Shelia Washington was instrumental in the exoneration of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young Black men who were wrongfully convicted of raping two white women in a famous 1935 case.The Scottsboro Boys – Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, Andy Wright, Roy Wright, Olin Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, and Eugene Williams – were riding on a freight train through Tennessee when a white mob tried to force them from the train and later accused them of raping two white women.