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Significance Of The 13th Amendment In To Kill A Mockingbird

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The thirteenth amendment states that all slavery in the United States is now abolished, along with involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The fourteenth amendment granted all people born or naturalized in the United States citizenship. These two amendments changed a lot in the course of history, but they also changed a lot in the town of Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus Finch is one of the top lawyers in Maycomb County. After these two amendments were enforced, he was appointed to defend Tom Robinson. The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments played into To Kill A Mockingbird in many ways, affecting how many things in the town ran and occurred. The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments affect To Kill A Mockingbird because, without the fourteenth amendment, Atticus would not have been appointed to defend Tom, Tom would not have been arrested or tried at all, and without these two amendments, Jim Crow laws would have never existed and created the dismay of racism. The fourteenth amendment states that "Its equal protection clause requires each state to provide equal …show more content…

These laws are known as Jim Crow laws. They were created to keep the two different races segregated. A big part of the trial of Tom Robinson was racism, which was the reason behind the Jim Crow laws. After Tom had been announced as guilty Atticus told his kids "As you grow older you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it, whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." (Lee 220). He also says "In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man will always win" (Lee 220). Even though it was apparent in several ways that Tom was not guilty, he has still declared it because of the racism in the

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