Significance Of The Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird

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).

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.

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.

To Kill a Mockingbird, a classic novel written by Harper Lee, is focused on racism that takes place in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s, where African Americans were segregated by white men. Harper Lee said that the Scottsboro trial, which was a trial that started because of discrimination, inspired her on writing To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite the differences between the Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird, both of them had an impact on the racial implications and laws of the south.

“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.

When reading books, readers will occasionally find that some books will have historical influences in them. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee there are three different historical influences. Lee used real life historical events in her book To Kill A Mockingbird to help make her story more Inspirational. The three different historical influences that Lee used were mob mentality, Jim Crow laws, and the Scottsboro trial.

To begin with, Harper Lee bases To Kill a Mockingbird on her own personal experiences of prejudice. “Set in a small Alabama town with characters drawn partly from her own experience, the story centered around the wrongful conviction of a black man for rape” (Funk, Wagnalls, 1). Basing a book on personal experience shows that even though a book is fictional, it can be based on everyday life. Lee shows the hardships that the Finch and Robinson families go through before and after the trial. The novel justifies what prejudice is like in everyday life not just in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Imagine having your life on the line because someone thinks you have committed a crime you did not commit. During the 1930s colored people were put down and were inferior to whites. Everyone was trying to find a place in society but it was made especially hard for the African Americans in this time. They were pushed to the bottom of everything and treated like nothing. In Harper Lee's very impactful book To Kill a Mockingbird, she illustrates what it was like for one black man to be pushed aside like he was nothing mainly because he was black. In her book she uses examples from real life examples from those times like: the Jim Crow laws, the effects of racism and the Scottsboro Trials.

The color of some ones skin does not determine the importance of their life. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel based on a young girl facing racism and discrimination, she is standing up for what she knows is right. Jim Crow Laws were portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird, Jim Crow Laws were state laws discriminating against African Americans. All the citizens of Maycomb, especially the negroes, experienced discrimination in the highest degrees. To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, relates to the Jim Crow laws and discrimination around the nineteen-thirties. The Jim Crow laws and To Kill a Mockingbird are intertwined, throughout the book from little hints to events impossible to miss. In the novel Scout and Jem see how discriminative their little town is and how smart and kind their father Atticus is when faced with discrimination.

“Scout, I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time . . . it’s because he wants to stay inside” (Lee 304). Jem said this to Scout after the final decision of the trial was made, and Jem was seeing what the world is really like. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about a girl named Scout living through the Great Depression and witnessing a trial against a black man accused of raping a white woman. Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and racism were all things common in the book, and in real life at the time.

Jim Crow laws are laws that stated that Native American people were limited to certain rights. The practice of Jim Crow laws deprived American citizens of their civil rights because the laws limited their education, their careers, and their personal lives outside of work and school.

In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, author Harper Lee shows many subjects that took place during this difficult time. The Jim Crow Laws, Mob Mentality and the Scottsboro trials influenced her to write the book and inform the readers of To Kill A Mockingbird.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” By Martin Luther King Jr. The unjust laws King was talking about is the Jim Crow Laws. Those laws segregated white folks from black. The laws had several foolish examples of how blacks slightly ruined white life's. The motto of the Jim Crow laws was, “Separate, but equal” However, everyone knew that nothing was equal about those kreul laws. In this essay, I will be discussing why the Jim Crow laws were not beneficial for anyone living through that terrible time.

For many years African Americans have dealt with injustice and and racism. From being falsely accused of a crime, from being harmed for no reason at all, and even being killed just for walking. This day in time is horrible, not as bad as the 1900’s but it is bad enough to the point where it needs to stop. Some people are scared for their life to walk outside or even go to the store without being terrified of being hurt. These laws have changed, yet there is still injustice around the world. Throughout Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird the readers are exposed to the cruel treatment of African Americans in Maycomb, known as Jim Crow laws. The youngest character, Scout, does not fully comprehend what this is but she knows it is not right.