Examples Of Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird

The Great Depression was a devastating time where millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes (McCabe 12). Not only did the Great Depression influence the writing of her novel, Harper Lee used other historical events to influence the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird. The Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials are some of the historical events that inspired To Kill a Mockingbird.

The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were a set of rules that perpetuated racism and segregation. These rules were sickening and appalling. The Jim Crow laws were made to keep Blacks from interacting with Whites. For example, if a white woman were to fall a black man could not offer her, his hand to help her up because it was considered rape (Pilgrim 2). Many scientists and religious leaders justified these laws. One reason was that scientist thought that black peoples brains were inferior to those of white people. Also, many religious leaders believed that Whites were the chosen people and Blacks were just there to serve them (Pilgrim 2). If you were not following these laws, there were sever consequences. People believed these punishments were necessary to “keep Blacks in their place”. One example is mass lynching. This punishment is when a mob of people would take a black person, accused of breaking a rule, and beat them, torture them, and kill them. The police didn’t just not stop these rampages, often they would participate. The Jim Crow laws can be seen in To Kill a Mockingbird in many ways. One of the laws was that a black person could not say that a white person was lying (Pilgrim). This is shown in the book when Tom is accused of calling Mayella a liar, by Mr. Gilmer (Lee 224).

The book, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, written by Harper Lee, is a very impactful novel that acutely connects an intricate plot and story to American history itself, specifically the time of the Great Depression, where racial oppression was rather common, and sadly, accepted. This novel dives into the harsh times of the Great Depression and gives readers a rather sufficient understanding of what life was like back then. In this novel, there are a plethora of archetypes, those being symbols, motifs, themes, myths, and characters that have a deep impact on the story’s development.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that takes place in Alabama during the Great Depression. It is narrated by the main character who is a little girl named Jean Louise Finch aka “Scout”. Scout has a father named Atticus who is a lawyer and an older brother. The Finch’s are a white family and when Atticus goes to defend a black man, the whole town is shocked.This novel has tons of racism. Racism is an issue that is still current. Large amounts of racism are expressed in the novel still happens today through racial profiling, police brutality, and segregation.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the sleepy, southern Maycomb, Alabama. A small town in the grips of 1930’s depression, To Kill a Mockingbird spans a period of three years following young Scout Finch and her family through their experiences with racism and prejudice. Jim Crow laws were a series of ordinances the prevented equal treatment of African-Americans. Beginning with the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and remaining in effect until the Civil rights movement of the 1950s, Jim Crow laws governed where colored people could live, work, eat, enter and exit a building, and use public services. “Jim Crow laws grew from theories of white supremacy and were a reaction to Reconstruction,” explained Andrew Costly of the Constitutional Rights Foundation, “In the depression-racked 1890s, racism appealed to whites who feared losing their jobs to blacks.” Ensuring that freed slaves remained weak and inferior, Jim Crow laws revoked black freedom’s and crippled their rights. And while not explicitly stated, evidence of Jim Crow Laws appears methodically throughout To Kill a Mockingbird. Strongly influenced by elements of racism, the story paints a vivid picture of life in the era of Jim Crow, for both colored and white.

“Devastation and uncertainty” are two words that describe the feelings of thousands of Americans during the Great Depression(McCabe 12). From losing homes to jobs, many Americans were left devastated. These feelings during this time period were Harper Lee’s main inspiration to writing her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Within the novel, there were many connections to the Jim Crows laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials.

The color of some ones skin does not determine the importance of their life. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel based on a young girl facing racism and discrimination, she is standing up for what she knows is right. Jim Crow Laws were portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird, Jim Crow Laws were state laws discriminating against African Americans. All the citizens of Maycomb, especially the negroes, experienced discrimination in the highest degrees. To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, relates to the Jim Crow laws and discrimination around the nineteen-thirties. The Jim Crow laws and To Kill a Mockingbird are intertwined, throughout the book from little hints to events impossible to miss. In the novel Scout and Jem see how discriminative their little town is and how smart and kind their father Atticus is when faced with discrimination.

The first connection to America’s actual history is the presence of Jim Crow laws in To Kill A Mockingbird. In history, the Jim Crow laws were not a good thing. Jim Crow laws were laws that belittled African Americans and made them seem lesser than white people. An example of a Jim Crow law would be that African American people could not be buried in the same cemetery as a white person when they died. Black children could also not learn in the same environment as white children. If anyone broke these laws, there were punishments. As said in the “What is Jim Crow?” article, if a teacher taught both black and white children, they could be fined. If an African American broke these laws, they could risk their families, jobs, and even their lives (Pilgrim 4). In To Kill A Mockingbird, the people in the fictional city Maycomb, Alabama abide by the Jim Crow laws. Scout witnessed some of these laws throughout the book. During the trial against Tom Robinson, Mr. Gilmer attempted to imply that Tom was saying Mayella was lying (Lee 294) which is strictly against a Jim Crow law. When Scout was in school, she did not go to school with black children because it was not allowed. There was examples of Jim Crow etiquette in To Kill A Mockingbird. All African American characters in the book referred to the white characters with courtesy titles like Miss or Sir because it was expected of them and considered disrespectful and rude. Another example is when Atticus and Calpurnia are going to tell Helen Robinson about her husband’s death, Calpurnia is sitting in the backseat of Atticus’s car (Lee 321), as was expected of any colored person in

The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a classic award winning book written in the 1950’s during the great depression. Harper Lee paints a picture of growing up in a small town in Alabama during the Great Depression. Characters in this book are written with empathy and truth, violence is shown, and landscape of what life is like during the depression is show greatly in this book.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is set in the time of The Great Depression, and shows several families that are faced with poverty. The Great Depression started with the stock market crash in 1929, between 1930 and 1934, one million farmers lost their homes and jobs. The Great Depression was making everyone poor and inflation was high. Many characters in the novel are extremely poor, such as the Cunninghams, so setting the the novel in the time of The Great Depression helps Lee to show differences between different classes.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel with demonstrations of many unfair things. One example of these unfair things is the demonstration of the Jim Crow Laws in action. The Jim Crow Laws were the laws that allowed segregation between whites and blacks. These laws could deny blacks education, jobs, and transportation. They completely violated the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments. White people tried to defend this by saying that blacks were more likely to commit crimes

Jim Crow Laws are laws that were put in place to “protect” white people from blacks. The name Jim Crow was created in 1830. It came from a white actor named Thomas Dartmouth. He performed routines as a fictional character named Jim Crow, “a caricature of a clumsy dim witted black slave” (Andrews). In Harper Lee’s book To Kill A Mockingbird, this law was promoted by segregation.

The Jim Crow laws had a very strong influence on the way of life of many people in the late 1800's up to the mid-1900's. Segregation was heavily enforced and accomplished the intended effect of people discriminating against each other, deeply affecting the southern region of the US. In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, many traces of the influence of the Jim Crow laws can be found, for her story is based on life in the 1930's, taking place in Maycomb County, Alabama. The traces of the laws are mostly seen through the characters in her novel and in the ways they interact with each other. Atticus Finch's character is the strongest force against the Jim Crow laws found in the novel, as a father, a brother and a lawyer.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel used to bring ideal imperfections of people that found themselves in an imperfect world. Racism and tradition are key focuses with both the trail and conflicts between completely different thoughts of racism, which was an effect of

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee. The novel is about the experiences of two siblings growing up in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s. Scout and her brother, Jem Finch, over several years, learn valuable lessons about life and society. The main themes of the story are the loss of cherubic innocence and the rift of inequality in society. The novel is largely influenced when it was written by the author’s own experiences, Civil Rights, and the Great Depression. The Great Depression is referenced many times in the novel since the Great Depression plays an important part influencing the story’s setting, plot, and characters. In To Kill a Mockingbird there are signs that the Great Depression is present and that certain characters are affected more by it than others, and the Great Depression is shown in the story’s families and their lives.