Mother Ada Wright and the International Campaign to Free the Scottsboro Boys, 1931–1934

Abstract

Mother Ada Wright and the International Campaign to Free the Scottsboro Boys, 1931–1934 Get access James A. Miller, James A. Miller James A. Miller is a professor of English and American Studies and director of Africana Studies at George Washington University. His publications include Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith (1998), Approaches to Teaching Wright's “Native Son” (editor, 1997), and numerous articles and reviews on African-American literature and culture. A literary historian with a longstanding interest in the relationship between American writers and social and political movements, Miller wrote his dissertation on Richard Wright. This article is an outgrowth of his research on African-American cultural politics during the 1930s. His current project, Moments of Scottsboro, examines the impact of the Scottsboro case on American culture. Susan D. Pennybacker is an associate professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she has taught European history since 1983. She also serves as the director of the college's Hartford Studies Project. Penny- backer is the author of A Vision for London: 1889–1914 (1995) and received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1984, where she studied with Gareth Stedman Jones. Her work on racial politics in the transatlantic world of the 1930s focuses on Britain and will be published as From Scottsboro to Munich: Racial Politics in Britain (Princeton University Press). Her paternal grandfather was a leader of juvenile court reform in Chattanooga. Eve Rosenhaft is a Reader in the Department of German at the University of Liverpool, where she teaches German and European social and cultural history. She has done research in the history of labor and the Communist movement, women's and gender history, and the German experience of ethnic and racial difference, on all of which she has published widely. Rosenhaft is currently engaged in book projects on the Nazi persecution of Sinti and Roma (“Gypsies”) and the origins of life insurance as gendered cultural practice in eighteenth-century Germany. The Scottsboro project represents the intersection of her longstanding research interests with memories of growing up as a pink-diaper baby in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Susan D. Pennybacker, Susan D. Pennybacker James A. Miller is a professor of English and American Studies and director of Africana Studies at George Washington University. His publications include Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith (1998), Approaches to Teaching Wright's “Native Son” (editor, 1997), and numerous articles and reviews on African-American literature and culture. A literary historian with a longstanding interest in the relationship between American writers and social and political movements, Miller wrote his dissertation on Richard Wright. This article is an outgrowth of his research on African-American cultural politics during the 1930s. His current project, Moments of Scottsboro, examines the impact of the Scottsboro case on American culture. Susan D. Pennybacker is an associate professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she has taught European history since 1983. She also serves as the director of the college's Hartford Studies Project. Penny- backer is the author of A Vision for London: 1889–1914 (1995) and received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1984, where she studied with Gareth Stedman Jones. Her work on racial politics in the transatlantic world of the 1930s focuses on Britain and will be published as From Scottsboro to Munich: Racial Politics in Britain (Princeton University Press). Her paternal grandfather was a leader of juvenile court reform in Chattanooga. Eve Rosenhaft is a Reader in the Department of German at the University of Liverpool, where she teaches German and European social and cultural history. She has done research in the history of labor and the Communist movement, women's and gender history, and the German experience of ethnic and racial difference, on all of which she has published widely. Rosenhaft is currently engaged in book projects on the Nazi persecution of Sinti and Roma (“Gypsies”) and the origins of life insurance as gendered cultural practice in eighteenth-century Germany. The Scottsboro project represents the intersection of her longstanding research interests with memories of growing up as a pink-diaper baby in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Eve Rosenhaft Eve Rosenhaft James A. Miller is a professor of English and American Studies and director of Africana Studies at George Washington University. His publications include Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith (1998), Approaches to Teaching Wright's “Native Son” (editor, 1997), and numerous articles and reviews on African-American literature and culture. A literary historian with a longstanding interest in the relationship between American writers and social and political movements, Miller wrote his dissertation on Richard Wright. This article is an outgrowth of his research on African-American cultural politics during the 1930s. His current project, Moments of Scottsboro, examines the impact of the Scottsboro case on American culture. Susan D. Pennybacker is an associate professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she has taught European history since 1983. She also serves as the director of the college's Hartford Studies Project. Penny- backer is the author of A Vision for London: 1889–1914 (1995) and received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1984, where she studied with Gareth Stedman Jones. Her work on racial politics in the transatlantic world of the 1930s focuses on Britain and will be published as From Scottsboro to Munich: Racial Politics in Britain (Princeton University Press). Her paternal grandfather was a leader of juvenile court reform in Chattanooga. Eve Rosenhaft is a Reader in the Department of German at the University of Liverpool, where she teaches German and European social and cultural history. She has done research in the history of labor and the Communist movement, women's and gender history, and the German experience of ethnic and racial difference, on all of which she has published widely. Rosenhaft is currently engaged in book projects on the Nazi persecution of Sinti and Roma (“Gypsies”) and the origins of life insurance as gendered cultural practice in eighteenth-century Germany. The Scottsboro project represents the intersection of her longstanding research interests with memories of growing up as a pink-diaper baby in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 106, Issue 2, April 2001, Pages 387–430, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/106.2.387 Published: 01 April 2001