To What Extent Did Tom Robinson Have A Fair Trial In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Getting accused of a crime based off the color a person shouldn't be a thing. The court case favored the whites and Tom Robinson who is an African American was falsely accused of raping and abusing a young white lady known as Mayella. Harper Lee tries to advocate civil rights in the book To Kill a Mocking Bird by showing a unfair court case, racism, and unfair social justice.
There was an unfair court case in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird because they accused a black man known as Tom Robinson of rape without fully proving he did the crime. Tom Robinson's defender Atticus Finch tried proving Tom was innocent in many ways. One in particular was showing that Tom was paralyzed from his left arm so there's no way Tom could've punched Mayella in …show more content…

Racism was a big controversy when this novel takes place since most whites think that "negroes" were bad people and couldn't be trusted. Atticus Finch knew racism is wrong which is why he's trying to help a colored man win a case. He said "You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men" (Lee 109). Atticus Finch thinks all men should be treated the same regardless of skin color. However it was rare that whites made contact with a black first. Tom Robinson confessed that Mayella asked him to help her with something in her house but later made a move to kiss him and she wanted him to kiss her back. Atticus Finch protects Tom by saying "she was white, and she tempted a negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man" (109). White women rarely made any contact during this time period because whites thought that they were more important than blacks which is why it was unspeakable in their society. The Judge, John Taylor didn't believe Tom's story and took Mayella's story which later led to Tom being