Native Son Book 2 Analysis

As the film Murder On A Sunday Morning, directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, documents, this murder case is a solid representation of the injustice our judicial system dispenses to the non-whites of the United States. The film tells the story of how a 15-year-old, black male was arrested and charged for a crime he did not commit. The film shows the case from the perspective of the public defenders who were assigned, and care to defend, Brenton Butler, of Jacksonville, Florida. While the film mainly documents the case and the details of why Brenton himself is not guilty, it also highlights the systematic racism the ensued before the case opened up for trial. On May 7, 2000, Mary Ann Stephens was shot in the head at the Ramada Inn, while walking

In 1930’s Maycomb Alabama, a young woman is stirring up a sleepy town by accusing an African American man of rape. Mayella Ewell, a poor white woman has wrongly accused Tom Robinson of sexually assaulting her in her own home. Her testimony, as well as her fathers’, have gaping holes in them. Their stories do not coincide, and it is even implied that Mayella’s father may have been sexually abusing her.(DBQ Mayella page 15 Chapters 18 and 20) The lack of sufficient evidence and Tom Robinson’s claim that Mayella had made advances toward him should have been enough for the jury to find Tom not guilty, but unfortunately, that was not the case. Instead, the jury believed Mayella’s deceitful testimony, and Tom was sent to jail, which ultimately led to his death. Mayella used her position in society to manipulate the court, and dispose of the only evidence of her mistake. Mayella Ewell is powerful as defined by class, gender, and especially race.

In 1931 two white women were riding the train along with the other men (the blacks and whites). When the fight broke out the blacks had won and let the white men off the train, however when the white men got off the train, they reported the incident to the local sheriff and that’s when the train stopped in Scottsboro, Alabama and everyone on the train was arrested. That’s how it all started in Scottsboro, Alabama and it was just the beginning of the case. The two women on the train Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were about to be in serious trouble because Ruby Bates was a minor and in that time it was a federal crime to take a minor across state lines for the reason of prostitution. The only way they could get of trouble in their situation was to say the black men raped them. In the time of 1931 rape was sanctioned by death. Usually they would’ve responded by a lynching, which was when they hung someone who was suspected of a crime, but for this case the citizens of Scottsboro wanted to hold a trial instead. The trial wasn’t fair at all because the outcome had been decided before the trial even

Why was it that the white race feels superior to other races, such as Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans? The problem with people is that many don’t like to see other ethical culture succeed. What people don’t know is that if that ethical group does not succeed then they together can not succeed as a racial community. The end of slavery but the rise of Jim Crow laws brought the acts of inequality, separation, and the mistreatment of the colored.

On January, 23 1906 a white woman named Nevada Taylor was dropped off the bus station in Chattanooga, Tennessee at 6:30 p.m. only two and half blocks from her home. Little did she know she was being followed? A man grabbed her by the neck and drug her ten feet before throwing her over a fence. She screamed and struggled as he put a leather strap around her neck and threatened to cut her throat. Taylor accounts waking up about ten minutes later in torn and dirty clothes covered in bruises. Her doctor later confirmed she had been raped. She claimed to have never of saw the face of the attacker but he had a soft voice of a black man. During this time of prejudice, segregation and hatred towards Negros was just a way of life for the

Those two men, Bryant and Milam, Should have went to prison for murder. They beat a black man to death and got away with it. Another way these two cases relate is the fact that the jury was all white, and had a lot to do with the sentencing of these men. For example, When Tom Robinson went up to the witness stand, he couldn’t use his left hand, when clearly the marks on Mayella’s throat were both hands. When The two men who beat Emmett to death went up on the witness stand, the jury was all white and worked in their favor because they were also white.

In 1910, a group of black women activist in Savannah spoke about the brutal lynching of eleven African Americans. They spoke against the brutal lynching of Mary Turner who was capture and murder with her eight months old unborn child (445). They saw this as injustice because they brutally murder a pregnant woman who was protesting the murder of her husband and was accused of killing a white person (445). The outrage felt by Black women call for the establishment of Federation of City Colored Women’s Club. The women passed a resolution that they send to President Woodrow Wilson, Governor Hugh Dorsey, and the president of the state and local white women’s club federations who allowed them to published their resolution in the Savannah Tribune titled “Negro Women Hold Humiliation Service.” This was a way of protesting against the brutality against women who had a similar experience as Mary Turner

Racial stereotyping often crossed over into subjective decision – making processes such as the courts, and it often resulted in devastating consequences (Alexander 2012, 4). The courts would often fail to uphold the law and give whites and blacks unequal punishment. Many times African Americans would take whites to court to dispute situations but the courts often overturned their decision and ruled in favor of the white party. After refusing to move to the Jim Crow section on a train after paying full price for a ticket, Ida B. Wells was put off the train and walks home. Later she takes the train company to court where at first she won, but later the court overturned the ruling. Ida B. Wells responded by writing, “tell my people to flee, there is no justice here” (The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow 2002, Part 1). It was also the norm some crimes that were committed by one race “not to be punishable when committed by the other race. If s white man were found guilty of adultery or bigamy, he might have to serve from 3 – 10 years in the penitentiary, but authorities were apt to ignore such a crime when committed by a black person, dismissing it as a racial defect” (Litwack 1998, 259). A white man could also be convicted of a crime and receive a very light sentence and a black man who was convicted of the same crime would receive a very heavy and unjust sentence. It is only “possible for the white race to prove its own incontestable superiority by appointing both judge and jury and summoning its own witnesses” (Du Bois 1998, 32). During Jim Crow the court system often did this. This is why blacks could be convicted of the same crimes that whites committed and sentenced to jail for several years while the white man walked free. This eventually became better after African American activist Charles Hamilton Houston devised a strategy that forced the courts to uphold the law and

But the reality was that in the 1900s, women, specifically black women had legally no voice “the author discussed the vivid picture of the black community.” If a woman was abused by her husband, the courts would not even acknowledge it even if it did

Being an African American woman in a Caucasian male dominated society, I have experienced my share of racial and sexual inequalities. Nonetheless, for the purpose of assignment only racial inequality will be discussed. As stated in last week’s assignment. For centuries, inhabitants of the earth have had an innate superiority complex, countries with greater weapons, numbers, technology and economic resources, created systems of inequality through domination of inferior-minority-groups, maintained and perpetuated through social forces.

Historically in the United States, there has always been a significant difference in the way different races have been treated. Even after many years of laws and bills being passed to create a smaller gap in the inequality of the different races, we still see a large problem with inequality today. One of those inequalities is the difference between white and African American’s, in history whites have always been at the top, and blacks at the bottom, civil rights movements lead by black leaders in the 1950s and 1960s changed the way blacks were treated, but although there was some change our society still recognizes blacks as the inferior race. Looking at inequality today, blacks are still being treated differently in jobs, the criminal justice

In her book, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching, Crystal N. Feimster discusses how race, gender and politics shaped the post-civil war south from reconstruction into the 20th century through the use of historical statistics, narratives and recorded court cases. Through the juxtaposition of Rebecca Latimer Felton and Ida B. Wells, born a generation apart as a plantation mistress and the other into racism, Feimster explores the differences in the treatment of and the reactions to a white woman and an African American woman fighting against rape and for women’s rights. The author, discusses how institutionalized racism, patriarchy and mob violence helped and hurt these women on their quest for equal rights.

The effects of racism on the victims also depended on gender. Moody makes this point clear when Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from a nearby town, was murdered for supposedly having sex with a white woman. “…every Negro man in Centreville became afraid to walk the streets. They knew too well that they would not get off as easily as the white man who was caught screwing a Negro woman. They had only to look at a white woman and be hanged for it.” (p. 131). Moody makes the connection that a black girl could get away with having sex with a white man, but if it was a black man having sex with a white woman, then it was a crime punishable by death. It was the same with anything else as well; black men were treated more violently than black women when it came to doing something the whites did not approve of.

Inequality is exemplified throughout society in the novel and outside world. Inequality is shown by elaborating on how each race is separate and not every man is equal. Chura writes, “Prior to the 1954 decision, what Benjamin Muse has called an ‘unwholesome stability’ has prevailed in the South, depriving nearly all black of the right to vote and adhering to strict and inviolable de facto and de jure segregation of the races in all areas of social life in which mixing of any kind could result in the suggestion of social equality” (Chura 1.) Demonstrating that not every person is equal, and seen through the children's eyes, this type of discrimination can influence judgment. People are born with the idea that everyone is equal no matter the

not equal. It was a time of black oppression an injustice. These themes are shown