The Scottsboro Boys Traveling Exhibit

The Du Bois Freedom Center is partnering with the Scottsboro Boys Museum in Scottsboro, Alabama, to host the museum’s traveling exhibit at its 309 Main Street office from February 10 through late April. This marks the first time the exhibit has traveled beyond Alabama. The exhibition examines one of the most notorious legal injustices in U.S. history—the 1931 false accusation of nine Black teenagers known as the Scottsboro Boys.

During the opening week, the exhibit will also be presented for public viewing at New Africa House in collaboration with the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst. The opening programming will include a public event in the New Africa House Theatre featuring the museum’s Executive Director, Dr. Thomas Reidy, in a discussion moderated by Marcus P. Smith, Ph.D. Candidate in Afro-American Studies. The discussion will reflect on the legacy of the Scottsboro Boys and the late Sheila Washington, founder of the Scottsboro Boys Museum, whose decades-long advocacy led to the men’s posthumous exoneration through the 2013 Scottsboro Boys Act. The discussion will also examine the museum’s ongoing work engaging public memory, accountability, and justice.