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Doomed From the Start
Throughout the course of history, blacks have always been second to the whites. Even after the Civil War, segregation and racists groups were at large. During this time, white men were disrespectful towards black men. Groups like the K.K.K. wanted nothing less than white supremacy, and they would stop at nothing to obtain this goal. Many blacks were lynched, or even killed only because of the color of their skin. The following are examples of this; the Scottsboro case, lynching by the Klan, and many forms of segregation from the 1920’s till 1930’s. Also in Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson never has a chance to plead innocent because of his black skin.
During the 1930’s, nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train near Paint Rock, Alabama. Ruby Bates and Victoria Price accused Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Andy and Roy Wright, and Eugene Williams of this crime. The boys were arrested on March 25, 1931. All but Roy Wright were sentenced to the death penalty. They were all convicted on very little evidence. It came down to two white women’s words against the black men’s. After many lawyers failed to win the defendant’s release in 1936, a plea bargain was arranged where four of the defendants were released. However, the remaining five continued to carry out their sentence. Because there was no real evidence to keep them in jail, the last defendant was freed in 1950 (Kelly 1-2).
After the Civil War, lynching was practiced by the K.K.K. Lynching is the legal execution of a person by a mob. On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the editor of the Al...
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...he balcony. This proved that the whites thought that they were better than any black man. Finally, the jury was all white. Since a white man would never believe a black man word over a white women’s word, Tom Robinson just like the Scottsboro Boys, were doomed from the start.
Work Cited
Kelly, Robin. "The Case of The "Scottsboro Boys"." Online posting. 23 Jun.1996. . 12
March, 2001. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/scottsboro.html>.
Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J.B. Lippincott
Company, 1982.
Reich, Steve. "Implementation of Segregation." Online posting. 22 Feb.1996. . 12
March, 2001.
<http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~south/archives/threads/segregation.html>.
Simkin, John. "Lynching." Online posting. . . 12 March,
2001. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm>.
The purpose of this essay is to compare three very similar cases, the Scottsboro Trials, Brown v. Mississippi, and the fictional trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; and to prove why the defendant of the third trial never had a chance. Each took place in the rural South in the 1920’s and 30’s and involved the unfair conviction of young black males by all-white juries pressured by the threat of mob violence. Each lacked the evidence sufficient for conviction, most especially for the death penalty. Last, heroes emerged from each trial and made small but solid steps towards equal justice for all.
Lynching of black men was common place in the south as Billie Holiday sang her song “Strange Fruit” and the eyes of justice looked the other way. On the other side of the coin, justice was brought swiftly to those blacks who stepped out of line and brought harm to the white race. Take for instance Nate Turner, the slave who led a rebellion against whites. Even the Teel’s brought their own form of justice to Henry Marrow because he “said something” to one of their white wives (1). Flashing forward a few years later past the days of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, several, but not all in the younger generation see the members of the black and white race as equal and find it hard to fathom that only a few years ago the atmosphere surrounding racial relations was anything but pleasant.
This essay is an analysis of two advertising posters, one of being a modern piece of media, the other being aimed at the previous generation. I will be reviewing posters from Coca Cola and Benetton, the latter being the modern piece of media in this comparison.
.guilty. . .guilty. . .guilty. . .” (211). By using only four guilty’s, Lee is able to demonstrate that the word of two white people has a greater effect than that of an African American even though the man who was put up for his life had not harmed, nor had he ever damaged anything he came into contact with.
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
How Tom Robinson was put at fault for raping Mayella Ewell. “-the evil assumption - all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around women-” (Lee, 225) He was blamed because he was near the house at the time it happened and he is black, so why shouldn’t they blame a black man? “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins.” (Lee, 243) In the 1930’s, or you could just say when slavery was happening, black men were at fault over white men. If it involved black and white men, the black men were at fault until it was proven that they weren’t
"The West Memphis Three Trial: Who was the real killer or killers?." The West Memphis Three
Several groups of white and black men rode the trains in the thirties for transportation. One night a group of white men started a fight with the black men in the train, which led to them getting kicked off. Later on in the case it is proved that the white men start the fight because both of the men have different stories and one of them admits to starting it all. After the white men were kicked off of the train it was ridden to the next stop somewhere in Alabama. Upon arriving at the station the black men and the white women were arrested for vagrancy. While talking to the police the women accused all of the black men of raping them. These women were known prostitutes of the area but their word was still taken over the black men who were accused. Twelve days later the trial took place. There were many witnesses that held bias towards the black men. One acquaintance of the women was a white lady who refused to support the lies that were coming out of the white women's mouths. One physician stated that two of the men were so badly crippled that they were incapable of committing such a crime. This wa...
Tom Robinson should not have tried to escape prison for three reasons. He would not have lost his life, he would have proven himself innocent, and he would have made a statement of how it’s wrong how white people treated black people.
Ever since America was found, there has not been social equality. African Americans were slaves for hundreds of years. During World War II, people discriminated the Japanese. Today, people are discriminating Muslims. People have repeated this part of history so many times, that it keeps happening. South Carolina Slave Laws, established in 1740, starts out article ten by saying “Slaves being objects of property...” (Bowdoin College). In the eighteenth century, people didn’t even think of African Americans as people, just property. This feeling has been passed on from generation to generation. In, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson, a black man, was accused of raping a white woman. After being claimed guilty, he was shot and killed. “In Maycomb, Tom’s death was typical,” said the narrator Scout Finch (Lee, 275). People were not fazed by a black man being killed because it has happened so many times in the
In the book To Kill a mockingbird Harper Lee states “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads, they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man word against a black man’s word. The white man always wins. They’re ugly, but these are facts of life.” (pg.252) this quote shows that because of racism the blacks are prevented for equal laws and rights as the whites do. Another evidence that is in the book To Kill a Mockingbird is when Attics states “I know I am going to lose this case, but I have to take it for myself respect “(pg.164) This shows that Atticus knows that he will lose the case because the man he is defending is a black man and the opponent is a white man. Therefore this is proof that racism prevents equal laws and rights. In conclusion I have gathered proof that shows that racism discriminates characters prevent equal law and
...because of his race; one only needs a single bullet to kill. Tom Robinson most likely felt forced to take the easy way out in fear of putting his family in more danger and poverty. The fatal outcome of Tom’s trial helps to prove how disastrous racial discrimination's effect can be on people, no matter what race they are.
Nearly the whole last half of the book is about racism. The attitude of the whole town is that Tom Robinson, because he is black and,"…all Negroes lie,…all Negroes are basically immoral beings,…all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women…"(Lee 207), will be found guilty regardless of how good a case Atticus makes for him. There was substantial amount of evidence that suggests his innocence. Even the prosecution's two witnesses' stories contradicted each other. The jury did not give a guilty verdict it gave a racist verdict. Not a verdict based on fact, but a verdict based on the color of a man's skin. This is important because the author was not making this racism up; it was what it was like in those times. She is trying to show how ignorant and blind people can be just because of differences between them, as well as how society treats racial minorities.
The cover of Kevin Boyle’s, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, features a worn black-and-white photograph of what looks like a packed courtroom, with four men in the foreground looking off to the right, as if awaiting a verdict. All of them, three white and one black, wearing suits, have their faces scrubbed out, as if someone had taken an eraser to them while the photograph was still wet. Similar to its cover, the 80-year-old Ossian Sweet case has nearly been wiped out of American history. The author, Kevin Boyle, is an associate professor of history and best known for his books on the labor movement. Boyle finishes reconstructing the Ossian Sweet case so we have a clear, precise snapshot of an incident
Ever since human existence started there have been laws. From Adam and Eve to Moses and the Ten Commandments, there has always been a higher authority that people needed to deal with. In the movies To Kill A Mockingbird and A Time To Kill, people had to deal with a higher authority because of their actions. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Tom Robinson had to deal with a rape charge, and in A Time To Kill, Carl Lee had a murder charge against him. Many different factors affected the outcome of both cases, and ultimately both outcomes were wrong. One was found guilty, and one was not, but both had to deal with the prejudice of being black and the stereotypes of the era.