On May 1, 1935, after the Supreme Court decision reversing the convictions of the winter of 1933 trials, Victoria Price swore out new warrants against all the Scottsboro defendants. New trials began, which continued throughout 1936 and 1937. Token African-Americans served on these juries.

One of the defendants was sentenced to death, but in 1938 his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the governor of Alabama; three others received jail sentences ranging from seventy-five to ninety-nine years. Charges of rape were dropped against one, but he received a twenty-year sentence for assaulting a deputy sheriff. Four others were released in 1937 after charges against them were dropped. Several widely read Alabama newspapers and many prominent Alabamians began working for the release of all the Scottsboro defendants in the 1940s. One by one they were paroled throughout the 1940s. The last one to leave prison was released in 1950.

But the Scottsboro case was still not over. In 1970 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and others discovered that Clarence Norris, the last of the "Scottsboro boys," was still alive. He had violated his parole by fleeing the state of Alabama in 1946, and he was still subject to arrest should he return to the state where some of his relatives still lived. The last Scottsboro defendant, he had spent the most time on death row and had been a fugitive from justice for thirty years. Finally, on October 25, 1976, Clarence Norris was officially pardoned by Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama. The attorney general of the state of Alabama, Bill Baxley, facilitated the pardon with the written recommendation to the parole and pardons board. Baxley's letter declaring that his research showed Norris to be innocent of the 1931 charges was based largely on the arguments made by Judge James E. Horton in 1933. After much anxiety about returning to Alabama and possibly subjecting himself to arrest, Norris returned in 1976 to accept the pardon.

Strangely enough, the Scottsboro case, which had begun in 1931, was still not entirely over. In 1975 the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) aired a program entitled "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys"; and several weeks later both Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, both now living under different names, filed lawsuits against the network for libel, slander, and invasion of privacy. By 1977, when the suit filed by Victoria Price came to trial, Ruby Bates (who had filed the suit first) had died. In the course of the trial many of the issues, especially those concerning Price's reliability and the physician's examination, were again debated. The lawyer acting for NBC closed his summation with a reading of Judge Horton's 1933 opinion calling for a new trial. Finally, Judge Charles G. Neese dismissed the case before it reached the jury, declaring that there were insufficient grounds for proceeding. And the Scottsboro case drew to a close again.

Johnson, Claudia Durst. Understanding To Kill A Mockingbird. The Greenwood Publishing, Inc. Wesport, CT:©1994.

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