Du Bois Freedom Center presents: Reflections on Justice – W.E.B. Du Bois, the Scottsboro Boys, and Legacies of Injustice

RESERVE

FREE, Reservations required 

Exhibition at 5pm; Moderated conversation at 6pm

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. As part of the opening week, the Center will present Reflections on Justice: W.E.B. Du Bois, the Scottsboro Boys, and Legacies of Injustice at the Mahaiwe theater’s Indigo Room—a featured public conversation examining W.E.B. Du Bois’s and the NAACP’s involvement in the Scottsboro case, the legal strategies developed within the Black Freedom Struggle, and the continuing relevance of those strategies today. The Scottsboro Boys Museum traveling exhibit will also be available for public viewing at the venue before and after the program. 

The program will feature Dr. Thomas Reidy, Executive Director of the Scottsboro Boys Museum, in conversation with Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst, moderated by Marcus P. Smith, History and Archival Fellow at the Du Bois Freedom Center. Sponsored by the Du Bois Freedom Center in conjunction with the Scottsboro Boys Exhibit, the program centers on one of the most notorious legal injustices in U.S. history—the 1931 false accusation of nine Black teenagers known as the Scottsboro Boys—and reflects on the legacy of the late Sheila Washington, founder of the Scottsboro Boys Museum. The discussion will examine Washington’s pivotal role in securing the men’s posthumous exoneration through the 2013 Scottsboro Boys Act, as well as the museum’s ongoing work addressing public memory, accountability, and justice.