Jim Crow Laws To Kill A Mockingbird

American history is a sad and bloody history with many bumps that have created it into the superpower it is today. This hardship from our history played a crucial part in many books and especially To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee created a writing masterpiece by using real life events as well as using real life corrupted laws. Connections like the Jim Crow laws, the mob mentality, and issues of racism that were taking place in that time.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, there are many references to the Jim Crow laws, which were created to keep inequality towards the races. The Jim Crow laws were considered a safeguard for whites and a way of life for blacks. The people at that time thought that whites were superior to blacks in all-important ways

to a black man (Piligrim). The punishments for breaking these laws were extremely severe. Examples of this are that if a black man touches a woman he would be charged with rape as well as lynching mobs were common and would lynch a man for the smallest of crimes, crimes that many did not commit (Piligrim). There are many examples of Jim Crow laws in to kill a mockingbird. One of the examples of the laws is when Tom Robinson said he would not dare push Mayella out of his way to get out because of the punishment that would have unfolded if he had. With the Jim Crow laws intact, He would have been charged with assault, rape, or even would have been lynched by a mob. Another example of this is when throughout the book Calpurnia is never called Ms. or her last name, it was only her first name because black people were not given the honor of being called courtesy titles. One of the most obvious examples of Jim Crow laws that was broken in the book was with Mr. Raymond eating with the black people. In the novel, the town has classified Mr. Raymond as an evil and vile man for

The Scottsboro trials were a overcomplicated trial to nine black teenagers who were convicted for a crime they had not committed. It all happened when two women who were crossing into a different state illegally. To be able to get a chance to get into the state they yelled rape as the nine boys came off the train (Claudia). The boys were instantly taken to the jail and a trial was instantly made. There were numerous amounts of evidence supporting the boy’s innocence. First off physicians told the jury that there was no case of rape and the boys were in an entirely different car than the women (Anderson). They were convicted by a jury that was not made of piers, which it should have been (Claudia). The jury was so bad that one man in the jury was drunk and another was senile (Anderson). The Supreme Court overturned the trials of the young boys because black people were specifically excluded in this case (Claudia). One boy was even held by Missouri and would not give him to Alabama for his death penalty because the argued that it was not right to give a death penalty to an innocent man (Anderson). Ultimately, the eight boys were executed by the death penalty and another boy lived in jail for thirty-five years. This bears a striking resemblance to the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird. First off, the book and the Scottsboro case both had a woman’s word against a