On The Tube CONEY ISLAND Greek and American Cuisine OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK 'Scottsboro: An American Tragedy' 154 S. Woodward, Birmingham (248) 540-8780 Halsted Village (37580 W. 12 Mile Rd.) Farmington Hills (248) 553-2360 Academy Award nominees experienced holdover _prejudice when making documentary that will air on PBS. 6527 Telegraph Rd. Corner of Maple (15 Mile) Bloomfield Township (248) 646-8568 4763 Haggerty Rd. at Pontiac Trail West Wind Village Shopping Center West Bloomfield (248) 6692295 NAOMI PFEFFERMAN Jewish. Journal of Greater Los Angeles B 841 East Big Beaver, Troy (248) 680-0094 SOUTHFIELD SOUVLAKI CONEY ISLAND Nine Mile & Greenfield 15647 West Nine Mile, Southfield (248) 569-5229 FARMINGTON SOUVLAKI CONEY ISLAND Between 13 & 14 on Orchard Lake Road 30985 Orchard Lake Rd. Farmington Hills (248) 626-9732 NEW LOCATION: 525 N. Main Milford (248) 684-1772 UPTOWN PARTHENON 4301 Orchard Lake Rd. West Bloomfield (248) 538-6000 HERCULES FAMILY RESTAURANT 33292 West 12 Mile Farmington Hills (248) 489-9777 Serving whitefish, lamb shank, pastitsio and moussaka 11111 111•11 IIIIN INN MIN INN MI MN NMI IReceive 1 . IIII 1 1 i Off' . . I Entire Bill I with any other offer I I I not to go with I coupon 3/30 2001 76 I Expires 4/30/2001 MO MI =I MI MI MI I 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 .