The home of the judge who famously presided over a retrial of the “Scottsboro Boys” is due to be moved to Decatur this weekend.

Hollis Kennedy House Movers Co. will begin Thursday morning the process of moving the Judge James Horton home from Greenbrier down Old Hwy 20 to Decatur.

The path of the move, according to the City of Athens, will carry it to the Garrett Rd/U.S. 31 intersection by Thursday evening:, It will then move down U.S. 31 Saturday, from 6 p.m. to midnight. Its estimated arrival in Decatur will be Sunday morning around 3 a.m.

The house will serve as a part of the Scottsboro Boys Civil Rights Museum.

The Scottsboro Boys were nine Black men, ranging in age of 19 to 12, who were wrongly accused, and convicted, of raping two white women in 1931 and sentenced to death.

Clarence Norris, Ozie Powell, Olin Montgomery, Charlie Weems, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Andy Wright, Roy Wright and Eugene Williams boarded a Memphis-bound train in Chattanooga but made it only as far as Paint Rock in Jackson County. They were pulled from the train, taken to jail in Scottsboro and accused of raping Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. The teens were eventually convicted by an all-white jury.

Horton, who was born in Tennessee in 1878 and moved to Limestone County as a child, was chosen to preside over the high-profile retrial of Scottsboro Boy Haywood Patterson in Morgan County in March 1933.

When an all-white jury once again convicted Patterson, Horton overturned the verdict, saying the testimony of accuser Victoria Price was not only “uncorroborated, but it also bears on its face indications of improbability and is contradicted by other evidence…”

Horton was ousted from the bench in the next election.

Bates later recanted her testimony about the rape. In 2013, Gov. Robert Bentley formally pardoned the nine men.

He died in 1973 at the age of 95.