Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird And The Scottsboro Boys

The Trials of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Scottsboro Boys Racism and prejudice can control the life of innocent individuals. For instance, historically, many slaves were used to do demeaning jobs like cleaning and cooking by their white owners. Their masters would beat them to a pulp if they disobeyed due to the fact they were their property. Furthermore, they were bought at a cheap price, which shows how worthless they were to society. The pain and suffering are really hard to understand for these men and women and how they struggled. Additionally, agony was dealt with and misery happened behind the scenes of the slave’s lives, similar to Tom Robinson and the “Scottsboro Boys” in which both were African-American and how

“Elected attorney general, Thomas Knight, Jr.”, was questioning Haywood Patterson, one of the “Scottsboro Boys” during Patterson’s testimony and he asked him “‘Were you tried in Scottsboro?’ Patterson replied, “I was framed in Scottsboro.” An angry Knight shot back, “Who told you to say that?’ Patterson answered, ‘I told myself to say it’” (Linder, “The Trials of ‘The Scottsboro Boys”). This outburst showed the audience that he wasn't afraid to stand up for himself. In a similar way, Tom Robinson also was not frightened by the trial through questioning him, Atticus desired the audience to know Tom’s previous history with the law to demonstrate that Tom takes precautions on his actions. Albeit, by telling the truth his actions might be immoral but this shows he risks everything to prove his innocence, like Scout, Atticus’s daughter and the main character in To Kill a Mockingbird said; “Atticus was showing the jury that Tom had nothing to hide” (Lee

Powell was shot at for fleeing which beforehand he “extract[ed] a pen knife from a pocket and slash[ed it at] the neck of a deputy sheriff [and] seriously injuring him.” For this action he said, he did this due to he felt as if they [Clarence Norris and Roy Wright and himself] were going to be killed on the road on their way to the prison facility. In the end, Powell survived yet “suffered permanent brain damage [and] according to Norris, Powell was never the same again” (Linder, “The Trials of ‘The Scottsboro Boys”). However in Tom’s situation he was attempting to climb over the jail fence to escape but, died with “seventeen bullet holes in him” from guards who “[first] fired a few shots in the air, [and] then to kill” (Lee 315). This concludes officers did not care if the individuals are innocent but rather are treated as if they were a prisoner in which, the police authorities used cruel forces to enforce their orders.

Parallel to both trials, the victims announce false accusations of rape causing a new event to occur. In the courtroom, Atticus starts to question Tom about the event that happened the day of the rape