RACES: Get It Done Quick

In April 1931, Herbert Hoover was just back from his first and last visit as President to the Virgin Islands ("a poorhouse" to him). Same month, eight young Negroes were sentenced to death at Scottsboro. Ala. for raping two white female hoboes in a Southern Ry. freight gondola (TIME, June 22, 1931).

In November 1932, the North was being treated to an orgy of self-righteousness by a semi-autobiographical film called / Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang. Same month, the U. S. Supreme Court set aside the Scottsboro verdicts on the...

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