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THEY SHALL BE FREE by Dr. Allan K. Chalmers

THEY SHALL BE FREE

By

Pub Date: March 22nd, 1951
Publisher: Doubleday

With an introduction by Walter White, this is the documentary of nineteen years in the lives of the nine Scottsboro boys and the long crusade to secure their liberation carried on by Dr. Chalmers, head of the Scottsboro Defense Committee. Dr. Chalmers, a southerner and at that time the minister of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, uses letters and official records to amplify the calendar of attempts and appeals and trials; the conferences with the Governor- and his defection; the release of four boys, and three years later of a fifth; the escape out of the state of Andy Wright which jeopardized those still in jail; the difficulty in raising money and support toward the close; Patterson's escape and his book, and finally the freedom of Andy Wright. This does not have the personal- to sensational- drama of Haywood Patterson's Scottsboro Boy, but it is important as a record.