The Scottsboro Trials and To Kill a Mockingbird In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the famous father named Atticus says “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it (Judith 2). This quote is said during a time of intense racism. “Not long after Obama took office, the National Urban League released its 2009 State of Black America report. The findings showed that racial inequities continued in employment, housing, health care, education, criminal justice, and other areas” (Buckley 1). This essay will primarily focus on the criminal justice area of this when discussing the Scottsboro trials and comparing the trials to the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In some schools, To Kill a Mockingbird is mandatory for students to read (“Harper Lee dies at 89: A quiet life, a lasting legacy-- see the photos” 2) however, in others it is banned. Jon Stewart said there is a “gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend doesn’t exist” (Judith 2). There are similarities between the famous Scottsboro Trials and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. THE SCOTTSBORO TRIALS There were nine African American teenagers aboard a freight train during March of 1931 in Jackson County, Alabama (Alex 1). All nine of the teenagers were accused of raping two white …show more content…
There have been movies and books released about the Scottsboro case, and a movie made based on Harper Lee’s novel (McDaniel 3). The movies and books are loved by many and often compared. Some today credit Harper Lee with playing a role in the fight to end racism because of how she portrayed characters within her novel. Therefore, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro trials have similarities that are often discussed years after the novel was released and the trials
Harper lee creates a trial similar to the Scottsboro trial in her book To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee was a kid when the trial became popular so it would make sense to mimic the trial. It could have been a way to express her opinion on the unfairness of the trial. Mayella Ewells is similar to Ruby Bates because they both violated the social principle of segregation. Mayella Ewells tempted Tom Robinson by kissing him “She reached up an’ kissed me” Robinson told Atticus Finch when giving his testimony.
In the 1930s, there were many conflicts because African Americans were always the ones to get blamed by the prejudicial people who lived in Alabama. When the Scottsboro case was happening, Harper Lee was six years old. So thirty years later, she had written a book based on the Scottsboro case. Nine black men had been accused of rape by a white woman, and in To Kill a Mockingbird, there was one black man who had been accused of rape by a white woman. Harper Lee was inspired by the Scottsboro Boys’ case when writing her novel due to the similarities between them.
The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the book Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe are two different books surround by the same ideas. To Kill a Mockingbird was a book about a girl named Scott, whose dad, Atticus, is a lawyer, who tried to win a case defending an innocent black man. Atticus did not win the case and Scott started to learn about injustice and what went on at that time in the South. Mississippi Trial, 1955 was about a boy named Hiram, who lived in the South with his grandpa because his parents were too busy working. His grandpa represented the South in the book and Hiram’s dad represented the North, and Hiram had a stronger relationship with his grandpa and did not really like his dad at the time.
The Scottsboro boys were convicted for a fight that occurred between black and white boys on a train traveling though Scottsboro, Alabama in 1932. The police rounded up all the black boys that were on the train and arrested nine of them.ranging from the ages 12-19. Two girls then came forward and said that they were gang raped on the train. All nine of the defendants claimed innocent. After four separate one day trials with all white juries, eight of the nine boys were sentenced to
The ever present distaste from whites in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, shows the issues that blacks had to deal with constantly. Lee was able to portray this hatred by putting and important character, Tom Robinson a black man, on an unjust trial for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell. This classic story reveals the awful conditions and intense racism during this time in the southern Unites States. Some of the many African Americans affected by southern white racists in court or otherwise include the Scottsboro
The book “To Kill A Mockingbird” was written by Harper lee. Throughout the book Lee uses a story to get a deeper meaning out to her audience and the world. During the where the story was set there were inequality issues and very prejudice opinions. Intertwined in the book she addresses the controversial topics like race and different forms of prejudice. There were several different forms of prejudice in this book.
Benjamin Hudok Honors English 10B Vande-Guchte 5/15/23 To Kill a Mockingbird, Symbols of Foreshadowing essay To Kill A Mockingbird is a story angled towards fueling the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Author, Harper Lee, loosely based her story off of the trial of the Scottsboro boys in the early 1930’s. The real life trial had depicted 2 white girls who accused 9 black boys of assaulting them, despite there being no evidence the 9 boys were sentenced to life in prison even after the girls had admitted the allegations were fake. She was inspired by her father’s writings in newspapers and time as a lawyer in Alabama because of the ideas he expressed in regards to the blatant racism in the Scottsboro Boys trial.
The Scottsboro Boys trial and the key people involved closely relate to the events in To Kill A Mockingbird by representing the sense of injustice in the community and the legal system. The case all began with a stone throwing fight between the young blacks
Imagine being stuck in a world where discrimination was relevant, hate was real, and white superiority existed. You live in that world. Harper Lee also lived in that world and survived it. The Scottsboro Boys Trial was a trial where innocent black boys were killed because they were accused and found guilty of raping white girls. Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, takes place during the 1930s in Maycomb, Alabama and is loosely based off of this trial and her life.
Imagine that your living in the 1930s, you’re a white woman, and you had just gotten “raped” by a black man or group of black men. This exact scenario happened in the critically acclaimed book To Kill a Mockingbird and in the real-life court case deemed the Scottsboro trial. Which in both the book and the court case, the characters, and people were shaped and influenced by society to become victims and accusers. This paper is going compare and contrast how the fictional character Mayella and the non-fictional plaintiff Victoria Price and Ruby Bates as painted victims and accusers by society.
To Kill a Mockingbird Argumentative Essay Racial equality and discrimination is a founding issue that has been spread throughout every part of the world, To Kill A Mockingbird was written and published by Harper Lee in 1960, this time was dominated by civil rights protests and some of the first hippie movements following the crushing reality of the Vietnam War, the 60s also saw the struggle against segregation and racial equality. It is no surprise that the extreme political conflict affecting her life and world would greatly impact her writing and influence how she perceived the world during the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird. the influence of the fight for racial inequality is shown greatly in her book as she depicts the everyday life
Although the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, took place in the 1930s, it ties closely into the Civil Rights Movement. This novel displayed the obvious superiority whites had over blacks. It took place during a time when colored people faced discrimination, prejudice, and racism. When the book was published in the 1960s, it made whites furious, resulting in a lot of controversy. Harper Lee had a goal when writing, she wanted to show the relation between actual events that happened during the civil rights and incorporate it into her own novel to show how cruel colored people were treated, specifically when whites accused blacks of doing sinful acts.
Because the jury did not favor black men, Tom Robinson did not receive a fair trial, although Atticus made a great case. Segregation directly disobeys the fourteenth amendment, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Maycomb Alabama is where the story, To Kill a Mockingbird takes place. Tom Robinson’s trial out come was not based on factual evidence. Mayella was lying to the jury, while Tom was completely innocent.
In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee teaches us about the town of Maycomb County during the late 1930s, where the characters live in isolation and victimization. Through the perspective of a young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, readers will witness the prejudice that Maycomb produces during times where people face judgement through age, gender, skin colour, and class, their whole lives. Different types of prejudice are present throughout the story and each contribute to how events play out in the small town of Maycomb. Consequently, socially disabling the people who fall victim from living their life comfortably in peace. Boo Radley and his isolation from Maycomb County, the racial aspects of Tom Robinson, and the decision Atticus Finch makes as a lawyer, to defend a black man has all made them fall in the hands of Maycomb’s prejudice ways.
Harper Lee was inspired to write To Kill a Mockingbird by all of the unspeakable events that happened in the 1930’s including racial tensions, Jim Crow laws, and the Scottsboro