Racism In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Racism was a big problem at the time. It can have a much larger impact on someone’s life than you may think. When it comes to stories about racism there can be such different sides of the story, but the stories are not always equally heard. You can see many many examples of racism in this book. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird shows that racism can have a large effect on an individual and community. In this story racism completely changes Tom's life, how the different testimonies are heard, and that once a standard has been set it is very hard to abolish. In this story Tom, a black man, is accused of rape. He is a hardworking man with a farming job. His life was completely changed due to this false accusation.

Tom, the black man accused of rape, and Mayella the white girl who claims to be the victim of rape. You can see very different sides of one story. Mayella Ewell was a 19 year old girl, and Tom was a friendly man who would do jobs for the Ewell family. One day Mayella came into the court claiming to have beeen raped. She was beaten and bruised. She shares her testimony with the jury, "reckon I did, hollered for all I was worth, kicked and hollered loud as I could" (Harper Lee 241). Mayella had for sure been beaten, she had bruises on her neck and arms, her right eye was also black. However, Mayella really had no real evidence that it was Tom that had assaulted her. Tom worked as a farmer and had never caused any trouble. Just after Mayella shares her testimony it is Toms turn to share his and try to win the jury’s favor. Toms says “She scared me so bad I hopped down an' turned the chair over. That was the only thing, only furniture 'sturbed in the room, Mr. Finch, I swear, when I left it... Mr. Finch, I got down off the chair, and I turned around an' she sorta jumped on me. She hugged me aroun' the waist. She reached up an' kissed me on the face. She said she'd never kissed a grown man before an' she might as well kiss me. She says for me to kiss her back” (Harper Lee 259). Tom is able to share his testimony to the jury and the other people of Maycomb. Though there was more evidence in Tom's favor, the jury

Tom and Mayella both shared completely different sides of the story, but in this case Tom was not given the same amount of respect due to his skin color. This is what Atticus says after the jury decides on Tom being guilty “There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life” (Harper Lee 295). In this time there was a standard that white people were always right and that black people didn’t not have any say, or that they didn’t matter as much. People in this society were so brainwashed to the standard of society that no matter how good Tom's case was or however much evidence he had he would not win, because white people always won. A courtroom is a place for people to share their stories and for both sides to be equally heard. Skin color makes no difference in a person’s character. "The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box" (Harper Lee 38-40). In this time racism obviously causes big division between people, but the one place where racism should be put to the side is the courtroom. Tom should have been more respected and the jury should