Prejudice In A Lesson Before Dying

The Prejudice in the South

“But let us say he was not. Let us for a moment say he was not. What justice would here be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.” Gaines wrote “A Lesson Before Dying” to really show the racism that was still around during his childhood and years as a young adult. Gaines wrote this book “A Lesson Before Dying” based off parts of his own life. From where the book was set to the segregation that was still around after the civil war. Gaines wanted to write this book to show that even though slavery was gone in name and that all men were considered by law equal, the people who ran the laws did not agree to it. Throughout the entire book we see the blacks being trodden upon

The boy Jefferson is convicted of a felony that he did not do because he was black and now one would believe a black man’s word against a whites. “The jury retired, and it returned a verdict after lunch: guilty of robbery and murder in the first degree. The judge commended the twelve white men for reaching a quick and just verdict.” In the world that Gaines lived in, white against black was as simple as saying a dog was not a person. Gaines had to grow up as a young boy on a plantation seeing it all first handed, it was not something he could easily forget, so he wrote about it so all could know the truth behind prejudice in the south. There are few characters in the “A Lesson Before Dying” that bestow kindness and friendship to the blacks. For example, the sheriff deputy, Paul, is one of the few white people in the book to act the same to blacks as he does whites. “Paul stuck out his hand. “Allow me to be your friend, Grant Wiggins. I don’t ever want to forget this day. I don’t ever want to forget him” I took his hand. He held mine with both of his.” Writing from a personal standpoint, Paul must have been the one in a thousand type of man to be nice to a