The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography

I came across this book quite by accident, and because I still remembered how much I appreciated and was engrossed by Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, by Dan T. Carter, when I read it in December of 1969, I at once decided to read this book. This is a very different kind of book, and tells the story of the Scottsboro Boys from an entirely different angle, but it is just as compelling a book as is Carter's masterpiece. Clarenc Norris was one of the nine Scottsboro boys and since he only went to the second grade, his contribution to this autobiography was via tape recorder. Wisely, the collaborator with Norris did not fancy him up, and we get to know Norris as he was: burdened by the ways of the South toward the Negro in the 1920s and early 1930s, with no high regard for some traditional moral behavior, never hestitating to lie or steal or indulge his weaknesses, but nevertheless tremendously wronged by an almost unbelievably racist environment. There can be no doubt that the Scottsboro boys were innocent of rape, that they were accused because they got in a fight with some white boys and threw them off the train all were hitching a ride on. One stands in amazement at the mentality that would let them be condemned to death because they angered some white persons by failing to conform to the desired pattern of subservience. One mourns to learn that the white Southern judge who was conscientious enough to set aside a guilty verdict was at the next election rewarded by being voted out of office. The book does not rely on only Norris' account of what happened, but includes excerpts from the trial transcripts almost unbelievable to one used to fair courtroom procedure. And the life of Norris and his vicissitudes (many attributable to his own behavior) after he got out of prison is a fascinating window into a life most of us are unacquainted with, which I found just as attention-holding as the account of the horrendous prison situations which faced him. And the ending of the book, with a meeting with Governor George Wallace, is one to relish after so much that went before which makes one cringe. This is a compelling book which you will never regret taking the time to read. It was in our libray and is probably in yours, I hope.