SCOTTSBORO, Ala. (WHNT) — It was a day of gathering, food and several guest speakers at the Scottsboro Boys Museum.
Among the speakers is William “Bill” Baxley, a former Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General of the state of Alabama.
Baxley was instrumental in obtaining a pardon for the last living Scottsboro boy, Clarence Norris, in 1976.
The museum pays homage to nine black teenaged boys who were wrongly accused of rape by two white girls aboard a train in the 1930’s. Baxley spoke about the significance of celebrating the boys during Juneteenth.
“The thing to me that’s most important is if we don’t teach history, then we don’t learn lessons from it,” Baxley explained. “And of course, we needed to learn a lot of lessons about what not to do and what happened to the Scottsboro Boys way back long ago.”
It wasn’t until years later that the boys were freed from prison. Mr. Baxley spoke to those in attendance about the backlash he faced trying to pardon the last of the innocent men.
“It wipes the slate clean, but it doesn’t restore the lost years they had when they were put in prison for something that did not happen, and they didn’t do. It’s like putting a cast on a broken arm. It helps, but it doesn’t make it ok,” said Baxley.
Attendees hope that the Juneteenth celebrations continue at the museum.
Juneteenth honors the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were told by Union soldiers that they were free, almost two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
“If we do remember our past, we will not know how to get to the future because I’m hearing so much about history trying to be erased, and it’s just something that I don’t want to see happen,” said Keith McIntosh.
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