User:UMZachL/sandbox

Intro
Ada Wright (born 1890) was an activist, public speaker, committed fighter for her sons and a devout Primitive Baptist. She lived a quiet life until her two sons, Andy and Roy Wright were arrested along with 7 other black teens for being wrongfully accused of raping two white women. After an initial stay of execution, she embarked on a campaign across Europe in the spring of 1932 to put international pressure on the Alabama Courts. She traveled with Louis Engdahl and the tour was organized by the ILD.

TOUR
Wright began her European tour in Hamburg where she landed on May 7th 1932. She utilized this tour to expose the history of American racism and speak against the oncoming imperialist war. She met Pan-Africanist George Padmore at a conference of the International Seaman and Harbor Workers. She paid respects to anti-fascist demonstrators who had been killed, and quickly gained recognition throughout the country. She inspired many Germans to write letters to Herbert Hoover demanding the release of the Scottsboro Boys.

She then traveled across several other countries on mainland Europe including Austria, France, Switzerland and Belgium. She was quickly expelled from Belgium and in the press linked her racist treatment to the treatment of colonized Africans in the Congo.

Britain
The tour shifted to Britain where she arrived in London to greet Shapurji Saklatvala in June. She repeated her story throughout Britain from the House of Commons to the League of Colored Peoples. She was quickly banned from entering Ireland because of the Irish desire to appeal to American racism.

Wright then traveled to Scandinavia, and then continued to the Netherlands where she spoke with Indonesian anticolonial activists. In September she was arrested in Kladno Czechoslovakia upon suspicion of spreading communist propaganda. She penned a letter while she was in jail describing her current situation and was soon released and removed from the country. The tour ended with a large marge of tens of thousands of workers in Moscow before Wright returned home with the ashes of Engdahl.

The international tour put extreme pressure on the courts in the United States and is credited with pressuring the US Supreme Court to overturn the convictions in the landmark Powell v. Alabama decision.

Post Tour
When Wright returned home she continued to give tours and speeches across the US for several years. The US continued to follow her actions and stifle any of her protests due to fear of her spreading her message. She returned to domestic work for an Irish-American family and continued to visit her sons while they remained in prison. She passed away in 1965.