Similarities Between Scottsboro Boys Trial And To Kill A Mockingbird

Courage is conveyed through the characters’ actions in the book To Kill A Mockingbird and the movie The Help. Atticus from To Kill A Mockingbird is a white, Southern lawyer in Maycomb County, Alabama. He adamantly defends Tom Robinson, a negro who had allegedly raped a white woman, even knowing that his prejudiced county would convict him. This exemplifies courage because a white man to seeking equality for a black man was not accepted in their time period, a place of extreme racial segregation. Yet, Atticus defended Tom already knowing that he will lose. In The

On March 25 1931 a group of nine boys were charged with raping two girls on a train traveling from Paint Rock Alabama. Several years later Harper Lee wrote her famous novel How To Kill a Mockingbird. In her story she made a character named Tom Robinson that was charged and accused of raping Mayella Ewell, it is an understanding parallel comparison between Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro case. Both Tom Robinson and the nine other boys race was presumed guilty before their trial. Harper Lee was convinced to making How To Kill a Mockingbird because she was a kid when the Scottsboro trial was happening and made comparison to the nine black boys to Tom Robinson, than Mayella Ewell to Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.

Some other small contrasts between the trials could be the evidence used in the trials and the number of people involved in the crime. But the biggest difference between the fictional story and the real event was the outcome of the two trials. Tom Robinson was sentenced to death and was put into the electric chair to be executed even with Atticus’s best efforts and a majority of evidence supporting him. But in the Scottsboro trial, the Scottsboro boys were the first group of black men to be accused of raping a white woman and leaving the courtroom without a death sentence but instead with 20-105 years of prison

in Scottsboro Trials says, “...two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, accused the black men of raping them.” (Scottsboro:American Tragedy) Another similarity is that the main plaintiffs Victoria Price and Mayella Ewell lied about their cases to defend their white womanhood and protect themselves from getting caught illegally riding the train. The Scottsboro Trials document declares that Victoria Price and her friend Ruby Bates avoided arrest from riding the train by saying that they were raped. (Scottsboro: An American Tragedy)

Back in the painfully segregated deep South of America, many blacks suffered from an actionless crime, that was the color of their skin. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is a lawyer that defends everyone, including blacks and whites, in Maycomb County, Alabama. Situated on a case in which he defends Tom Robinson, a Negro accused of rape by a white woman, Atticus is able to display his leadership by teaching his two children, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and Jeremy “Jem” Finch, that a community with prejudice and racism towards anybody is shameful, and therefore should not exist. In addition, the article, “The Scottsboro Boys”, written by Douglas O. Linder, and Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have a Dream” speech show audiences a point of view through the eyes of a Black American of the harsh reality of racial discrimination. During the early 1900’s, segregation and racial prejudice against blacks were both big issues that a majority of society failed to see as problems, but brave leaders were able to notice the fault in them, and help the reshape society for the good of both blacks and whites.

Some people knew it was Bob Ewell that abused his daughter, Mayella. I thought that it was very shocking how prolonged it took for the judge to convict Tom guilty because usually when a black is accused of raping a white, they would plead them guilty within seconds after the trial ended. Also, I think it is very ridiculous that they still convicted Tom to a death sentence when it was Bob Ewell that attacked Mayella. There was no justice served in the Tom Robinson trial, but there was justice served in the Scottsboro trial because the boys did deserve a death sentence for raping two females. I think moral courage wasn’t a factor in the decision of the Scottsboro Trial because they made their decision quite swiftly, but I think moral courage was a factor in the decision of the Tom Robinson trial.

I think that Harper Lee was inspired by the events of the Scottsboro Boys to write To Kill a Mockingbird based of the following evidence. Several of the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are very similar to people that were involved in the Scottsboro Boys trials. The setting in a small Alabama town are similar and that both of the accoused rapes are both under similar circumstances that a black man was accused by a white women. This essay will be comparing characters from the book to real people from the Scottsboro Boys trials. Including Haywood Patterson, Tom Robinson, Victoria Price, Mayella Ewell, Samuel Leibowitz, and Atticus Finch.

From just the foundations of the two cases it is obvious there are many parallels between them. The Scottsboro case and Tom Robinson's case both took place in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro boys are also accused of the same crime. Although the Scottsboro case involves 9 boys and 2 women and the other case only includes 1 man and 1 woman it is clear what Harper Lee was trying to represent. In both cases there was an extreme lack of evidence, “Ruby Bates testified that she was beaten and bruised by the repeated rapes and that she lost consciousness, regaining consciousness only when she found herself on the way to the Scottsboro jail. In fact, numerous witnesses and the arresting officers saw her fully conscious when she and the boys were taken off the train. The physician

Firstly, when it came to color the blacks were accused more. According to the scottsboro trial, 9 Blacks were accused of raping two women on a train and two of the boys were only 13 years old with another crippled boy (Jessie) . Also in the book to Kill a Mockingbird Tom Robinson was accused of rapping Mayella and when he was a boy the got his hand caught in a cotton gin and it tougher all the muscles loss of his bone ( Lee, 248-249). In both of these cases tom and the scottsboro boys both were incapable of committing the crime because of the disabilities and age just because they were accused by white people.

The Scottsboro Trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are almost identical in the forms of bias shown and the accusers that were persecuted. The bias is obvious and is shown throughout both cases, which took place in the same time period. Common parallels are seen through the time period that both trials have taken place in and those who were persecuted and why they were persecuted in the first place. The thought of "All blacks were liars, and all blacks are wrongdoers," was a major part of all of these trails. A white person's word was automatically the truth when it was held up to the credibility of someone whom was black. Both trials were perfect examples of how the people of Alabama were above the law and could do whatever they

Racism is one of the worlds's major issues today. Racism is the violation of the rights of a group of people on the basis of race,color,religion,national origin. The term racism implies blind hatred, malice, or prejudice. racism hurts everyone involved. to kill a mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee and is set in maycomb county that takes place in the 1930's. The scottsboro trial is about nine African american teenagers accused in Alabama of raping two white american women on a train in 1931.In to kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee shows how fear and racism is often more powerful than reason and intelligence. The Scottsboro trial is similar.In to kill a mockingbird the author shows us how hard it was for colored people. A colored person

April 1931, when Harper Lee was just a little girl nine african american boys were accused of rape by two women Victoria Price and Nancy Bates out of fear who were illegally riding a train and riding it without a male escort. After growing up and writing Toms trial, Lee based it off of the Scottsboro Trial. The two trials were very much alike, I'm comparision with both lawyers were alabama lawyers, both black men were accused of rape, around the same time period as in the 1930s. The people in both of these towns looked down upon them because they were black.

There are many similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. “No crime in American history—let alone a crime that never occurred—produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern railroad freight run on March 25, 1931” (Linder 1). The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, was a young girl during the Scottsboro trial and based the trial of Tom Robinson in her novel off of the Scottsboro trial of 1931. The three main similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are the geographic settings, the portrayal of racism, and the specifics of the court

There were several trials held throughout the case of the Scottsboro Boys. Most of them were unfair and obviously conducted with the odds stacked against the boys. The testimonies given by the two girls often did not match up. Victoria Price spent the most time on the stand, and on the rare occasion that Ruby Bates testified, most of what she said was disregarded because it contradicted or changed Price’s story. It was concluded that anything Bates said was no good because she was dimwitted and could not keep her story straight.

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