The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-02-18
Hearing Today
On ScOttsbOrO
Continued from Page y

hearing for the Daily Worker,
leave his brief case outside tht
court room. The day before, several
persons, including myself, had
walked unchallenged into the court
room, and sat listening to the pro-
ceedinss, with brief-cases in our
hands.
Justice James Clark McReynolds,
Of Kentucky, who wrote the dis
senting opinion in the first Su-
preme Court reversal of the Scots
boro sentences, in which he said
that the contention that the boys
were deprived of fair trial because
Of the systematic exclusion of Ne
groes from the grand and petit
1uries that indicted and tried them
was without merit" was conspic-
uously absent from the bench when
the cases came on last Friday. He
sat with his eight confreres from
noon until two o'clock, but when
the court convened again at two
thirty, with the case coming on
forty minutes later, he failed to
appear.
The argument he claimed was
without merit" is the main con-
Stitutional question which is being
raised in the present appeals.
Court Packed
The attorneys and others fam
liar with the ways of the United
States Supreme Court were aston
ished, during this hearing, to see
eight persons standing at the back
of the court, after all seats had
been filled-mostly. with sympath-
izers of the Scottsboro boys, about
half of them Negroes-for not only
Is the court almost complete empty
of spectators, with the exception of
small parties of tourists who sit
for a few minutes in bored and
awed silence, but none of them
could remember on any previous
occasion session when anyone had
been permitted to enter after the
seats were filled. Dozens of people
stood in line outside, last Friday,
waiting for the slim chance that
one of the spectators would go out,
and leave room for one at a time
to enter.
The analysis of the Communist
Party and the I. L. D., that this
case symbolizes the whole struggle
of the Negro people for civil rights
of which they are violently de-
prived, and for national liberation,
was shown to be correct by the very
attitude of the justices of the court.
the nine pillars of reaction, toward
the arguments presented.
Justice Butler is fighting like
he'll" an attorney sitting beside me
whispered as Pierce Butler, Presi-
dent Hoovers Attorney General
fired question after question at At
torneys Leibowitz and Pollak as they
piled up proof of the illegal and
systematic exclusion of Negroes from
Alabama juries, and of the fraudu-
lent attempt to rob the Scottsboro
boys of appeal by forging the names
of Negroes on the Jackson County
! jury roll.
Lieutenant Governor Knights
foxy, beet-red, smirking face broke
out into a beaning grin, and he
looked as though he were about to
repeat his famous Decatur hand
clapping trick when Butler fired a
question at Leibowitz, interrupting
his argument to ask whether this
was not question of determination
of fact" The Supreme Court, ac-
cording to its theory, is only sup
posed to pass on questions of con-
stitutional law.
Knight stopped his nail-chewing
and his nervous twitching of his
hands in front of his face for an
other big smile with which he ia
vored the whole bench from one end
to another, when Butler interrupted
Pollak to ask a question in regard
to the discretion Of the jury COM
missioners. Pollak easily answered