Similarities Between Letter From Birmingham Jail And To Kill A Mockingbird

The Hard on Truth
There are many connections you see between the impact of Jim Crow laws on life in the South and the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Jim Crow laws impacted life in the South by creating inequality, racism, and segregation. This plays out in To Kill a Mockingbird in an immensely powerful way. In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr., King defined inequality in various ways such as, “a child asking can they go to the amusement park and you have to tell them no because they’re black.” The Jim Crow laws made all of this happened because it basically separated whites from blacks. Constitutional Rights Foundation confirms, “They held that racial segregation of children in public schools, even in schools of equal quality, hurt minority children. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” In chapter 12 of To Kill a Mockingbird, Calpurnia took Jem and Scout to her church. While they were there, both, Jem and Scout were wondering why they didn’t have hymn-books. Even though they are separate, they’re still not equal.

The situation of Emmett Till where he was brutally attacked/kidnapped by whites, just because he was “flirting” with a grocery cashier. He’s not the only black male that has went through this. Dr. King in “Letter From Birmingham Jail” emphasizes, “when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’; when your first name becomes ‘nigger’ and your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John,’ and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs.’” This relates in To Kill Mockingbird, chapter 19, where in the courtroom the whites sat down in the main section while the blacks had to stand on the balcony to observe the trial of Tom vs the Ewell