Sheila Washington Dies at 61; Helped Exonerate Scottsboro Boys
She fought for decades to get their names cleared from an egregious
injustice in the Jim Crow South, and created a museum in their honor.
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Sheila Washington in an undated photo at the spot where the Scottsboro
Boys were arrested. She recognized that their story was an important
milestone in the annals of civil rights, and was determined that it be
remembered. “The story dies if we don’t tell it,” she said.
Sheila Washington in an undated photo at the spot where the Scottsboro
Boys were arrested. She recognized that their story was an important
milestone in the annals of civil rights, and was determined that it be
remembered. “The story dies if we don’t tell it,” she
said.Credit...William H. Hampton
Katharine Q. Seelye <https://www.nytimes.com/by/katharine-q-seelye>
ByKatharine Q. Seelye <https://www.nytimes.com/by/katharine-q-seelye>
* NYT, Feb. 26, 2021
Sheila Washington was cleaning her parents’ room at their home in
Scottsboro, Ala., in the 1970s when she discovered a paperback book
hidden in a pillowcase underneath the bed.
The book, “Scottsboro Boy” (1950), was a harrowing memoir byHaywood
Patterson <https://www.famous-trials.com/scottsboroboys/1560-patterson>,
written with the journalist Earl Conrad, about Mr. Patterson’s
experience as one of nine Black youths who were falsely accused of
raping two white women in 1931 in a notorious miscarriage of justice in
the Jim Crow South, one that set off an international outcry at the time.
Ms. Washington, then 17, started to read the book, but her stepfather,
who owned it, took it away, saying it was too horrific for children. In
time, she did read it, and the story seared her soul, she said. She
vowed to do something about it.
“I said, ‘One day, when I get older, I’m going to find a place and honor
the Scottsboro Boys and put this book on a table and burn a candle in
their memory,’” shetold NPR in 2020
<https://www.npr.org/2021/02/04/964172261/remembering-sheila-washington-who-told-the-story-of-the-scottsboro-boys>.
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It took her decades, but she accomplished her goal, and more. She became
the catalyst behind the creation of the Scottsboro Boys Museum and
Cultural Center and then won something few thought possible — not only
posthumous pardons for the defendants but also full exonerations for the
history books.
Ms. Washington was 61 when she died on Jan. 29 at a hospital in
Huntsville. Loretta Tolliver, a cousin and board member of the museum,
said the cause was a heart attack.
Ms. Washington saw thatthe story of the Scottsboro Boys
<https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/scottsboro-boys#:~:text=On%20March%2025%2C%201931%2C%20nine,freight%20train%20in%20northern%20Alabama.>had
helped fuel the civil rights movement decades later, and she was
determined that it be recognized.
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ImageDeputy Sheriff Charles McComb and defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz
in 1935 with seven of the Scottsboro defendants: Roy Wright, Olen
Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, Charles
Weems, and Andy Wright.
Deputy Sheriff Charles McComb and defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz in
1935 with seven of the Scottsboro defendants: Roy Wright, Olen
Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, Charles
Weems, and Andy Wright. Credit...Associated Press
The nine young men, all under 20, were riding a Southern Railroad
freight train in March 1931, most of them looking for work in the depths
of the Depression and most not knowing one another, when they got into a
brawl with some white hoboes who had hopped the same train.
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The police arrested the Black youths on a minor charge. But when
deputies questioned two white women who had been on the train, the women
accused the boys of raping them. Accounts differ, but the women were
facing their own charges of vagrancy and illegal sexual activity
stemming from an unrelated incident and apparently thought that by
accusing the boys they could avoid being arrested themselves.
The defendants were all tried swiftly in separate trials in Scottsboro,
a small city on the banks of Guntersville Lake in northeastern Alabama,
and attracted widespread attention; by her account, Harper Lee later
drew on the case as inspiration for “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
All-white juries in Scottsboro convicted each of the youths, and all but
the youngest of the nine were sentenced to death. After appeals, the
U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions, which led to more
appeals, trials and retrials. Along the way, one of the white women,Ruby
Bates, recanted her
story,<https://www.nytimes.com/1933/04/07/archives/girl-recants-story-of-negroes-attack-ruby-bates-makes-dramatic.html>but
the defendants remained behind bars.
The cases led to two landmark Supreme Court civil rights rulings — one
that opened the door to allowing African Americans to serve on juries,
the other ensuring that defendants had the right to adequate legal
representation.
The sentences were eventually reduced or dropped entirely, and the
defendants were freed; most of them had been incarcerated on and off for
several years. But they were not declared innocent, and their names were
not cleared.
Ms. Washington and others spent years planning how to honor them, and
decided that the best way to tell their story would be through a museum.
But they faced ardent objections.
“A lot of people didn’t want Scottsboro to be remembered for this
tragedy, in both the Black and white communities but especially in the
white,” Ms. Tolliver said in an interview. “It was pulling the scab off
the wound.”
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Opponents included a former Scottsboro mayor, who told Ms. Washington to
stop her planning.
“He said, ‘Wait til some of the older people die out,’” Ms. Tolliver
said. “And she said, ‘Then we die out. The story dies if we don’t tell it.’”
Over time, enough people came on board, among them descendants of some
who had played pivotal roles in the case, and the museum began to take
shape, in a former church near the railway tracks. It recreated the
courtroom where the trials had taken place.
People began bringing artifacts and memorabilia for the exhibits,
including the chair from which witnesses had testified. Given pride of
place was a glass case that contained the book that had inspired Ms.
Washington.
The museum (now undergoing renovations), opened in 2010 and was placed
onthe U.S. Civil Rights Trail.
<https://civilrightstrail.com/attraction/scottsboro-boys-museum/>
Image
Ms. Washington was a driving force behind establishing the Scottsboro
Boys Museum and Cultural Center. Housed in a former church, it is
located near the railway tracks traveled by the Scottsboro Boys’ train,
and it recreates the courtroom where the original trial took place.
Ms. Washington was a driving force behind establishing the Scottsboro
Boys Museum and Cultural Center. Housed in a former church, it is
located near the railway tracks traveled by the Scottsboro Boys’ train,
and it recreates the courtroom where the original trial took
place.Credit...Associated Press
Ms. Washington’s next goal was to clear the names of the Scottsboro
Boys, the last of whom, Clarence Norris,died in 1989
<https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/26/obituaries/clarence-norris-the-last-survivor-of-scottsboro-boys-dies-at-76.html>at
76. The museum became the headquarters from which she spearheaded that
campaign.
With the help of a legal team from the University of Alabama and others,
she wanted to go beyond winning pardons, which forgive an offense; she
sought exonerations, which are declarations of innocence.
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Ms. Washington was on the phone constantly with legislators, lawyers,
community leaders and academics, and kept in contact with all the key
players.
“She very strategically involved people,” Ellen Griffith Spears, an
American studies scholar at the University of Alabama, who was part of
the campaign, said in a phone interview.
“And she did it against considerable local opposition and no small
amount of pushback from people in Scottsboro who didn’t want to bring up
the past,” she added. “Everyone remained skeptical except Sheila. She
just kept moving forward.”
In 2013, the Alabama Legislature voted unanimously to pave the way for
the state parole board to pardon the Scottsboro defendants and for the
governor to exonerate them. Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, signedthe
measures into law in 2013, in a ceremony at the museum.
<https://www.al.com/breaking/2013/04/post_1132.html>
“This has been a long time coming,” Mr. Bentley said at the time. “But
it’s never too late to do the right thing.”
More than 80 years after their arrests, those whose names were cleared
were Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie
Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charles Weems and
Roy Wright.
Image
Ms. Washington in 2010 at the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural
Center, the year it opened.
Ms. Washington in 2010 at the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural
Center, the year it opened. Credit...Associated Press
Sheila Edwonna Branford was born on Jan. 27, 1960, in Scottsboro to
Eugene Branford and Betty (Johnson) Branford; her parents soon divorced.
Her mother, who became a minister, married James Nicholson, an elder of
their church.
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After graduating from Scottsboro High School in 1978, she worked in
Scottsboro City Hall for 22 years, having stints as secretary to the
mayor. She also worked for the Scottsboro Parks and Recreation
Department, where she created a youth center; it is now a boys and girls
club and a hub of activity with after-school programs.
She married Ferry Washington, a former policeman and a factory worker;
the marriage ended in divorce. Ms. Washington is survived by a son,
Marques; a daughter, Emily Dowdy; four grandchildren; one
great-granddaughter; and six sisters.
Ms. Washington continued to bring school groups and others to the
museum, educating new generations about the Scottsboro Boys. And last
summer she backed a group that wanted to stage a Black Lives Matter
demonstration in reaction tothe police killing last year of George Floyd
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html>in
Minnesota.
“Sheila said, ‘We need to do this,’” Dr. Spears recalled of the
march,which was peaceful.
<http://jcsentinel.com/feature_story/article_df6a612a-ab24-11ea-a5e3-cb118c741234.html>“She
said, ‘This is Scottsboro, and it’s really important that we have this
march here.’ She understood the significance of Scottsboro’s history in
a very deep way.
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