Examples Of Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird

“Many Blacks resisted…indignities… and, far too often, they paid for their bravery with their lives” (Pilgrim). The novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, utilized many historical events in order to provide life to the narration. There are accounts relating to the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and racial dilemmas of the Great Depression Era. To start, one connection of between the novel and American history is the Jim Crow laws. These were a set of rules that limited the respect blacks received in society. White citizens thought the laws were needed because they did not want blacks to gain power. Some examples of these laws concerned the education system, libraries, and militias. The education and libraries sectors stated that blacks

According to Dr. Pilgrim, an extreme punishment for disobeying the laws was lynching. Blacks were often lynched without a fair trial or evidence (Pilgrim). Next, an artistic piece by V. shows the inequality that blacks were less than whites. Verification of this is seen in the illustration as it shows a black man in tattered clothing, and white women ornate dresses. (V.). It aids a person in visualizing the inferior treatment blacks received in a white dominant society. The art also helps to see that blacks were out of place in the Deep South. They were not able to feel comfortable in a place where they were constantly mocked. Further, in To Kill a Mockingbird, people in the town of Maycomb stood by the Jim Crow Laws. One example is when Calpurnia, a black maid, took the white Finch children to her church. This was unusual because whites and blacks had different churches in the Deep South. They were not allowed to worship in the same place. A black woman in the church spoke out against the presence of the children, as she declared they had their own church to go to. She did not like having to worship in the same place as whites, who constantly degraded her kin (Lee

There are many examples as to why people are racist. According to Dr. Jack Schafer, racism is caused by the human need for power (Schafer). Here, Dr. Schafer means that people try to overwhelm and conquer others lower to themselves. They accomplish this by exerting their authority over others, causing their minors to be intimidated of them. One example of racism in the United States came with the trial of the Scottsboro Boys. This was an event that involved a group of black teenagers in Alabama. Two white women accused these boys of rape upon exiting a train with them. One of the women was a minor who was being taken across state borders by the other woman for purposes of prostitution. This was a federal crime in that time period, and in order to elude attention from it, the women accused the blacks of an offense. The case of rape was taken to court, the verdict against the boys ostensibly decided even before the commencing of the case. The jury and judge failed to consider the hard evidence showing the misconduct of rape never took place. During testimony, one of the women directly stated that some of the boys were not in the same car, eliminating the possibility of all nine being convicted. Nevertheless, the court decided in favor of the white women, and thus, all of the boys were thrown into jail. Over the time