Examples Of Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

Prejudice beliefs

Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. (Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, 1937)

Strange Fruit, written while lynching occurred, nauseates me as Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol show the everyday horror living in the south. The poem prompts the realization of lynching that existed in our society. Hatred, expressed through violence, leaves innocent African Americans to die. The novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee withholds a related theme from a child’s perspective. The narrator, Scout and her brother Jem establish an understanding their hometown Maycomb is not perfect. They recognize the injustice of Tom Robinson, a hard-working, honest African American man. In spite of Tom’s discrimination, change from biased decisions

Tom Robinson is nearing his trial date while being held in the county jail. Atticus is watching him because Mr. Cunningham and a group of grown men ready to lynch him. Jem, Scout and Dill look for Atticus. When they see Atticus and the men at the jail in a confrontation, Scout ran up up to Atticus to say hey. Atticus told Jem to take Scout and Dill home. Scout introduced herself to Mr. Cunningham and spoke about his son Walter Cunningham. Ignored by the men, Scout reminds Atticus ‘“that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes… that you all’d ride it out together… ‘ I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for livingroom talk,” (Lee, 154). Scout stands up to a group of fully grown men without regret. She was just being honest and thought she had made a mistake. When Mr. Cunningham acknowledged Scout’s voice and her courage, he understood her innocence and withdrew from Tom’s possible