Stories of Scottsboro essays

Stories of Scottsboro essays "Stories of Scottsboro" by James Goodman is an in-depth look at the case and overall events that occurred when nine black men are accused of raping two young white women. The black men range in age from thirteen to nineteen. And the two women whom they are accused of raping are seventeen and twenty-one years old. The men are arrested in March of 1931 at a train depot in Paint Rock Alabama after getting into a fight with a group of white men around the same age on the train earlier that day. They are then taken to a jail in Scottsboro Alabama because Scottsboro is the county seat of Jackson County. They were sentenced to death after a rushed and racially based trial, which caused much controversy within the United States and attracted attention around the globe. "Stories of Scottsboro" is told from a third-person point of view and is written as a narrative. James Goodman is not presenting new information in this book; he is just arranging information that is already known to exist into an easy to follow retelling of the events that occurred during the trials through the eyes of people that were there. Goodman's book is written in an interesting way. The book is divided into fifty-four rather short chapters in which he tells the story from a different perspective in each chapter, but still in the form of a narrative. With this narrative style and division of chapters into different perspectives, the book flows very well and captures the events taking place very thoroughly. He lists his sources in the bibliography and also briefly explains what his sources are in the preface. In the preface he says, "My sources include diaries, memoirs, oral histories, and autobiographies; previous histories of Scottsboro and numerous other works of history " Goodman's goal with this book is to tell the stories of what happened on a more individual level in contrast to solely explaining why the men were arrested and how they were not given a fair t...