3

The boys were indicted for rape by a special grand jury, and the trials set for April 6, one week off.

### III

April 6 was "horse-swapping day," fair-day in Scottsboro, as Judge Hawkins knew when he set the date. "The Jackson County Sentinel" came out with its front page in the lynch spirit. Before the Court opened there were 10,000 people in this 1,500 town. Drunk many of them, openly carrying arms, milling round the court-house square. Militia circled the court-house. Every man who enters the court-house was searched for arms.

The nine boys were dragged, chained, into the court-room, plainly showing marks of terrific beatings. The boys were penniless, illiterate, and Negroes. Not a single friend or relative was in the court-room. There was not a Negro on the jury... The boys averaged fifteen years, the oldest twenty, one thirteen.

The boys told a straight story on the stand. They were on their way to Memphis to find work - their families were starving. They had nothing to do with

4

the girls. Only one of the boys had even seen them.
Their "defence" attorney, of Chattanooga, urged the
boys to plead guilty so as to get the "mercy" of
life imprisonment. They refuse.

Seven white boys from the train, who supposedly
saw the rape, were in the court-room. Only one was
called, briefly, to the stand. As for the girls, Ruby
Bates had no idea who had attacked her, but Victoria
Price, did the identifying for them both.

The defence attorney did not make a plea for his
clients. The first jury - in the case of Charlie
Weems, 20, and Clarence Norris, 19 - retired to the sound
of excited mob-hubbub outside the court windows.
(Was this a fair and impartial jury, free from bias
and prejudice, free, as the law promises, from coercion
and intimidation?)

When the Norris-Weems jury came in with its verdict,
the jury for Haywood Patterson, 18, was recessed in an
adjoining room. Through an open transom, they hear
the verdict, "Guilty," followed by applause in the
court-room, wild cheering and a sudden triumphant burst

5

of band music outside. They brought in their verdict, "Guilty."

The same evening five more boys were tried. The next morning the verdict was in; "Guilty." Death for Andy Wright, 18, Eugene Williams, 13, Willie Roberson, 17, Olin Montgomery, 17, Ozie Powell, 16. One trial remained - Roy Wright, 14. The prosecutor asked for life imprisonment. Eleven jurors hold out for the chair. There is a mis-trial.

By April 9 - three days - eight boys were sentenced to death in the electric chair. The ninth was to wait until a new jury tried him.

July 11, 1931, was the date set for the electrocution. The boys were put into a death cell in Kilby Prison, Birmingham, in actual sight of the electric chair, to await electrocution.

## IV

The Scottsboro boys did not die on July 11. The International Labor Defense entered the case, engaged defence, headed by General Chamlee, and began to fight for an appeal. All over the United States it

6

called protest meetings, circulated petitions, held demonstrations.

The appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court reversed the sentence of Eugene Williams, on the ground that he was a juvenile. But, though Chief Justice Anderson stated that the boys "did not get the fair and impartial trial required and contemplated by our Constitution," the death sentences of seven boys were affirmed. Execution was set for May 13, 1932.

But the Scottsboro boys did not die on May 13. The International Labor Defence took the cases up to the United States Supreme Court. There it succeeded in winning a victory - a Supreme Court review of the seven death sentences. The hearing is set for October.

The fight to save these nine boys goes on. The National Committee for the Defence of Political Prisoners has from the beginning cooperated with the International Labor Defence in its efforts to rescue the boys. At this moment funds are imperatively needed for court and legal expenses, and for crucial investigations in Alabama for new evidence. Money is also needed to get new trials for the two youngest boys, and for their proper legal defence.

7

This Committee appeals to all lovers of legal
justice and to all men and women of imagination and
humanity to interest themselves actively in this case
and to join with the thousands of lawyers, writers,
artists, professional men and women, workers who are
protesting against this shocking judicial crime.

TELEPHONE, RIVERSIDE 2287.
STATION, RAVENSCOURT PARK 31 MINUTES.

26th

RIVER COURT,
HAMMERSMITH MALL,
W.6.

Dear Mabel Luhan

I've just finished reading your book, the first volume, which I shall send back to Harcourt Brace after New Year's Day. I've kept it a long time, because I've been awfully busy and had little leisure for reading. May I have the next volume? But don't send it me till March, as I've got to go away in February, I don't quite know where.

It seems an awful pity you can't publish it. Yet I suppose you can't. It gives the most amazingly vivid, and not at all to me at least - rather shocking, picture of the break-up of nineteenth century individualism. You convince one all the time that it really was like that, and then one stops and realises that there must, after it, have to be war and revolution to clear it up and tear it away. It's like Rome, I think, and under all that luxury there must have been terrible cruelties going on that you just didn't know anything about. It was two worlds then - now at least the words know about one another. You make the whole spiritual content of it so clear, you give the details which are what one needs; you show this madness of individualism on the world; it's marvellous social history and after reading it I shall never see a picture or piece of furniture of the period without realising, as I never did before, what it's meaning really was.

I wonder how different America was from England? You fitted in to Paris, but Paris is scarcely Europe. It seems all so strange, so fantastic, so far from anything I have ever imagined in the comparative present - more, perhaps, like pre-revolution Russia. My childhood was, I suppose, fifteen years later, but did fifteen years make all that difference? I come by origin from the small landed gentry, in Scotland, and by feeling I suppose I belong to the professional University people. I was certainly brought up in an individualist habit of mind, but I don't remember ever having thought of success in your terms, or rather in the Buffalo terms and I don't remember ever having your sense of unhappiness, of searching, the "finde siecle" feeling, I take it. Anyhow, thankyou very much for letting me read this.

One sees, after this book, why you feel as you do about politics. I do wish you could go to Russia, though! Real politics, real socialism, is so anti-individual, or rather it sets the individual free of himself so that he can just be without thinking about it or bothering about it.

copied

May 6th

Dear Mabel Dodge Luhan

It is nice of you to send me your book - especially as it seems so much realer now that I know a little about it. Re-reading it, I'm still astonished at the kind of picture of society it gives. Do tell me some time what the people you're writing about say of their portraits! I'm glad you've had the courage to publish it, you deserve well of the world for that. Thankyou, too, for the Scottsboro' cuttings. God, what a bloody business it all is! Here, the communist paper, the Daily Worker, has written about it, and so has the Labour paper, but the others hardly mention it.

It looks as if the crash might come pretty soon; one tries to nerve oneself up to it. The people on top are tightening the screw everywhere. Three communists were sentenced heavily last month - they were defended by a very eminent lawyer, the man with whom my husband shares chambers; he's a Labour candidate. There are always rows. Tomorrow is the joint May Day demonstration, and I'm going down to Birmingham (my husband's constituency is there) to walk in the procession. I hope there'll be a row, but I'm afraid not. I'm fetching my big boy over from his school, which is very sympathetic. He's thirteen now, tall-er than I am, much stronger, a good scientist, and very kind and thoughtful. He's very handsome too, dark and curly-haired. It's funny having anyone so big. But I hope he may survive a revolution.

Sometimes I wish I could get out of it all, to somewhere peaceful and sunny. But one can't streak. I've finished a big modern novel. If, as seems possible, we get a fascist regime over here, I expect I shall be shot for it - or kicked out. If the latter, I shall come over and visit you! It's annoying that one won't be alive in a hundred years to see the outcome of it all.

CARRADALE HOUSE,

Jan 9th CARRADALE, CAMPBELTOWN, ARGYLL.

TELEPHONE: 234.

Dear Mabel,

How nice to have word of you again - and
that delicious smell I remember so well! We
sold the London house (which was anyway a bit
shaken by bombing) and Dick (who is in Parlia-
ment) has a small flat in the Temple - though
the children all manage to crowd in and sleep
on the floor. And I live here; in fact I spent
most of the war here, farming. It has been
fairly tough - I did everything except horse
ploughing - and I'm tired out now. And also
I'm on the County Council, various other public
jobs, including the panel of sixteen people who
will advise the government about the Highlands.
I know the hell of a lot about fishing, forestry
and small scale agriculture. Tell Tony I've
had to knife, gut and skin my own deer - and
of course cook it; I can cast a plash net;
and I can fell a tree decently.

Most of the children have been up for New
Year - all demobbed now. I've two charming
small grandchildren too. On New Year's Eve we
danced inot the morning, square and long dances n
mostly, with accordeon, fiddle, an three people
playing the bagpipes. I've written one book all
this time which should be out soon. But at least
I've grown a fair amount of food, and that means
something serious here.

Goodness knows whether I shall ever be able
to go to the USA again. One feels very Europ-
ean now, and not frightfully keen on the Americ-
an way of life as it looks at present. Yet
that's only a phase I expeet.

Zita, who was with me at Taos, is married to
another member of Parliament, Crossman, a left
winger; I see her in London when I go south.

Do give my greetings to anyone who remembers
me.

P.T.0

CARRADALE HOUSE,
CARRADALE, ARGYLL.

June 8th

TELEPHONE 34.

Dear Mabel

How awfully nice of you to send me th t book! I had seen
it at a friend's house, and thought rather enviously that I
almost had a right to it - I remembered seeing those kinds of
faces so well - and I wished I could have a copy. And then,
next week, your parcel came. I think a lot of them are faces
to be proud of, and some are very beautiful. The text is
interesting too. Thankyou!

I'm in the mid le of being a land-owner at the moment,
and the hell of a nuisance it is. We got involved into buying
the tail-end of an estate on the west coast - much against my
better judgment, for I knew much more than the rest of the
family what responsibilities it would involve. There was an
oldish, rather derelict house, which we have made habitable,
a large and very lovely garden, and various tag e-nds of woods
and rabbit warren and cliffs. The Forestry Commission - a
Government thing - have taken over most of the land, but they-
have left me the souls of the inhabitants to deal with! Of
course it's grand for the children, for there is nothing to
stop them wandering off indefinitely, and there are deer and
wild goats, and all kinds of birds - one of my boys is mad
about birds, and goes off photographing them and their nests.
It's close to the sea, too, and there's a tidal island with an
old vitrefied fort on it. There will be good fishing, though
so far Dick has only caught the little loch trout. Our neigh-
bours are fishermen, mostly, and feeling pretty bitter about
having to throw away the best of their catches so as to keep
the prices up.

It all means a lot extra to do, and whenever I try and get
some work done someone turns up with a domestic conundrum of
some kind. At the moment I'm in the middle of a play. I'm
working in collaboration, which I enjoy far more than working
by myself - but very few people will collaborate properly; it
means give as well as take, and men, at least, won't do that!
However, "ewis Gielgud, with whom I do plays, was pretty badly
wounded during the war, and that's made him gentle. Besides
we quarrelled so much when we were children that we don't now!
We've done two acts of a play on early Christians, a hope to
do the third when I get back to London next month. It's rather
exciting.

I've got a little room across the garden in London now, and

we worked there; I have got the picture of the Indian
dance over the fireplace; it's a nice picture to have when
one's working. This Scottish house is largely being dec-
-rated by the boys; all three turn out to be able to paint!
Neither of the girls can - but the eldest will probably
write. The youngest is still content to be charming! It's
rather exciting about the youngest boy, who is ten. He
is really something of a genius, I think, but, apart from
paitning, he just eats up knowledge of any kind, and is
prepared to tackle anything. He is also sweet-tempered and
quite tough - did a good climb to get to a peregrine falcon's
nest the other day - so I feel I'm lucky. If only he doesn't
get bombs dropped on him.

It's been a nervy year from that point of view. Our
present government is awful; but we can't get rid of it.
Everyone is frightened, but not frightened enough to do any-
-thing effe tive. But we've just realised that being an island
doesn't mean what it used.

My book of political thoery doesn't seem as if it was
going to be published in America. The difficulty is, it isn't
orthodox from any point of view. That has been bad for it
here; it has only sold five hundred, which is frightfully
bad. But of course the orthodox communists don't like it, any
more than the orthodox of any other party.

Zita has married again and seems to be very happy. But I
don't see as much of her!

Now it has stopped raining and I must go out and pick
gooseberries to bottle.

Waltz
TELEPHONE, RIVERSIDE 2287,
STATION, RAVENSCOURT PARK 31 MINUTES.

Dec 13th

Dear Mabel

I am in the middle of reading your book, or rather near
the end. I find it fascinating and I love having it, and I
felt immensely grown-up and placee when I found myself suddenly
in it! So queer too to find people like Reed who are legendary
hero figures, and Lippman, whom I always respect as a "grown-up"
being childish and writing rather bad verse, not bad for under-
-graduates, but not hero-size. And how absolutely bloody you
were, not really caring, not living outside yourself with a
changed focus, not KIND. My god I do think kindness is more
important than any single thing else. The greatest of these
is charity: damned right. How did you change into Mabel who
wrote Winter in Taos, which now I lend to anyone who is ill
and unhappy and wants the feeling of kindness? - perhaps in
the next volume. I wonder if you could be as bloody now? I
doubt it. But - No, I don't know. You were ripping to me
and Zita, anyway.

Zita is getting divorced; I wish she wouldn't; I think
she's probably changing for the worse - her new chap is a fine
young thing, and extremely intelligent, but I don't believe he's
kind, and I want kindness for her. I don't believe any good ever
comes of cruelty and conflict; it's not creative, not in per-
sonal relationships, anyway. Still, there it is.

I'm feeling like hell tonight, and writing to you, asking
for Kindness back. The best of the young men are going to Spain,
including one whose death would matter to English Poetry as Keats
death mattered. Thank goodness it hasn't occured to my 17 year
old yet, but if it goes on - ? My step-nephew ds out, and my
brother JBS Haldane goes on Monday to organise anti-gas defence
for Madrid. He isn't happy unless he's in danger though. I wish
I could see him before he goes, but think it's unlikely because
of my sister-in-law. I think I've muddled and destroyed all my
relationships with men, beginning with mine with him; there were
just the two of us and we loved one another violently, and when
he got married I tried to be so good about it. Oh hell. I'm
never sure if I've muddled things with Dick or not: I've been
desperately cross with him lately, especially because I've not
been able to start a baby and it was the one thing I wanted,
stupidly enough. Three days ago he went into a nursing home to
get his tonsils out and I felt just as if they were mine and was
absolutely miserable and extremely affectionate, and now he's

had them out and I am frightfully cross with him for being so
well! But it's this edgy feeling all over Europe; one can't
settle; I believe I could be a really great writer, but not
as things are - and it's annoying to feel the potentialities
and not to be able to express them. But I can't possible run
away and leave the children and all one's friends. I have
finished a philosophy book, and it's extremely good in parts,
and could be very good indeed but I haven't the patience to
sit back and finish it properly, to concentrate on it. And
some of it's all wrong and it doesn't hang together. And now
the holidays are coming and I shan't have any time at all.

Clare Leighton (whose work as a wood engraver you probably
know) has just rung up. Her husband, Brailsford, the writer,
wants to go to Spain, and she doesn't feel justified in trying
to dissuade him, and I can't make up my mind whether she shoulc.
All this is spoiling her work too. I am feeling like hell; I
want to talk to someone, but everyone I know seems to be out of
away and I've got a cold. M... lovely 8 year old came back from
school crying - and he's usually such a tough - and said to me:
"Do you think Franco can win?" He says they all at school talk
about it, and all are for the Government. I said to him that he
must remember that lots of nice, well-meaning people thought the
Spanish Government were awful because they were socialists, and
he couldn't see it, he couldn't see that anyone could think soc-
ialism wrong. And goodness knows I haven't propagated him;
it's in the air. Only two are at home now; I read them a good
deal of poetry, for my own sake partly, and the 6 year old goes
about chanting Tyger, tyger, burning bright, and 8 says that's all
wrong because tigers don't burn and it should be blending not
burning.

We have had all this fuss about the poor King and his girl
friend. It shows how the non-conformist conscience and the
Catholicism between them, run things. I'd like to sweep England
with No Popery. I hate it most because it's so opposed to the
real thing. I'm not sure I'm not a Christian, myself. Whatever
that is.

I still have that pi ce of sage bruhh you sent me. It must be
all white in Taos. And also in my native Scotland. Hzve you ever
seen Scotland?

It was odd in your book, the way you realised what money was
doing with and for you. It's nasty magic stuff. I+, makes most

TELEPHONE: RIVERSIDE 2287.
STATION: RAVENSCOURT PARK 31 MINUTES.

people want to eat one. I do a fair amount of giving parties
for these left wingers who don't get an awful lot of parties,
and they like them, but a lot of them hate one really for
having them - and that though I've been cutting sandwiches and
arranging sweets and all, myself. We've got more money than most
of the gang but also more children and we both give away a lot.
I try not to go over £40 a year on clothes and shoes and things
myself, but I don't want the children to feel stinted though I
do want them to grow up on simple standards. I keep on bothering
about this * perhaps I've written about it before. We had a party
for some of the unemployed marchers who came to London; I enjoyed
that because some of them were Scots and we danced a reel set,
and then they sang, and they did love having good coffee instead
of coffee essence - I had thought of having coffee essence myself
on the grounds that they wouldn't know the difference, but
thank goodness I didn't!

I've been speaking abit and doing various odd jobs of writing.
I want a holiday awfully. I'd arranged a week-end off and then
Denny, the big one, said he could have two days off beofre his
scholarship exma, and those were the two days. I shan't get one
now till February; then I shall go and lecture at Dartington -
do you know the Elmhirsts, by the way? They're embarrassed with
riches. The son is said to be awfully nice, and red. I was in
Cambridge speaking to undergraduates and they all said so. They
had little photographs of Prof Cornford's boy who is out in
Spain, carried next the heart. It's all so bloody like 1914.
"Honour has come back like a king to earth!" I am trying to
collect money for Spanish Medical Aid and all that. Stafford
Cripps is grand; he's a fine man, and a Christian in my senze.
But one can't be in politics and remain decent or a good artist.
And yet one's got to be. When I find myself having a meal with
non Socialists, which happens occasionally, I always find it
rather fun - and if it's a meal out, I have what I like instead
of what's cheapest! - and then gradually it begins to be un-
comfortable, and then, fairly soon, I can't stand it. I see a
fair amount of Americans, journalists mostly and L.I.D. boys;
I got awfully pro-American last year. You know about the
sharecroppers' co-operative, I expect.

Nov 7th

RIVER COURT,
HAMMERSMITH MALL,
W. 6.

Dear Mabel

How awfully nice of you to send me this other Indian
picture. They are so clean and clear-cut and far off,
like something on one's childhood, unbothered in the same
way, too. And I do like these pre-Greek patterns on the
pots. I am taking them all down to my small girl's school
to show the children, who are doing a lot of pottery
themselves. Thankyou very much!

I am going for the first time in my life to have "a
room of my own"; it is being built at the bottom of the
garden, and the Indian pictures will go there.

A few days ago, I met Mary (can't remember her surname,
who lives in Richmond). She asked me to give you her love
and tell you she is quite well now, and that even the
glimpse of Taos was good for her. She looked pretty well,
and quite lovely, but I don't feel that she's very happy.
I don't suppose she can be, but none of us are in the world
as it is. However, I think one's a bit weller and happier
if one makes efforts to alter that world.

I'm just finishing a book on the moral basis of Poli-
tics; I am alarmed to find that it is hellishly stiff
reading, but I think it's got to be. It's no use being
easy and graceful and lucid as Bertrand Russell, for in-
stance, is. I don't altogether like me own conclusions,
but I don't think they are incorrect, so I must accept
them. And of course I'm doing a good deal of practical
work, one kind and another.

The children are well, Denny, the big one, leaving
school at the end of next term, as he wants to have some
experience in an engineering works before going to Cam-
bridge. He has a fine brain and I respect him, I feel
it's more worth having children than writing books. If
only they don't get measles or something, Christmas should
be quite fun. I love Christmas trees and things!

I'm sending you a book with pictures by a very great
friend of mine, Agnes Miller Parker. I do particularly
wonder what Tony will think of them. If he cares to read
it, do let me know. Agnes is awfully good with animals
and she can smell as few civilised people can. (I can