[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 14, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H2578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SCOTTSBORO BOYS

  (Mr. BROOKS of Alabama asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BROOKS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, today I applaud the Alabama 
Legislature's Scottsboro Boys Act, which granted posthumous pardons to 
eight African American young men wrongfully accused in Alabama in 1931. 
The Scottsboro Boys case profoundly impacted America's civil rights 
movement and American law.
  In two different landmark decisions, the United States Supreme Court 
ruled that the Constitution requires legal counsel for criminal 
defendants and held that arbitrarily excluding African Americans from 
jury pools was unconstitutional.
  It is never too late to call wrong by its name. As Dr. Martin Luther 
King, Jr., wrote in his ``Letter from Birmingham Jail'':

       Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

  I pray that the families of Olen Montgomery, Haywood Patterson, Ozie 
Powell, Willie Roberson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, and Andy and 
Roy Wright may take comfort in Alabama's full acknowledgement of the 
innocence of these wrongfully accused young men.

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