A three-person panel of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to issue posthumous pardons to three boys who had been falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931, CNN reported.
"It has taken 82 years to clear the names of the Scottsboro boys. Today it happened," Sheila Washington, the founder and director of the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center, said on Thursday.
In the 1931 case, "nine African American males, who were aged between 12 and 19, were falsely accused of raping two white females on a train in Alabama. The men were convicted by all-white juries, and all but the youngest defendant was sentenced to death," The Associated Press reported.
The Scottsboro boys were were convicted after a third round of trials in 1937 and eventually died before their sentences were ever addressed, Newsy reported.
"Five of the men's convictions were overturned in 1937 after one of the alleged victims recanted her story. One defendant, Clarence Norris, received a pardon before his death in 1976. At the time, he was the only Scottsboro Boy known to be alive," The AP also reported.
Thursday's pardons for Charles Weems, John Andy Wright and Haywood Patterson "remedied a wrongdoing of social and racial injustice," added Eddie Cook, an assistant director for the board, in an interview with CNN.
"Today, the Scottsboro Boys have finally received justice," Alabama Governor Robert Bentley also said.
The Scottsboro Boys case became an impetus for songs, poems, books, plays and films, which dealt with the themes of racial injustice in America. It helped to spur the American civil rights movement as well.
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