"There were six to me and three to her....It took three of them to hold me. One was holding my legs and the other had a knife to my throat while the other one ravished me." --Victoria Price (Carter, 58)
"When I put this in you and pull it out you will have a negro baby." --Victoria Price quoting her alleged attacker (Alabama v Patterson, Record)
"I was scared before, but it wasn't nothing to how I felt now. I knew if a white woman accused a black man of rape, he was as good as dead." --Clarence Norris (Goodman, 5)
"The courtroom was one big smiling white face." --Haywood Patterson (Goodman, 6)
"I saw all of them have intercourse; I saw all that with my own eyes." --Scottsboro boy Roy Wright, age 13, testifying in the first trial
"I was sitting in a chair and one of those girls was testifying. One of the deputy sheriffs leaned over to me and asked if I was going to turn state's evidence, and I said no, because I didn't know anything about this case. Then the trial stopped awile and the deputy sheriff beckoned to me to come out into another room-- the room back of the place where the judge was sitting-- and I went. They whipped me and it seemed like they were going to kill me. All the time they kept saying, "Now will you tell?" and finally it seemed to me like I couldn't stand it no more and I said yes." --Roy Wright (NY Times, 3/10/33)
"I am speaking with feeling, and I know it, because I am feeling it. I absolutely have no patience with the mob spirit, and that spirit that would charge the guilt or innocense of any being without knowing of their guilt or innocense." --Judge James Horton addressing court after hearing reports of plans for a lynching (Alabama v Patterson, Record, 3/31/33)
"Now the question in this case is this: Is justice in the case going to be bought and sold in Alabama with Jew money from New York?" --Prosecutor Wade Wright addressing the jury in Alabama v Patterson (NY Times, 4/8/33)
"You are not trying lawyers. You are not trying state lines." -- Judge Horton addressing the jury (NY Times, 4/9/33)
"The whole damnable thing was a frame-up of two irresponsible women." --Samuel Leibowitz addressing the jury (NY Times, 4/9/33)
Crowd during trial
"If you ever saw those creatures, those bigots whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes popped out at you like frogs, whose chins dripped tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it." -- Defense Attoney Samuel Leibowitz commenting on the jury verdict in Alabama v Patterson (NY Times, 4/11/33)
"The testimony of the prosecutrix in this case is not only uncorroborated, but it also bears on its face indications of improbability and is contradicted by other evidence, and in addition thereto the evidence greatly preponderates in favor of the defendant. It therefore becomes the duty of the Court under the law to grant the motion made in this case." --Judge Horton granting the defense motion to set aside the death sentence and verdict in Alabama v Patterson (Record, 6/22/33)
"There shouldn't be any trial for them damn niggers-- thirty cents worth of rope would do the work and it wouldn't cost the county much." --Decatur lunchroom proprietor (Goodman, 211)
"We all have a passion, all the men in this courtroom, and that is to protect the womanhood of the state of Alabama." -- Prosecutor Knight addressing the jury in the third Patterson trial, Nov. 30, 1933
"He couldn't get us to the chair fast enough." -- Haywood Patterson commenting on Judge Callahan (NY Times, 1/22/36)
"Do not quibble over the evidence: Say to yourselves we're tired of this job and put it behind you. Get it done quick and protect the fair womanhood of this state."-- Prosecutor Hutson addressing the jury in the fourth Patterson trial (NY Times, 1/23/36)