Archives acquire witness stand used in Scottsboro Boys trials

Jul. 25—A wooden platform now in the Morgan County Archives, which for years served as stairsteps to a mobile home and then sat in a barn, in 1933 was the witness stand in the old Morgan County Courthouse from which lies and truths were told during the retrial of the Scottsboro Boys.

It was from this stand, acquired by the Archives this month, that white Victoria Price pointed at Black defendant Haywood Patterson and swore to an all-white jury, "One thing I will never forget is that one setting there raped me."

And it was from the same stand that Ruby Bates, the other alleged rape victim, also white, recanted her previous claim of being raped and explained her earlier lie by testifying, "I told it just like Victoria did because she said we might have to stay in jail if we did not frame up a story after crossing a state line with men."

The historical significance of the witness stand was first recognized by Decatur historian Jonathan Baggs.

Baggs received an unexpected call the night of May 3. The caller had a witness stand from the second Morgan County courthouse, and he wanted Baggs to come take a look at it. Baggs immediately realized that if authentic, it was the witness stand used during the Scottsboro Boys trial that in 1933 garnered international attention and triggered major reforms in the U.S. justice system.

"The first thing I did is I said, 'Send me some photos, and make sure that you get the top of it and the sides and all that,'" said Baggs.

The caller texted Baggs photos of the stand, a small two-step box made from old wood boards that reached knee height, as it lay in a barn near Hartselle.

"The next day I pulled up every known photo from the Scottsboro Boys trial (in Decatur) that I could find," Baggs said. "With old photos, a lot of times it's not what is in the foreground of the photo that's important, it's what's in the deep background." — All in the details

Baggs compared archive photos of the Decatur trial to those he was texted, counting 11 slats and two border slats for a total of 13 boards that made up the top of the stand in both the past and present pictures. Then he compared the sides of the stand in the courthouse photos and in the barn photos and observed the wood grain patterns to be identical.

"Wood grain is just like a fingerprint," Baggs said. "I knew with a 99% degree of certainty that this has got to be what he says it is and that's when I got really excited. The details from the photos in the 1930s match perfectly with the details on the box today."

Several weeks later, on May 27, Baggs contacted a friend, Morgan County archivist John Allison, with word of the stand's existence. Allison said he was "guardedly optimistic" about the stand being the genuine article but understood it to be real after also reviewing the trial pictures.

"I've gotten excited and then things fall through," Allison said. "When I saw the actual photograph, it was so recognizable as to what it was."

Allison estimates witnesses "in the hundreds, maybe the thousands" stood on the stand over the nearly 50 years it was used in the circuit court, including Price and Bates.

The two white women hitched a ride on a freight train between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, in 1931. Also on the train was a group of nine Black teenagers whom they would accuse of rape. Bates later recanted her accusation. The teens became known as the "Scottsboro Boys" because the first trials were held in Scottsboro, but the later retrials were held in Decatur.

Baggs said the conviction of the defendants by an all-white jury caused a spark that contributed to the civil rights movement and to reforms in the justice system.

"This (witness stand) is ground zero where the words of the Sixth Amendment (guaranteeing impartial juries) and the 14th Amendment (guaranteeing due process) became a reality for millions of people," Baggs said. "If there's no Black representation on the jury, it can't be a fair and impartial jury."

Circuit Judge James Horton of Athens, who presided over the first Decatur trial, rejected the guilty verdict of Patterson and ordered a new trial. Subsequent trials under a different judge in Decatur led to guilty verdicts, which in a landmark case the U.S. Supreme Court eventually reversed because Blacks were excluded from the jury. — Saved from scrap

The man who called Baggs and then donated the stand is 69-year-old Decatur resident Allen Shariatt, whose family had been in possession of the witness stand for nearly 50 years until it arrived at the Morgan County Archives on July 13.

Shariatt, a retired NASA employee who was involved with the space shuttle program, said his father rescued the witness stand from the second Morgan County Courthouse as the county was in the process of demolishing the building in 1975.

"I don't know exactly how he got hold of it, but I know as they were tearing (the courthouse) down, he went up there and rummaged through things they were going to throw out and had them load it on his pickup truck," Shariatt said. "From what I heard other people ended up with things, so it must have been a free-for-all."

Shariatt said it was just like his father to seek out odds and ends like the witness stand and other items salvaged from the courthouse.

"He collected all kinds of stuff," he said. "He would buy and sell things; he was always bartering, that's what he enjoyed doing. He enjoyed going to auctions and flea markets, and when they started taking (the courthouse) down he made an effort to go up there and claim what he could."

Shariatt was in his early 20s at that time and was in the military, so he didn't see the witness stand arrive home, but it and other objects recovered from the courthouse became fixtures of the Shariatt home.

"(My father) acquired floor joists out of the building that are in the house where my mother lives now and bookshelves that he repurposed into the house," Shariatt said.

As for the witness stand, it served as stairsteps to a mobile home from which Shariatt's father ran a business.

"There was a large patio out there that was covered, and it sat out there for years," Shariatt said. "It was kind of a conversation piece sitting out there, you know. People would say, 'What's that?' and (my father) would say, 'That's the swearing-in stand from the old courthouse.'"

Eventually, his parents purchased property near Hartselle, where his mother still resides, and the stand was left in storage there in a barn. — 'The right place'

After almost five decades of owning the witness stand, Shariatt said he felt it "needed to be in the right place" after seeing Facebook posts about Decatur's past. That's when he called Baggs to verify the stand's authenticity and discuss donating it to the Archives.

"My mother still lives out there, but she's not going to live there forever," Shariatt said. "I just felt like it belonged to the county, to the Archives, and that's where it should be."

David Breland, historic resources administrator for the city of Decatur, said he was pleased to learn the Archives received the witness stand after he previously assisted in donating courthouse chairs.

"This is something that really the public needs to have access to," he said.

Breland is a retired Morgan County judge and said the Scottsboro Boys case had a profound impact on his legal career.

"The first-floor courtroom was the one where I tried many cases ... (and) is part of the Scottsboro Boys trial bench," Breland said. "Just sitting behind that bench (gave) us the most incredible responsibility to do our best, to do justice. If you understand history and know what happened right at that bench and right in front of that bench during those trials, it's just an amazing thing."

Shariatt said he and his family didn't really recognize the significance of the stand's ties to the trial until Baggs shared the photos with him from the courtroom.

"My dad had always said that the stand was from the old courthouse and ... I didn't think a lot about it," Shariatt said. "I never doubted his word, but it was just a thing that was around."

Allison said items of significance can be among family heirlooms and encouraged Morgan County residents to save items of interest in case they could hold historic value for the county.

"We really do try to get the word out to the community that things are in people's barns or in people's attics or in grandma's chest," he said. "Just the fact that something like this can still exist and we didn't know about it — what else is out there?" — Restoring history

The witness stand would have been assembled in about 1928 at the time the second Morgan County courthouse opened, according to Allison, and its age is evident after the wear and tear in the courtroom and exposure to the elements when it was with the Shariatts.

Most of the damage is to the bottom of the stand, which has suffered significant rotting and insect damage, Allison said, but the Archives want to keep restoration minimal.

"Of course, we want it to be safe and we want to arrest any deterioration," he said. "We're going to need to get all that out and make it structurally sound, but I like it ... to look old. You don't want it looking shiny and new, so we'll do a fairly conservative restoration on it."

Once readied for public display, the Archives will exhibit the witness stand with its existing Scottsboro Boys collection, which includes items like the witness chair that once sat on the stand in court, a juror's chair, original trial records and keys to holding cells the teens were placed in.

"This (witness stand) is the crown jewel of all of it," Allison said. "It's super significant ... if you're talking about national or international importance. The defendants were defended by the Communist Party (USA), so they were talking about this in the Red Square."

For Peggy Allen Towns, a local author and historian who wrote "Scottsboro Unmasked, Decatur's Story," the find is invaluable to ensuring an understanding of local history among future generations. Towns visited the archives July 14, unaware Allison and Baggs had been in talks to acquire the witness stand or that it still existed.

"I went in the Archives looking for something else and there it was," Towns said, chuckling. "It's a historically significant piece ... not just for the Archives but for the city, state and nation."

Allison said he hopes the stand's presence in the Archive's collection will cement Morgan County's place in American history as a stepping stone to the civil rights movement.

"Finding this thing is going to make ripples in the historical community," Allison said. "Anyone interested in constitutional law, African American history (or) civil rights history will be fascinated by this."

— tim.nail@decaturdaily.com or (256) 340-2437. Twitter @timmnail