Similarities Between Scottsboro Boys And To Kill A Mockingbird

Michael Franco

Mr. Rebolini

AP Literature

June 1, 2016

To Kill a Mockingbird The south for African Americans in the late 1930s was extremely difficult. Everyday life for all Americans involved racism towards blacks. The ever present distaste from whites in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, shows the issues that blacks had to deal with constantly. Lee was able to portray this hatred by putting and important character, Tom Robinson a black man, on an unjust trial for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell. This classic story reveals the awful conditions and intense racism during this time in the southern Unites States. Some of the many African Americans affected by southern white racists in court or otherwise include the Scottsboro

One is a fictional character and the other is real life. Both the Scottsboro boys and Tom Robinson were suspected of raping white females in Alabama. In the instance with the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American teenagers were tried for the rape of two white females in Alabama. They were wrongfully accused of the rape after a fight that occurred on a freight train that resulted in a group of white men being thrown off a train. The nine black boys were taken to jail and were going to be tried for assault until two white females were found on the train. After the discovery the boys were charged with raping the two women. The white men thrown off the train decided to try the blacks for the raping the women because they originally had sexual relations with the women and were afraid they would be convicted of the crime (Douglas). Similarly in Tom Robinson’s ordeal, Mayella, the one who was “raped”, was actually abused by her father, Bob Ewell. Afraid of being tried for assault he conjured a story to make Tom look like the villain. Another controversy was the awful killing of a fourteen year old boy named Emmett Till. Till was beat so horrifically and then disposed of into a river just for “flirting” with a white woman (The death of Emmett Till). Although Robinson’s death was not as bad as Till’s it can relate in many ways. One way is they were both looked at as awful people through the eyes of whites for either a crime

Black men during this time period were not given the same privileges as the white man. They faced many problems in the work force and were rarely given higher up jobs in the auto and steel industries. There were a lot of racist whites that would not allow blacks to succeed. This comes into play when talking about Tom Robinson’s job. Mr. Robinson is a hard working field laborer and it would be impossible for him to obtain a job such as a doctor or lawyer because he neither had the money to go to college nor was he allowed there. Not only was it difficult for African Americans to get white collar jobs it was difficult for them to get a job at all. 30 percent of whites were unemployed as opposed to 50 percent of African Americans. This shows that people obviously were racist towards blacks and would rather give a job to a white instead of an African American (Sustar). “To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.” (Lee) This is a prime example of how the people of this time period looked at blacks. As unintelligent people that flea when there is a problem. Harper Lee does this to reveal to people what life was like living in a racist town in the south. Everyone being so judgmental and not the least bit