About this item
This chilling and harrowing account tells the story of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African-American teenagers who, when riding the rails during the Great Depression, found their lives destroyed after two white women falsely accused them of rape. Award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner explains how it took more than eighty years for their wrongful convictions to be overturned.In 1931, nine teenagers were arrested as they traveled on a train through Scottsboro, Alabama. The youngest was thirteen, and all had been hoping to find something better at the end of their journey. But they never arrived. Instead, two white women falsely accused them of rape. The effects were catastrophic for the young men, who came to be known as the Scottsboro Boys. Being accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow south almost certainly meant death, either by a lynch mob or the electric chair.
About the Author
Larry Dane Brimner is the author of 200 books for young readers. His books have received many awards, including the Carter G. Woodson Award, the Robert F. Sibert Honor Book Award, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award Honor, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Book Award Honor, and the Eureka! Gold and Silver state awards in California, among other accolades. He also had a one-year stint writing children's programming for PBS. Born in Florida, he taught at the high school and university levels in California for twenty years and now makes his home in both San Diego, California, and Tucson, Arizona. In addition to high school and university, he taught at the primary, elementary, and junior high school levels. When he is not writing, he enjoys mountain biking, cooking, working with mosaic tile, wogging (a combination of walking and jogging) , and playing hide-and-seek with his schnauzer, Kubric. Larry enjoys visiting between 30 and 60 schools every year, where he motivates young people to read and write. His school programs are a blend of stand-up comedy, storytelling, and pro-literacy, pro-writing--he believes that everyone has a story. After one visit to Sandy, Utah, a parent wrote him to say that her young son now kept a special notebook because he was an author and had some stories to write. That's exactly the outcome he hopes to achieve, as he strives to impress upon children that their own lives are rich material for story--whether something fanciful, something exaggerated, or something factual. You can learn more about him at www.brimner.com.
