PRIDE OF THE SOUTH

Yesterday morning the jury of the Scottsboro case broke a ten-hour dead-lock to return a verdict of guilty against Haywood Patterson, a negro accused of attacking, in company with eight others, two white girls bumming their way South on a freight train. This is the second time that Patterson has been handed a death sentence for the alleged crime, a new trial having been ordered by the Supreme Court last November. It is not impossible that a third trial will be held, if the defense's appeal is successful. It is, however, doubtful if the verdict will be any different the next time.

The almost universal protest directed against Alabaman jurisdiction has been based on a number of beliefs and sympathies, but the one outstanding sentiment has been that the Scottsboro boys have not been granted fair trials. As in the Mooney case, it is a question of procedure and not of innocence. It has been evident to all those who have given even a slight inspection to the affair that in the trials at Scottaboro and Docatur the jurors were subject to an overwhelming prejudicial influence, which rendered their decisions far from impartial. At times the prisoners had to be protected by the National Guard from the mobs of Southern gentlemen bent on indulging themselves in a lynching or burning party. When it was bruited about Dixle that Negroes were on the stand for the rape of white women, and were being defended by a Jewish lawyer who belonged to the International Labor Defense, a Communist-affiliated organization, it was plain enough which way the verdict was due to fall. It was a foregone conclusion that the attempt to get at least one negro on the panel would fail.

In the face of these three phobias against the colored race, the Semites, and the Communists, it is unreasonable to expect anything good to come out of Alabama. Barring the very improbable Constitutional change necessary to remove the administration of capital crimes from local areas to Federal control, the Scottsboro boys can at the most hope for a commutation of sentence from electrocution of sentence from electrocution to life imprisonment. Until the prejudices permeating Southern thought are liquidated it will continue to be obvious that the eye-bandage Justice wears to insure an impartial weighing of the scales is made of transparent cheese-cloth.