It wasn't Southern hospitality that prompted a local posse to greet the Chattanooga to Memphis freight train as it pulled into Paint Rock, Alabama, on March 25, 1931 -- or maybe it was. On board, among a crowd of riders who had hopped the train searching for work, were nine young black men, some of them still boys. Little did they know that their lives, which had already been made miserable by the twin demons of racism and the Great Depression, were suddenly about to get a whole lot worse.

The mob had arrived after word spread of a brawl on the train between groups of black and white passengers. The black youths, only some of whom had actually been involved in the fight, were taken into custody. But if their situation wasn't sticky enough, it quickly worsened when two white female passengers named Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, for reasons of their own, told the mob that they had been raped by the prisoners. So began the most excruciating legal ordeal in the nation's history, one that put the defendants through a near lynching, several trials, convictions and reversals, stints on death row, physical torture and finally freedom. But it wasn't just that innocent lives were ruined -- and they were. The twenty years that it took for the Scottsboro case to be wrung from the judicial system proved to be a stain on America's reputation around the world.

Less than two weeks after their arrests, the nine defendants -- who ranged in age from 12 to 18 -- were jointly put on trial. The country's leading civil rights group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, refused to get involved. That placed their lives in the hands of two local attorneys who were notable only for their incompetence. It was no surprise then that the trials lasted a single day and the jury deliberated all of an hour and a half before sentencing all nine to death. After it returned its first verdicts, a brass band outside the courtroom celebrated with rousing renditions of "Dixie" and "The Star Spangled Banner."

It was at that point, with the date of execution set and little hope for an appeal, that the Communist Party stepped in. Through its legal arm, the International Labor Defense, the Party brought in Samuel Leibowitz, one of the country's premiere defense attorneys, to save the lives of the Scottsboro boys, as they were called then. But The Party also kept its eye on the larger issues involved. With the whole world seemingly following the Scottsboro case, the modern civil rights movement had begun.