Tom Robinson's Trial

WOW! To Kill A Mockingbird has been a popular book for many years. The reason for this is it brings out a main theme which was common back then and still happens now. The theme of racism is seen in the book mainly at Tom Robinson's trial. The Ewell family represents the pride that whites had for innocent blacks. There were many cases like the Tom Robinson case, an important one is the Scottsboro Boys, which took over 20 years to solve. The court rulings in the early 1900’s were based on race and the trial of Tom Robinson in “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee gives us a glimpse of how horrific racial inequality was for African-Americans.

In the book, Tom Robinson was found guilty of a crime just because of his skin color. He was accused

Eight of the nine defendants got sentenced to death. The International Labor defense (ILD) started working on appeals for the defendants. “The ILD soon got into a conflict with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP)”.They were fighting for control of the defense for the next three years. When the ILD finally secured legal counsel for the defendants, they started a campaign for a release of the defendants. The case got so popular that there were marches being held across the world to petition a release of the Scottsboro boys. A re-trial was finally held and there were defense attorneys set up for the Scottsboro boys, but nothing ended up happening. In 1935 the ILD cooperated with the NAACP and created a Scottsboro defense committee (SBC).the case slowly was forgotten of and more legal failures happened. Finally, in July 1937 a plea bargain by the SBC, released four of the defendants.one escaped in 1948 and the “last defendant was released in 1950,nineteen years after his initial arrest.“ The release of last defendant, sparked a big movement which was called the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights movement was so big, that marches were being held across the country no matter white or black, south or north for equal rights. This was such a big case since it was the tipping point of having a better judicial system in place that will never take into account

The concept was first really spoken of in an essay by Lloyd warner in 1936.There was a study in a city in Missippi. In the study they found that there were two classes. One for the whites and one for the blacks. There was also a study done in New England and they found out that only one class lived there, no matter the race. However, rich the blacks were, whites had way more rights than the blacks and that's why they were always considered a higher class in the South. The caste and class concept brought attention to how bad the African-American poverty was then and it also got attention of the racism divide that’s happening in the South compared to the North.

The case of Tom Robinson in “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee was based on race and nothing else and the Scottsboro boys case mainly lead to a change in the judicial system. The Tom Robinson case was a really horrific and biased case, then came the Scottsboro case which was twenty years long and changed the course of the judicial system. The caste and class concept was still living on for a while until small stuff got changed like having more rights for blacks and many more stuff. All these cases sparked a Civil Rights movement that got the government's attention of how bad the racism was in the