If It's A Black Man Against A White Man

The saying, “white men rule”, has been around since the founding of the United States of America and continues to this day. This country was built and controlled by white men. Not only were blacks frowned upon, but women too. Back then, a black person never received justice. “...our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal” (Lee 274). Atticus Finch is saying how a courtroom is a place where there should be equal justice. Tom was not being treated equal therefore, this so called “place of equal justice” was not abiding to what it should be. In St. Louis, Missouri, June 2017, a white police officer shot and wounded an off-duty black police officer. In an article from the New York Times, it states, “... the off-duty officer, a 38- year old black man with 11 years of service, was inside his home nearby when he heard the commotion. Taking his police issued weapon, he went outside to help. When he approached the scene, two of the officers told him to get on the ground but then recognized him and ordered him to walk toward them. But another officer who had just arrived, a 36- year old white man with more than 8 years of service, did not recognize the black officer. That officer “fearing for his safety,”...fired a shot”. It continues to say, “... in the police report you have so far, there is no description of a threat he received,

Someone once said “No matter your social status or how powerful you think you are, we are all equal.” The quote has much to do with the racism and segregation that people went through while living in America, especially in the South. It still is a relevant quote today, seeing as how racism and segregation has not ended, but increased over the decades. In Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill A Mockingbird, the small town of Maycomb, Alabama consists of plenty of racism and segregation. When Atticus is obligated to defend the man accused of rape, the whole town is hoping for him to prove his client is guilty. They’re quick to make a judgement about him, solely because he’s a black man. In this novel, several craft moves/techniques are used which then

During that time Johnson was the general secretary of the NAACP, and knew what impact the case would have on civil rights. Given this the NAACP aided those accused of the murder of Breiner, and a first-rate defense team was in the making. Assistant secretary Walter White was the main assistant of NAACP to find the best attorneys (who were not prejudiced, of course). He later meets Arthur Garfield Hays and Clarence Darrow and urges them to take the case. After agreeing they meet their clients about a month after the accident. Boyle shows how both James Weldon Johnson and Clarence Darrow had interior motives for defending the Sweets. Both men had a love for the spotlight, when speaking about Darrow, Boyle writes "in the glare of a high-profile case he found the perfect opportunity to attack the status quo and proclaim the modernist creed." The trial itself felt more of a civil rights case than a criminal case. The most impressive thing in regards to the actual trial was the performance done by Darrow. One could draw many similarities between him and To Kill A Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch. A common misconception of the courtroom is that the jury goes strictly off of evidence when deliberating. This book clears up that false belief with the attorneys playing off of emotion and targeting pathos. A strong argument presented by Darrow can be summarized by a few statements he made in that courtroom. “You are facing a problem of two races, a problem that will take centuries to solve. If I felt none of you were prejudiced, I'd have no fear. I want you to be as unprejudiced as you can be. Draw upon your imagination and think how you would feel if you fired at some black man in a black community, and then had to be tried by

This quote shows how the klansmen have forced people to do want they want or they will face punishments. This also showed the lack of equal law treatment in the states at the time that

“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the jury in the Tom Robinson trial had to make a decision. Tom Robinson who was an innocent man, was convicted for a crime he did not do. Atticus proves his innocence with hard facts and it was up to the jury if they wanted to deem Tom Robinson guilty or not guilty. The jury thought about the case for a long time which does not happen often with cases about a black man in the 1930's, but in the end they did deem him guilty. Even though that they knew that he was an innocent man, they proclaimed that he was guilty, because they had to make a decision, and they decided to do what society thought was right. When Tom Robinson knew that there would be nothing that could save him he decided to run, not because he was guilty but because he knew that he would die either

In Maycomb, a black man named Tom Robinson is on trial for raping beating up Mayella Ewell. From the beginning Mr. Robinson never really received a fair trial. The law states that someone should get a fair trial from a jury of their peers. However, in Maycomb this doesn’t happen. The Courthouse in Maycomb is filled with local white people. Two men say “You know the court appointed him to defend this nigger...Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it”(163). This quote is important because it shows the overall attitude of Maycomb’s white citizens. One critical moment may have shown why the trial wasn’t a fair trial. Atticus proved that Tom Robinson was not involved in the attack. “His left arm was fully 12 inches shorter than his right and hung dead at his side” (186). This represented the physical

In 1979, the first black man was in a jury. For once in time, white Americans felt threatened. Wouldn’t you? After so many dreadful years that blacks faced from whites, they could potentially use this to “get back” at Americans. This is what Southerner feared the most. If a black man was in a jury, would they side with the white guy, or the black guy? The obvious answer would be the black guys. Southerners didn’t ever think about the future with black rights because they never saw times changing. Their attitudes definitely came back to bit them in the butts.

Tom Robinson’s case, in which we see in that time period how a white man’s word goes against a black’s, is perceived as unfair by Scout, Jem, Atticus, and many of their neighbors. As Atticus says to Jem, “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 who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”(295) This quote explains that there is great injustice and extortion for personal gain. This is disturbing in its own right; The fact that Atticus needs to even make a comment like that is disturbing in its own right, let alone that any person would do that to another, also tells Jem this: “So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night in front of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn’t go as reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads–they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.”(295) Even a man like Atticus, a sort of rebel in that time period, accepts that the system is

Back then when if you were black you would be guilty until proven innocent, no matter what. The reason for that was because people were more racist back then than today and black people were the main target. Even if you did nothing and you were black, if someone told on you and accused you of doing something really bad even if there is no proof you would still get in trouble. In Scottsboro Boys there was nine black boys who went to a train men were fighting them because they illegally rode the train. There were also 2 women that falsely accusing them of rape. You can find all this information on the “False Accusations” part of The Scottsboro Boys. They had to go through a lot to prove their innocence. Not that much changed today 5 young black men got accused of raping a woman not to long ago. Then young men had to go to court to prove their innocence, comparable to the time when in To Kill a Mockingbird when Tom Robinson got accused of raping Bob Ewell's daughter, Mayella. She got caught lying a lot in court and Tom Robinson was innocent but it was unfair for black people back then so he was guilty even though he was innocent and went to

The prejudice seen in the fictional novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee corresponds with the real narrow-mindedness during this time period. A fair trial would be unlikely during this time period between a white and a black man. Tom Robinson was presumed guilty because of his race.

the prisoners were lucky enough to escape the being lynched when they were moved into Scottsboro. In this trial, nine young, black boys were charged with the rape of two white girls while on a train. This case was a major source of controversy in the 1930’s. “Despite testimony by doctors who had examined the women that no rape had occurred, the all- white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old were sentenced to death” (“Scottsboro”). The boys’ lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, did not even get assigned to the case until the first day of the trial. “If he could show a jury that these nine boys were innocent, as the record indicated, the jury would surely free them. To Leibowitz, that was simple!” (Chalmers 35). However, it was not that simple. Many white citizens would not change their minds about

It was much easier for a white man to go on trial than a colored man. In 1918, white troops from Illinois, in broad daylight, under the eyes of tens of thousands of people, shot, wounded and killed over one hundred Negroes without any reasonable or apparent provocation from

For him, like many other real-life Negroes in American history, the principles underpinning political, social and criminal justice failed. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus’ belief that, “in our courts all men are created equal,” ( p. 209) makes a complete mockery of the judicial system.

This was the opinion of most Justices and the majority of the white population at that time. From this quote you can see how the people still believed that the races were not the same and had to be kept separate. This was considered normal in the court and in the social life. The fact, that the races were not treated equally, even though stated within the law, was ignored by the white population.