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Article: Images of Scottsboro.
- Article from:
- Southern Cultures
- Article date:
- March 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 University of North Carolina Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In his poem "Scottsboro Too Is Worth Its Song," the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen complains that poets "have raised no cry" against the injustice suffered by the Scottsboro boys in contrast to their "sharp and pretty tunes" for Sacco and Vanzetti.(1) Granted, no artist memorialized the Scottsboro boys to the degree Ben Shahn did the two anarchists in his painting that repeatedly appears in art history texts to illustrate the American social realist movement; yet, contrary to Cullen's claim it is doubtful that any victims of alleged legal oppression touched as many socially conscious artists as did the nine African Americans accused, while riding a train as hobos, ...