Source A A demonstration calling for the release of the Scottsboro Boys, including Ruby Bates and the mothers of some of the accused
1 Why was it that, in the Deep South in the 1930s, white men being beaten in a fight with African Americans ‘always meant trouble’?
The freight train was rattling its way slowly through the countryside of Tennessee in the southern USA. It was March 1931, and the train had pulled out of Chattanooga, heading westwards. This was at the height of the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was still 2 years away. Unemployed men often took to hoboing — jumping onto freight trains for a free, though illegal, ride in search of work in another city or state.
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