This painting is part of a series of portraits by Sherman Beck in which Beck memorializes African American heroes. Inspired by a famous photograph, the painting depicts nine young men, age 13 to 19, who were falsely charged with the crime of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. Missing from Beck’s painting are the dozen or so armed police and militia men surrounding the Scottsboro Boys in the photograph. Beck has surrounded the figures instead with the stripes from an American flag, a target, and various symbolic references to currency, such as QR codes, a bar code, and an American Silver Eagle $1 coin, which features what’s known as “Walking Liberty,” an image of Lady Liberty on the move. Currency is an essential part of the story of the Scottsboro Boys. After being falsely accused and convicted, and almost all sentenced to death, the defendants spent years in prison work camps being used essentially as slave labor while fighting their convictions in the courts. Their court cases went all the way to the Supreme Court multiple times, resulting in landmark decisions that forever altered the criminal justice system, making it more fair for minority defendants. Despite the false arrests, false convictions, horrible prison terms, and tragic outcomes nearly all of the nine Scottsboro Boys suffered, their fight for justice made a profound and lasting contribution to American Civil Rights.