How Does Harper Lee Use Racial Discrimination In To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has a historical place because of racial discrimination. By reading this I could tell that it was written a while ago because of the way whites treated black people. In the book there, is lots of racism because of the way blacks were treated verse whites are treated. Colored people back then mainly had to go the different places than whites like different churches. “First purchase African M.E. Church was in the Quarters outside the southern town limits, across the old sawmill tracks. It was an ancient paint-peeled frame building, the only church in Maycomb with a steeple and bell, called First purchase because it was paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves. Negroes worshiped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays (157).” Sometimes they would even be put on trial and be prosecuted when they were proved to not be guilty. Also, Scout and Jem in the book get picked on because their father was defending a black person. Finally, right before his trial

Back then white people thought that they somehow were better than black people. “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins (251-252).” This shows that whites thought they had more power than blacks in our justice system. In the book there was a man named Dolphus Raymond and he was a white man who married a black woman, he pretends to be drunk so the other white folk in Maycomb county don’t make fun of him for his choices. “You mean all you drink in that sack’s Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola (267)?” After Scout, Jem and Dill found out that he is not a drunk he explained that he just did that to keep the white folk from nagging on him about marrying and black woman, who he loves. This book shows racial discrimination because a white man can’t even show his love for his black wife without being made fun