Tom Robinson Trial In To Kill A Mockingbird

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One of the most intensive depictions of racism in the novel is the case of Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson was a black man who was unjustly accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. "Old Mr. Bob Ewell accused him of rapin' his girl an' had him arrested an' put in jail," said Calpurnia to Scout. The white lawyer defending him, who was Scout's father, Atticus, was looked upon in disregard and disrespect and even called "nigger-lover" by adults and small children alike. Even his children were mostly bullied by their peers at school and even their relatives. "Your father's no better than the niggers and trash he works for," said Mrs. Dubose to Jem and Scout. All of this was just because he was defending a black man who was accused of, as Edythe…show more content…
However, it should be noted that Atticus was appointed by John Taylor, who was a judge, to take the case and did not ask for it himself. He even said that he would have preferred if he never faced such a case in his whole life. "You know, I'd hoped to get through life without a case of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, "You're It."," said Atticus to his brother, Jack. Despite losing the case in the end, black people respected him greatly and treated his children with great kindness as a simple token of gratitude. This was shown when they all stood up in unison as a sign of respect as he was leaving the courtroom. "I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their…show more content…
As it says in The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History, "In the late nineteenth century a formal structure of racial discrimination and marginalization, known as Jim Crow, emerged. Racial Segregation was a system of tightly enforced racial controls that mandated the physical separation of the races and oppressed African Americans economically, politically, and socially". Jim Crow laws were applied in "employment, public transportation, hospitals, jails, schools, churches, and cemeteries". According to Joe Feagin, these laws were applied in the southern states during the 1930s. Those segregation laws were applied until late 1930s and the greatest successes against them were made in the 1950s. According to Don Noble, "Segregation in 1936 Alabama had, in the minds of 99 percent of the white people, the same force as the law of gravity, inconceivable to repeal". That shows how racist white Americans were towards black Americans during that period of
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