Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird

Since my written source was concerning the Jim Crow laws, I chose a letter which was written by the father of the abolitionist movement, Fredrick Douglass. He expresses his concerns about the unjust treatment which the African- Americans are forced to endure. He concludes that it is the old mentality of slavery and racism by the White race that has led the Jim Crow laws to be enacted. Furthermore, Fredrick Douglass documents some his observations and beliefs in this letter. He has noticed several incidences of segregation and inequality. I chose this primary source because it had a direct correlation to the Jim Crow Laws. It explores several instances of inequalities in the southern states, proving the brutal treatment of African- Americans.

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).

During the 1930’s depression, there was a great divide between black and white America. There were many communities and groups who had been exposed to the same treatment and persecution as the Negroes in To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee has used a small town setting, such as that in To Kill a Mockingbird, to illustrate America’s views on white supremacy and the inferiority of the black race. The author has illustrated view that are expressed world-wide through her characters in Maycomb county.

In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee segregation plays a huge role throughout the story. The Jim Crow Law also lay along these lines too. The Jim Crow Laws were laws that legalized segregation between blacks and whites. In Harper Lee’s book black and white people are often separated.

The topic that I chose for my research paper is the Jim Crow laws. I chose this topic because during this time period the Jim Crow laws were a huge obstacle that our country had to overcome in order to grow. The Jim Crow laws were created to separate whites and blacks in their everyday lives, allowing for no interaction between races. The Jim Crow Laws were enforced in the southern, United States. The laws existed between 1877 and the 1950’s, around the time the reconstruction period was ending and the civil rights movement was beginning.

Thomas Rico was a famous actor in the 1860’s, who played the character named Jim Crow, in theaters. Around the time that Jim Crow became popular, slave were being free from plantations and new laws were being made in the south. These laws were created to limit the freedom of newly freed African-Americans. White people in the south grew fond of both Jim Crow and the new laws that they started calling these laws “Jim Crow Laws”. Though the African-Americans were freed and had rights, whites would use laws so they could have power over African-Americans,

The Jim crow Law, was a system set up mostly in the southern area of america from 1877-1960’s, its goal is to change the way colored people were allowed to live in america after gain their “freedom” from slavery. These so called law are were meant to continue the segregation against those of color so that they don’t start thinking highly of them selfs and don’t come to a place thinking that they own their own lives and it their to do with what they please. Fear is a powerful thing and when learned, it can do some serious harm both physically and emotionally. Many of these law would prevent colored people from doing thing we do now on a day to day…. heck, some of these we do more then once in a day. Things like giving a hand shake, showing affection, eating together and even siting next to someone in a bus or cab was set to be done in a certain way. All this was done just so that a race of people not the same color as you don’t think their equal to you. Even now it make me wonder how people can have so much hate in their heart to live like this and be ok or even happy about it. to give an even more broader look on how bad it was i’m gonna list many of the thing colored be people went’t allowed to do in america back then.

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.

Can you imagine being told where and what to do based on the color of your skin? Many people born between 1800s and 1900s have experienced this. Whites and Blacks were considered completely different species back in those days. People thought that the races being separated was okay, as long as everything each race had was equal. This was never the situation though because blacks always had less than what the white people did. A group of laws that enforced this behavior were known as the Jim Crow Laws.

“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.

In the late 1800s to the early 1900s segregation was one of the biggest issues in the court of law. After slavery was finally abolished African Americans were able to have more freedom, but they were still treated different than any other race. The Jim Crow laws are an example of the law that affected everyday life in the African American community in the beginning of the 1890s. This law segregated schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. The struggle to achieve equality was made even more difficult by the legislation of racism in the Plessy v Ferguson case.

“The Jim Crow era was one of struggle -- not only for the victims of violence, discrimination, and poverty, but by those who worked to challenge (or promote) segregation in the South” (“Jim Crow Stories”). It is important to know the history of this significant period where everyone was treated differently based on how they looked instead of their character. During the Jim Crow era, the lives of African Americans were severely restricted making it difficult for them to succeed in everyday life.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee's only novel, is a fictional story of racial oppression, set in Maycomb, A.L. in 1925 to 1935, loosely based on the events of the Scottsboro trials. Unlike the story however, the racial discrimination and oppression in the novel very accurately portrays what it was like in the 1920's and 1930's in the south. Tom Robinson, the black man accused of raping a poor low class white girl of 19, never stood a chance of getting a fair trial. This can be supported by giving examples of racially discriminatory and

Soon after slavery was abolished in 1865, all races could live freely without being controlled by anyone else...or so they thought. A new rule in the southern states in America divided whites and blacks amongst each other called “systematic discrimination” or as you may know it as, segregation or Jim Crow laws. However in 1975 civil right law meaning to prevent discrimination against other races, really didn’t work out too well. It was already too late, because the Jim Crow laws were already put in place. How did this all happen? Well we need to go back when Jim Crow laws were first thought of. In 1890, a group called “The citizen’s committee” plotted a protest against an early Jim Crow law. More specifically Louisiana’s separate car law. It abided by a rule known as “equal, but separate” idea. Other races could have the same rights as White people, however they had to be positioned differently in different