The Scottsboro Boys were a group of nine black teenagers accused of rape in the 1930s South. The blatant injustice given to them during their trial lead to several legal reforms. Watch as Emory’s Associate Professor of African American Studies, Carol Anderson, discusses what happened to these boys both during and after their trial.

Reginald Gammon: Scottsboro Boys (2002), mezzo tint on paper, 12″ x 10″ – Collect This Fine Art

Reginald Gammon (1921 – 2005), Philadelphia born painter and printmaker Reginald Gammon chooses subject matter that often deals with dramatic moments in history  and unlikely heroes. He was a child of the Great Depression who learned to draw at an early  age. Acknowledging his debt to the social realists of the 1930’s, Gammon began to formulate his style as a figurative and social artistin the early 1940’s. Gammon attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, and later the Stella Elkins Tyler School of Fine Art at Temple University. Disillusioned with the lack of an artist  synergy in Philadelphia, Gammon moved to New York in the 1950’s, where he began to associate with Harlem Renaissance artists like Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Hale A. Woodruff and Richard Mayhew and became one of the founding members of Spiral. In the print above, Gammon depicts the famous  Scottsboro trial of the 1930’s in which a group of young black  men was accused of raping  a white woman. A young  Jewish attorney  by the name of Leibovitz came to their defense and they were found not guilty of the crime. Gammon’s work can be found  in the collections of the Schomburg Center  for Research in Black Culture, New York City; Fisk Uni versity in Nashville, TN; the New  York Public  Library; and the Hampton University Museum in Hampton, VA. He is now a retired Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts and Humanities at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI.

The Scottsboro Boys Trials Way before the Civil Rights Movement 1931 to 1937

 Join us for this important showing of Reggie’s work.