Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird

The Jim Crow laws were laws created in the south to support their hatred for blacks. It began in the late 1870s and lasted well into the mid-1960s. The laws made everyday life for blacks challenging considering they segregated everything from schools to water fountains. You would not be allowed to forget these laws exist because most places or things were labeled with a “White Only” or “Colored” sign. The Jim Crow laws were the basis of everything bad done to blacks since it made hate crimes legal. The book To Kill a Mockingbird is an accurate representation of how blacks were treated unfairly in the south in comparison to the whites. In an audio by The Big Read.com about the book, many of the speakers who were raised in the south felt as if

In the article “Scottsboro Case” it states that the during the Scottsboro trial, a case about a group of African-American men were allegedly accused of raping a white woman, the defendants were not provided with a lawyer until the first day of the trial. This injustice is mirrored in the novel in chapter 16, page 218 which states “The court appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed to defend him. That’s what they didn’t like about it.” These two cases show that when it came to black vs. White cases the blacks were usually the accused. The way both justice systems handled the lawyer situation since blacks could not afford to get their own lawyer also shows just how unfair it was for blacks when it came to the law. There are those who may say, the textual evidence shows how strongly the town believed Tom Robinson was guilty not different justice systems for the races. Nevertheless, the town’s hostility towards the Finch family after Atticus decides to defend Tom is dealing with the law because Atticus is only being treated this way for deciding to do his job as a lawyer regardless of skin color. This type of injustice was something that occurred during most trials. An example would be the Scottsboro boys being declared guilty though it was quite obvious they were innocent just like how Tom Robinson was clearly innocent in the novel. In Chapter 9 Page 102 of the novel, it states "My folks said your daddy was a disgrace an' that nigger oughta hang from the water tank." From this, we can imply that Atticus was an enemy because blacks were enemies and he was defending them. Surely, the town was not convinced Tom was guilty, they simply hated him and chose to condemn him because he was