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Similarities Between Rodney King And To Kill A Mockingbird

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Throughout history, African American men have been treated with less respect than their white counterparts. As years have progressed, and the American people continued to perpetuate this cycle, discomfort in society grew. One of the key developments in this Civil Rights movement was the Rodney King Case. King was an African American man, a simple taxi driver. He was pulled over for speeding and after a prolonger altercation where he allegedly ran from the police he was detained and brutally beaten by four police officers. The case of Rodney Glen King is considered a great injustice, because of its blatantly untrue and unjustified acquittal of the four police officers who beat him and who - evidence would lead any other jury to believe - were …show more content…

As a matter of fact, throughout the 90s, the LAPD underwent a series of inside investigations regarding police brutality and the coverups thereof. Among cases called into question for reanalysis was the Rodney King Case; there was a legitimate video of the altercation. It was clear that King was not putting up a fight, but that did not stop the officers from claiming self-defense. Comparatively in To Kill A Mockingbird, there was simply no way that Tom Robinson had been in MayElla Ewell’s presence at the time which she had claimed. There was also no way that Tom Robinson could have beat her about the face on the right side, he had a gimpy hand and was not physically able to. Despite these facts, and the fact that MayElla Ewell basically admitted to perjury, Tom Robinson was still convicted and later murdered brutally in the same way that Rodney King was beat brutally. Ultimately, black-white trials were a series of back and forth situations, he-said-she-said encounters, whose word is more valuable than the other paradoxes. And whether or not an African American individual being tried with a crime was actually guilty, if they were put up against a white person, their word would automatically be unavailing (or futile) in comparison. No matter what they said, they were still black and that was enough for most juries to

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