The founder and supporters of the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson County, Alabama, are raising money for a major remodeling of the circa-1876 church that is the facility's home.
The museum was founded by Sheila Washington, who also serves as the director, coordinator and tour guide at the museum on West Willow Street in Scottsboro, Alabama.
Washington said Monday that fundraising efforts launched in December, marking the museum's 10th anniversary, quickly ground to a halt with the arrival of the novel coronavirus in early spring.
"It hurt us with the fundraising," Washington said Monday. "So we're at it again."
The pause didn't slow efforts on the first phase of improvements, the installation of the Scottsboro boys' courtroom trial scene, depicting all the players in the historic legal drama that played out in 1931 and 1932.
The initial goal is $100,000, she said, noting the cost of the first phase - the trial scene - is estimated to be $40,000. Work begins almost immediately.
"We've got a project that's going to take place in two weeks," she said. "We're going to do the courtroom scenery in the church first. That was the most extensive project. We've doing, I think, 17 more phases."
If you go
The Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center is open the second and third Saturdays of each month. Special appointments to see the museum or make a donation can be made by contacting Sheila Washington at 256-912-0471, 256-609-4202 or by email at scotttsboroboysmuseum@scottsboro.org. Tickets are $10, and children under 5 can get in free.
The "Scottsboro Boys" were nine Black teenagers from Chattanooga and parts of Georgia accused of raping two white women traveling through Jackson County on a train in 1931. All but two were convicted by an all-white, all-male jury and sentenced to prison, but in the years after the trial one of the two women said to be victims admitted the accusations were false, according to newspaper archives. In 2013, then-Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signed a resolution exonerating all nine of the Scottsboro Boys, and pardons were posthumously granted to all the defendants in late 2013.
The nine teenagers - Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Andrew and Leroy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson and Eugene Williams - the youngest of them only 13, were tried in 1931 and 1932, according to the museum website.
As the supporters prepared in December 2019 to celebrate the museum's first 10 years, Washington said it "was a dream of mine since I was 17 years old when I found a little paperback book hidden under my parents' bed" that told of the wrongful convictions of nine young black men in Scottsboro.
"Once I read that book, I knew at 17 that those boys weren't guilty," she said. "And then I had a brother to get killed in Kilby Prison - the same prison the Scottsboro Boys were in - in 1978.
"That moved me to the point where I said, 'One day, I will do something for the Scottsboro Boys, in memory of them and what they went through,'" Washington said.
It would take more than two decades to get the idea off the ground.
When local officials were discussing a historic walking trail in 2000, Washington suggested including the history of the infamous Scottsboro Boys' case. The idea got a cool reception because no one really wanted to drag up such a dark time in the community's history, so she kept working until the museum attracted some funding, she said.
In 2010, half the cost of establishing the museum in the circa-1876 Joyce Chapel United Methodist Church - the oldest Black church still standing in Jackson County - was funded by the Jackson County legislative body and a donation from a family with ties to the lawyer who defended the Scottsboro Boys, according to Washington.
The museum, opened in February 2010, preserved the old church and the history of the Scottsboro Boys at the same time. The church also has ties to Rosa Parks' husband, Raymond Parks, who came to Scottsboro while working to start an NAACP chapter, Washington said.
"After 10 years of operating as a public gallery The Scottsboro Boys Museum & Cultural Center is ready to undergo a major transformation," Sarah Stahl, director of marketing and tourism for the Jackson County-based Mountain Lakes Chamber of Commerce, said Monday in an email. She added that as "one of eight Alabama stops on the National Civil Rights Trail, now's the time to take the visitor experience to a new level."
Stahl said fundraising is aimed at speeding up the timeline "as every part of the museum will be reimagined - from the parking lot to cutting edge displays.
"What could take years we hope takes months, but we want visitors to better understand the constitutional and civil rights impact this case had on the world, and it starts with support from the region to ensure these boys' story is well honored," she said.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.