s a system based on working-class power. To nurture and sustain any growth, the working class needs to be won to the long-term solution of communism.
Background:
In April, less than five business days before the high school’s planned Eid celebration, the Administration sabotaged it—declaring Eid will be “postponed” because we hadn't done anything for Easter. The postponement was de facto cancellation.
They say: “[W]hy…only have an Eid celebration when there are hundreds of Christians in the school too…If [Student Council] truly represent and respect the whole student body, then everyone can be celebrated.”
We fight to say: This isn’t inclusion—it’s racism. Muslim students matter, and multiracial unity matters. This is a racist attack on students, period.
This student organization has been disciplined in the past for their pro-student activities, so it’s unsurprising the administration attacks one of the few events that unites students.
Students debated the merits of the administration's top-down decision to change Eid. Their responses:
“I’m a Christian…and there are so many celebrations [but] the one day for Muslims after a month of fasting gets looked over? That’s genuinely so frustrating”
“We’re so bummed out!”
“How about we call it Eid-ster?!”
“I don’t know why they’re complaining now”
“I think the fact the the school ISN’T majority Muslim is the biggest reason to have an Eid celebration”
On the surface, the idea of combining Eid and Easter into one “interfaith” event may sound like inclusivity. The logic behind this decision reeks of “All Lives Matter.” It pretends to call for unity, but in reality, attacks student unity.
After the discussion, the students reached a decision: the Eid celebration should stand on its own. The student organization sent a second event proposal to celebrate the Eid in June. This was immediately dismissed in four words: “we already discussed this.”
When another student heard of the original postponement, they were inspired to write an article about it for the school newspaper, which became the basis for conversations with students and co-workers.
Teacher organizers from the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are participating in the national teachers' strike, making inroads into the movement by distributing thousands of solidarity flyers, providing food supplies, and bringing people around the Party.
The National Union of Education Workers (CNTE) launched the teachers' strike and started a sit-in in Mexico City, demanding the repeal of the fascist Peña-AMLO-Sheinbaum Education Reform and the Institute for Social Security Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) Law that governs social security and health care services for federal employees. PLP rejects the bosses’ policies of repression and their violation of labor rights. We call on the entire working class to fight for communist revolution and against the attacks of the bosses' system, fascism, and imperialist war.
The 2007 ISSSTE law, imposed by former President Calderón, repealed the old pension system that guaranteed retirees a defined percentage of their final salary and replaced it with a privately-run system that pays retirees about 30 percent of their final salary.
This new system is used by approximately 85 percent of state workers, including nearly two million teachers. Current President Sheinbaum promised to repeal the 2007 ISSSTE law when she was campaigning. But, like her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), she has failed to respond to the demands of the workers. Capitalist politicians, regardless of whatever party they’re in or promises they make, serve the capitalists and will always put the banks over the needs of the working class. Only communist revolution can create a decent life for workers.
Bosses lie and scheme to steal from workers
The 2007 law put the retirement system under the control of government-selected banks, called AFORES, that collected the pension payments of the workers and invested the money to create profits for themselves. So, while teachers who retire under the new system receive a fraction of what they need to survive, AFORES from March 2024 to February 2025 alone recorded capital gains of over 774 billion pesos, an unprecedented amount for any 12 consecutive months since records began (La Jornada, March 24, 2025). This attack targeted the most precarious needs of the working class, such as the retirement benefits of workers after a lifetime of work, only to favor parasitic financial capital that produces nothing for the benefit of society. AFORES gets rich through profiteering and speculation and has accumulated enormous profits using workers' individual accounts.
By monopolizing worker’s accounts, AFORES uses the worker’s money to conduct big business and extract multimillion-dollar profits, while the pensioners upon retirement will not even receive what they saved. They are given an amount that has been devalued over the years, condemning them to a miserable pension. This behavior of financial capital and the rulers who protect them is not an exception; it's the rule. This is how the anti-working-class capitalist system works. Therefore, we communists tell all workers that the cause of the problem is the capitalist system, and the only root solution is to destroy it and build a new communist system of social equality, where all the wealth produced by the working class is distributed among the working class itself. We must consign all capitalists and their apologists in the current government to the dustbin of history.
This is the AFORES scheme that AMLO and Claudia Sheinbaum promised to cancel and now defend as the most faithful guardians of profiteering capital. This clearly demonstrates whose side they are on, and it is not on the side of the workers and "the people," as they falsely proclaim. All welfare programs represent an insufficient palliative for the great needs of workers, peasants, and students throughout the country. This aid is fleeting and momentary, as it soon ends up in stores and banks, enriching the richest capitalists. In this way, the government policy promotes the domestic market, which allows the capitalist elite to increase their enormous profits and maintain stability in the face of market fluctuations and their changing relations with the imperialists. The underlying problem remains the capitalist system. Those who defend the capitalist system are enemies of the workers. Fighting teachers, must fight for communism!
NYC teachers’ statement of solidarity
We, public school teachers in New York City, send international revolutionary support and solidarity to the teachers in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico who are on strike. We admire your courage and your dedication to your students and communities in the face of continued state repression.
Your fight against the government’s attempts to weaken the union and for better conditions for students and teachers is important—not just in Oaxaca, but everywhere. We take inspiration from your struggle as we fight back against the increased fascist attacks on our own students here in the United States. Same Enemy Same Fight! Workers of the World Unite!
On the morning of June 7th, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) Kentucky joined other local organizations for the 2025 festival of Richmond Pride,where we had many conversations, filling up an entire page of contacts within hours and managing to get out several stacks of CHALLENGE, while exceeding our fundraiser goal by double. It was for a second PLP Pantry, selling our collectively-made bracelets and painted tote bags. Our tote bags had a red hammer crossed with a rainbow color play on the sickle, the colors of which ranged from Palestine to trans in order to show the fight against oppression is the struggle against bosses and class society as the root of racist and sexist gender ideas and divisions.
PL’ers in the tenant struggle and the movement for Palestine brought posters from past struggles to show interconnectedness. “Rednecks for Palestine” and “Smash Housing 4 Profit! PLP.” Club leaders had red “WV Mine Wars museum” bandanas around their necks signifying the coal wars as a multiracial working class uprising. Our club supplied free contraceptives, pregnancy tests, Plan B and Narcan and invited these new comrades to the next tenant’s meeting to get more involvement in mass struggle
Some of us split from the tabling booth to drown out counter protesters with syncing bluetooth speakers. There was even a religious misleader who kept preaching on a mic with his own camera crew about how marginalized workers there needed to repent, clearly trying to sabotage pride. One portable speaker was no match, but just like the forces within our class, several combined together and our music overpowered this religious “scripture.” Comrades were blocking the cameras and playing the copyright music into them, using the Bosses’ own laws against them
There was a solidarity moment after we drove them out. PL’ers held up a Party banner and stood side by side with LGBTQ workers. The fight for an antiracist and antisexist world continues!
