Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird And The Scottsboro Trial

For example, in both the real life case and the fictional novel, at least one black man had raped a white woman.  Though, there were 9 Scottsboro boys and only 1 man in To Kill a Mockingbird- Tom Robinson.  Also, the  boys in the Scottsboro

Both trials were based off of false accusations against black men. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was accused of rape by Mayella Ewell. And in the Scottsboro trial Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozie Powelll, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, Roy Wright, and Haywood Patterson were accused of rape by Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, a known prostitute. “The witnesses for the state have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, on the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption-the evil assumption-that all Negros lie, that all Negros are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber” (Lee 204). This quote was stated by Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird in the court and he is stating the beliefs of most people in the south during the Great Depression. These trials took place during a time of segregation and racism so most people took the side of the white women. Both of the juries and judges for these trials were white. Because of this, the accused had no chance of getting equal treatment or justice. The last and most important similarity between the Tom Robinson trial and the Scottsboro trial is the similarities within the court.

Despite their similarities, the book To Kill a Mockingbird and The Scottsboro Trials are different in many ways. First, the Scottsboro boys had different appeals

Furthermore, both text have events that are similar which explore the theme of prejudice. In both stories there are two court scenes one where Tom Robinson is trial for the rape of Mayella Ewell and the other was where a groups of white men are trialled for bombing a black man’s house. “In this country, courts are the great levellers and in our courts all men are created equal.” However Tom Robinson was innocent but only could get another trial and the white men were guilty but had their sentence suspended. “In our courts when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s the white man

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.

When Harper Lee was writing about the trial of Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” she had a very real case to look to for inspiration. The trial of the Scottsboro Boys was a world renowned case in the 1930’s in which nine black youths were accused of raping to white girls in Alabama. Lee’s novel took this case and created the fictional case of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a lower class white girl in a small town in Alabama during the Depression-era. The Scottsboro trials were the main source of inspiration for Lee’s novel, and although the circumstances of the novel differed from the real-life scandal, the similarities between the two cases are quite abundant.

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.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a book written by Nelle Harper Lee. It’s set in a fictional town in Alabama called Maycomb during the Great Depression. This story follows The Finch family (Scout, Jem and Atticus) during a case that Atticus takes on. Mayella Ewell and her father accuse a man of rape. Since this man, Tom Robinson, is african-american all the occupants of maycomb assume he is guilty. Eventually,

To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Boys are similar because Harper Lee based her story on the Scottsboro Trials.

In both the case of Tom Robinson and the real life version of the Scottsboro boys, we see that justice is denied to African Americans because the jury consists of only white. The day of the Scottsboro trial, when the jury was discussing the final verdict, the sheriff had a talk with the doctor who examined the girls and the jury didn’t do much investigation. Klarman states, “It later came out that Sheriff Wann had warned Norris that he would be killed if he did not admit that the girls had been raped”(Klarman 160). This quote demonstrates that the trial wasn’t the best since it later came out that the doctor lied which meant that the jury didn’t do much to investigate. This shows that the jury didn’t want the boys to win the trial

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

One similarity is that, both Emmett Till and Tom Robinson never got justice. In the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom was shot and killed trying to escape because he knew he didn’t do anything wrong, but the court was still going to find him guilty because he was a black man. In the Emmett Till case, Till was kidnapped and murdered, and the guilty men were acquitted and protected from further prosecution.

One of the most important cases in the history of the judicial system is little known in the modern world. The case of the Scottsboro Boys made headlines in early 1931 when nine African-American men were charged with the gang rape of two white females on a freight train from Chattanooga to Memphis. Since the time of the trial, it has become widely accepted that the allegation was false and that no rape actually occurred. However, the case represents an issue greater than itself, one that is explored similarly in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee through the case of Tom Robinson. The issue of large scale racism and discrimination has been a problem plaguing American culture for a very long time, finally becoming an issue of the

In 2010, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that black Americans receive 10% longer sentences than white Americans through the federal system for the same crimes. Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the greatest works of fictional writing in American history. Set in the 1930s in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, this story is about a young girl, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, and her family. Her father, Atticus Finch, is an attorney who has been assigned the job of defending a black man, Tom Robinson, in a trial. Although Tom is innocent, it is hard to get off the hook as a black man in 1930s Alabama. Tom is found guilty after a long and grueling trial. This leaves Scout and her brother, Jem perplexed. They don’t understand how the jury could find an innocent man guilty just because he is a different race. Throughout the book, Scout and Jem have to learn about the racism problem in America, and why it is dividing the country. To Kill a Mockingbird shows that racism has the power to negatively affect a community because it makes good people do bad things, creates hypocrisy, and it creates hatred.

The text type of To Kill a Mockingbird is a fiction novel which deals with the racism the author observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee, who wrote her novel in a retrospective point of view. There were numerous aspects of historical, personal, cultural and social context in To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee was born on the 28th of April, 1926, in Monroeville Alabama. Monroeville was a close-knit community that has many similarities with Maycomb, which is the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s father was a prominent lawyer, whom she drew inspiration for the protagonists father, Atticus Finch. Among Lee’s childhood friends was Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration to the character Dill. These personal details help portray Harper Lee’s own childhood home, where racism and segregation was highly evident. Another example of context which helped shape To Kill a Mockingbird were the events that occurred during Harper Lee’s childhood. In 1931, when Harper Lee was five years old, nine African-American men were accused of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Alabama. After a series of lengthy, highly publicised, and often bitter trials, five of the nine men were sentenced to long term imprisonment. Many prominent lawyers and various members of the general public saw the sentences as spurious and believed that it was motivated by racial prejudice.