To Kill A Mockingbird: The Scottsboro Trial

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, the classic novel by Harper Lee, is centered around the case of a black man being framed for raping a white woman. In the 1930s there was a similar case. The Scottsboro Boys were a group of nine black teenagers accused of raping two white woman on a train. Neither of these cases had any substantial evidence, but the men were still convicted based on the racial inequality of this time period. Although the Scottsboro case and the fictional Tom Robinson case are very similar, the one critical difference was the fate of each of the defendants as prompted by the community. Though the Scottsboro case was terrible and morally wrong, in the end each of the boys was released from prison. Yet unfortunately for Tom Robinson, he

This created the critical difference between the two, and the aftermath of each trial affected the communities in different ways as well. In the final chapters of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” while some people moved on, other bystanders felt distressed and guilty that an innocent father had been killed, yet the Scottsboro case resulted in feelings of anger and resentment by the injustice. Each of these events continued to shape the communities of fictional Maycomb, and the modern United States. Harper Lee decided to base her bestseller on this case because of the impact it had on the nation as a whole. The idea of racism was brought to light, and millions of people became more conscientious of this discrimination. However, the author writes her story in a somewhat smaller setting by choosing a small Alabama town, instead of a trial that reached a global stage. By doing this, Lee makes Scout’s narrative more relatable and displays how the case of the Scottsboro boys could have gone. Harper Lee shows the tangible truth of racism in the 1930s, and the terrible effects subjective people can have on the lives of innocent