“This horrific chapter of American history – nine black teenagers pulled off a train and falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931, then subjected to Southern justice at its most criminally graphic – was far too serious to be presented in so cavalier and racially volatile a format, let alone by a white creative team.” Candace Allen – with reference to her grandmother and Aunt Billie, who remember the case – says that Kander & Ebb pulled it off.