Poem (1944) by Robert Hughes Bennett in Celebration of Simuel Decatur McGill's Victory in the 1942 "Little Scottsbury [Scottsboro] Case"

This poem celebrates the 1942 victory of Jacksonville-based African American lawyer Simuel Decatur McGill (1877-1951) in his successful defense of four African American men accused of murdering a white man in 1933. The case, Chambers et. al. v. Florida, became known as the "Little Scottsboro Case," an allusion to the landmark "Scottsboro Case" in Alabama, which was twice appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1930s.

McGill was a graduate of Edward Waters College and a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Knights of Pythias, three institutions that appear in documents in the Eartha M.M. White Collection. For more information, see the biography of McGill provided by the Chicago Public Library, where the McGill Family Papers are held.

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