Historical Events In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

The Jim Crow laws were unfair and unjust to all African-Americans by making them unequal. The Jim Crow laws are laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. It used the term separate but equal, even though conditions for African Americans were always worst than their white counterparts. They could not eat at the same restaurant as white people, they could not used the same restrooms, and they couldn't even use the same drinking fountain. Their schools and buildings were severely underfunded and not properly maintained. Blacks could not socialize with white people in public or they risked being arrested. “A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it

The Great Depression was a time of devastation and uncertainty (McCabe 12). The great depression was a time when the stock market crashed causing many people to lose their jobs and homes. This novel is based on the time around the Great Depression. There were many historical influences in the book To Kill a Mockingbird such as the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality and the Scottsboro trials.

The Jim Crow laws weren’t originally named the Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era (1865-1877) when they were first passed. They were started to called that by the actor named Jim Crow who was a white man who blacked his face and he danced around and sang about not having a care in the world. The Reconstruction era was the period of time after the civil war after the north triumphed over the south. Things weren’t a smooth transition for the people of the south with many people staying as racists and the creation of hate groups and deadly gangs such as the Ku Klux Klan were rampant after the northern soldiers left the south when reconstruction was over. The treatment of the innocent black people was unfair and unjust. Reconstruction wasn’t

How much of history would change if African Americans never went through adversity? Between 1877 (End of Reconstruction) and the 1950’s (Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement) African Americans went through immense hardships. They had to fight numerous times in order to gain their rights and even be counted as “human”. During the Harlem Renaissance many African Americans arose and found ways to create and show what they were going through. A famous African American author and civil rights leader by the name of James Weldon Johnson “was deeply committed to exposing the injustice and brutality imposed on African Americans throughout the United States, especially in the Jim Crow South”

In January of 1926, the Public Assemblages Act made it legal to separate whites and blacks in public halls, theaters, opera houses, and motion picture shows. The final Acts beginning in 1928 attempted to fix the definition of racial definitions. It redefined colored as anyone who has any ascertainable degree of negro blood, any negro blood in their ancestry.

After the Civil War, the south was left in shambles. Not only were the southern states left with the destruction and damage of the war but the economy was injured and barely stable because of the costs of war. The union began a Reconstruction movement to rebuild the broken nation. The Reconstruction was also meant to repair the broken economy and the damaged society. But the effectiveness of this system is questionable because it both succeeded and failed. Reconstruction was an overall failure because Republican Legislations failed to protect former slaves from persecution, white slave owners had returned to power and because “black codes” were passed, and African Americans lost their economic power and became tied to slave owners because of

The Jim Crow Laws authorized legal punishment for interacting with the opposite race. This led to treatment and areas that were almost always inferior to the whites. “Jim Crow” originally referred to a popular dance from the 1820s, and referred to a black man in an old song. Theologians and Christian ministers taught that whites were the “Chosen people”, God support racial segregation and blacks were cursed to be servants (Hansen 1). Jim Crow Laws legalized segregation between blacks and whites to create “separate but equal”, but this had a more negative than positive outcome.

Al Sharpton radio host, and minister once said, “We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.” (cite) He then goes on to say that his “son” is smarter, slicker, and more cunning than him. This metaphor describes that even though the Jim Crow Laws have been ratified, there is a new racial discrimination in America that is growing and is harder to defeat than the last. The Jim Crow Laws were the set of laws that set the whites and blacks separate from each other in the 1900s, although they have been defeated, America today may be equal lawfully but not on an individual level. With the beginning of the Jim Crow Laws in the 1900s to their abolishment in 1965, and even today, America has yet to resolve the issue of “separate but equal.”

Before the civil war African Americans were enslaved forced to work on plantations. They were treated harshly, and faced many different hardships. This would change after the civil war, because they were granted their freedom. They were no longer forced to work on plantations, but that does not mean they were treated any better. After the civil war African Americans were still treated poorly and faced persecution for many years. Even though African Americans were free they still did not get treated the way that they should be. I feel that relations between white people and African Americans remained the same even after slavery was abolished. I believe this because there were black codes in America, the kkk was formed, and African Americans were segregated from the white people.

The white people down in the south, aka the confederate states, were the people who had started the “Jim Crow Laws” because they’re racist and wanted power over the black people. They also made it hard for black people to vote and do things. They weren’t in control of black people but they were bossing them around. Black people also didn’t get enough freedom, as the white people separated them. Blacks got old stuff, whites got new stuff. The Jim Crow Laws are laws made in the south, based on race. It created a “separate but equal” from white people and black people. White people used black people as slaves and now that their “slaves” are equal to them, white people made the Jim Crow Laws so that they will still be more superior to blacks. Water

“To Kill a Mockingbird” was set in the Great Depression. During the Great Depression money was hard to come by, and with racism still lingering people were not the kindest. In the novel Scout’s father, Atticus, was a lawyer.

What comes next is a very much needed, but undoubtedly a grim chapter in our nation's brief history, the atrocious Civil war known as "a new birth of freedom" said by no one other than Abraham Lincoln himself. With the southern states succeeding from the northern states, this quite literally

Fortunately for some period of time the success of the reconstruction outweigh the negative, these negatives quickly escalated during this important milestone for the country.

Families changed drastically during the 1930’s, some for the better, others for the worse. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus and his peers show that even in small southern communities, the Great Depression had its toll. Families all over the U.S. blamed Herbert Hoover for the struggles of the Great Depression. In order to help their communities, teens and young adults took jobs in any field offered. Newly employed women took the power to make decisions with their own income to support their family. In the end, WWII pulled America out of its longest depression in history and created one of

Although the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, took place in the 1930s, it ties closely into the Civil Rights Movement. This novel displayed the obvious superiority whites had over blacks. It took place during a time when colored people faced discrimination, prejudice, and racism. When the book was published in the 1960s, it made whites furious, resulting in a lot of controversy. Harper Lee had a goal when writing, she wanted to show the relation between actual events that happened during the civil rights and incorporate it into her own novel to show how cruel colored people were treated, specifically when whites accused blacks of doing sinful acts.