Lee may have gotten the inspiration for Tom Robinson's case from the Scottsboro Trials of 1931, which were a result of the ideals and laws discussed in the preceding sections. In the Scottsboro case, two white women accused nine black men of raping them as they traveled from Tennessee to Alabama. Both of the women, the nine black men, and two white men hopped a freight car and headed south. (During the Great Depression, jobs were scarce, and the unemployed frequently rode from place to place in empty boxcars in search of work. Although unemployment among blacks was much higher — and in spite of the Jim Crow laws — blacks and whites ultimately competed for the same jobs, a fact that whites greatly resented.)
During the train ride the two groups of men fought, and the white men were forced off the train. When the rest of the hobos arrived in Alabama, they were arrested for vagrancy. Both women were of questionable background; one was a known prostitute. They used the ideal of Southern womanhood as their "Get Out of Jail Free Card" and accused the nine African Americans of rape.
Although a doctor's examination revealed no signs of forced intercourse or any sort of struggle, eight of the nine men were sentenced to death. The Supreme Court ordered a second trial for the Scottsboro "boys," during which one of the women recanted her testimony, denying that she or the other woman had been raped. Nonetheless, the eight men were convicted a second time. The appeals process continued for several years. Some of the men escaped prison, others were paroled. The last man was released from prison in 1950; one of the men received a pardon in 1976.
Because of deep-rooted anti-black sentiment, two white women with skeletons in their own closets were able to deprive eight men of several years of their lives.
