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y 1933, Samuel Liebowitz, the assimilated son
of Romanian Jewish immigrants, had won fame
and fortune defending kidnappers, rapists, cor-
rupt cops and jealous lovers.
Fresh from defending Al Capone, he was enthusiastic
when Communist Parry leaders asked him to represent the
most famous defendants in America: nine black youths
falsely accused of raping two white women on a train near
Scottsboro, Ala.
Not that Liebowitz cared about civil rights. "Like many
mainstream Americans, he was not sympathetic to the
black cause," said Barak Goodman, writer-director of the
2001 Oscar-nominated documentary Scottsboro: An
American Tragedy, which airs April 2 on PBS as part of the
"American Experience" series. (Scottsboro lost out to Into
the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport for Best
Documentary Feature at Sunday's Oscar telecast.)
"And he hated Communists," Goodman said of
Liebowitz. "He simply wanted to advance his career."
Instead, the arrogant, overly confident attorney learned
an important lesson about racism and anti-Semitism —
and the post-Civil War tensions that still simmered
between North and South.
Despite his brilliant defense in Scottsboro, Liebowitz was
simply perceived as a Jewish carpetbagger. "Let's show
[people] that the Alabama justice system can't be bought
and sold with Jewish money from New York," the prosecu-
tor urged the jury.
"The minute a Jewish lawyer from New York City came to
Alabama," one historian noted, "the case was lost."
Liebowitz, who was deeply shaken by the bigotry, began
to empathize with his clients. "He was able to understand
their plight, because he was going through some of the
same discrimination and hatred," Goodman said. "For the
first time in his life, he began to think of himself as a Jew."
Goodman and Daniel Anker, the film's producer and co-
director, were in part drawn to the Scottsboro story because
of their Jewish roots. Friends since childhood (their fathers
attended Harvard Law School together in the era of Jewish
quotas), they grew up in homes where Jewish identity was
inextricably linked to social justice.
Anker accompanied his mother as she registered blacks to
vote near their Maryland home. Barak, whose name means
"lightning" in Hebrew, was disturbed by the racial divide in
his Philadelphia suburb.
Goodman went on to write his Harvard University thesis
on the black civil rights movement in Chicago. Some years
later, he hooked up with Anker, a fellow Harvard alumnus
and documentarian, to make the 1996 Emmy-nominated
Samuel Liebowitz, seated,
film Daley: The Last Boss.
one of the country's
Goodman again contacted
most prominent defense
his childhood friend after he
attorneys (he'd never lost a
chanced to read a gripping,
case), was hired to defend
nonfiction book about
nine African American
Scottsboro in 1994. The
teenagers in Alabama for
story mesmerized him from
rape. • His case was solid,
the first page.
but it was judged on him
"It was a great courtroom
being a New Yorker and a
drama," Goodman said.
Jew. He lost the initial
And it had characters wor-
trial and a second one.
thy of a Hollywood movie.
One of the nine black
hobos accused of rape was
only 13 and had never been
away from home before. Another defendant suffered from
severe syphilis and could barely walk. A third was nearly
blind and hoped to find a job to pay for glasses.
Their female accusers were textile workers who could
only afford to live in the black section of town — where
they occasionally traded sex with men of both races for
food and clothing
.