Montgomery Bus Boycott and Scottsboro trials

a. Rosa Parks- Parks was ordered to enter at the back of the bus and as she was heading to the back of the bus, the bus driver drove off without her. She never wanted to to board a bus driven by James Blake after then but on December 1 1955, she was sitting in the front-most row for black people but was later asked by the bus driver to move back to create a row for the whites, only to realize that the bus driver is James Blake but she refused to move despite the fact that bus drivers are given the authority to assign seats. She was prosecuted and fined but she appealed and her arrest triggered a series of events. She was known as one of the pioneers of civil rights movement.

Claudette Colvin- She was fifteen years old when she refused to give in her seat to a white man but later was found that she was pregnant.

Scottsboro trials- On Mrach 25, 1931, a freight train was stopped in Paint Rock, a tiny community in Northern Alabama, and nine young African American men who had been riding the rails were arrested. As two white women - one underage - descended from the freight cars, they accused the men of raping them on the train. Within a month the first man was found guilty and sentenced to death. There followed a series sensational trials, condemning the other men solely on the testimony of the older woman, a known prostitute, who was attempting to avoid prosecution under the Mann Act, prohibiting taking a minor across state for lines for immoral purposes, like prostitution.

b. Both trials are related as they involved white females accusing innocent black men of raping. In TKAM, Mayella Ewell accused Tom Robinson of attempted rape when she herself seduced Tom while in the Scottsboro trials, the prostitutes accused the blacks of rape because she wanted to escape prosecution for immoral acts.

c. The trials are similar in the time they took place which is in the 1930s and they both took place in Alabama. The trial began with the charge of rape made by white women against African American men and the poor white status of the accusers was a critical issue. Both have a central figure in which a central figure of the Scottsboro trials was a heroic judge, a member of Alabama Bar who overturned a guilty jury verdict against African American men while in TKAM, the central figure is Atticus, lawyer, legislator and member of the Alabama Bar, who defends an African American man. Both judges went against public sentiments in trying to protect the rights of the African American defendants. Both jury ignored evidence that was evident that the African American men were innocent. Both also include the attitudes of the Southern women and poor whites that complicated the trials.