Haywood Patterson

Who was Haywood Patterson?

Haywood Patterson was one of the original Scottsboro Boys, born in Elberton, Georgia in 1913. By the time he was fourteen, he was riding the rails, looking for work. He was 18 when he hopped on an Alabama-bound freight train with his friends Eugene Williams, Roy Wright, and Andy Wright. Patterson admitted that he was one of the black teenagers who fought with white hoboes, who had tried to force them off the train, but the charge against him was rape, a capital punishment at the time in Alabama. The reason he was charged with rape was because two white hoboes also on the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, accused nine black teenagers on the train of rape to try to avoid charges pressed against them.

After the first trial, in which the nine Scottsboro defendants were tried in groups, Patterson became the point man in the subsequent trials. In March 1933 he was retried before Judge James Horton of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, with Samuel Leibowitz as lead defense attorney. That trial ended in a conviction and death sentence, but the judge set aside the conviction. The next trial, before Judge William Callahan, resulted in another death sentence. A confusing series of filing deadlines was missed and Patterson lost his right to appeal. However, in their ruling on Norris v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court recognized that the two cases were interrelated and strongly suggested that the lower courts look into the Patterson case again.