A Plea for Peace In the late 19th century, tens of millions of people were killed or enslaved because of their race. Imagine how it would feel to be pushed away from society because of your skin color. Harper Lee used real-life events as inspiration for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. There are connections to Jim Crow, mob mentality, and issues of racism in that time period. In To Kill A Mockingbird, the Jim Crow laws are one of the first historical references. Jim Crow was a system that setup inequality between the races. Some people felt these laws were needed to make whites feel superior to blacks, and blacks inferior to whites; a way to separate whites and blacks (Pilgrim). One example of the laws is blacks were not allowed to show public …show more content…
Mob mentality is when people are influenced to do something they usually would not do without the help and support of others (Smith). This is shown in current examples like peer pressure, clothing style, Black Friday, restaurants, and name brands (Smith). Mob mentality is also part of our country’s past. One example is whites getting together to lynch blacks (“Strange Fruit: Anniversary of a Lynching). A photo taken at the lynching shows how whites were watching and were amused by the lynching of blacks (Beitler). In the novel, citizens of Maycomb experience mob mentality. One occasion is when some of the kids of Maycomb hid the furniture of two ladies on Halloween (Lee 337). If the kids were alone they more than likely would not have done it. They were influenced by the people around them to play a prank on two innocent ladies. The last instance of mob mentality is when the men came to Atticus’s front door. As the text states, “There’s some men outside in the yard, they want you to come out” (Lee 193). These men probably would not have gone to confront Atticus by themselves. They were encouraged by the fact that they were going as a group and were not alone. Finally, mob mentality is people coming together to fight for what they think is
Jim Crow laws were a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. (Jim Crow Laws, PBS). Jim Crow laws had the same ideals that slave codes had. At this time slavery had been abolished, but because of Jim Crow, the newly freed black people were still looked at as inferior. One of the similarities between slave codes and Jim Crow laws was that both sets of laws did not allow equal education opportunities. The schools were separated, of course, which cause the white schools to be richer and more advanced in education than black schools. This relates to slave codes because slaves were not allowed to read which hindered their learning of when they were able to read and write. Another similarity is alcohol. In the Jim Crow era persons who sold beer or wine were not allowed to serve both white and colored people, so they had to sell to either one or the other. This is similar to slave codes because in most states slaves were not allowed to purchase whiskey at all, unless they had permission from their owners. Slaves did not eat with their white owners. In the Jim Crow era whites and blacks could not eat together at all, and if there was some odd circumstance that whites and blacks did eat together then the white person was served first and there was usually something in between them. This relates to slave codes because
The theme of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird is the existence of racism and prejudice in the 1930 – 40's. Harper Lee succeeds in presenting the topic in a manner that is not overly simplistic and thus achieves the task of allowing the reader to fully appreciate the complex nature of unjust discrimination. Harper Lee's inclusion of characters such as Tom Robinson, Boo Radley, Dolphus Raymond and many others, aid the reader to grasp the concept of racism and its central role in the town of Maycomb.
The term Jim Crow was a “colloquialism whites and blacks routinely used for the complex system of laws and customs separating races in the south” (Edmonds, Jim Crow: Shorthand for Separation). In other words, it was a set of laws and customs that people used that separated white people from the colored. The Jim Crow laws and practices deprived American citizens of the rights to vote, buses, and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” First, though, a little background on Jim Crow is in order.
The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws are laws that took place in between 1877 to the mid 1960s (Pilgrim). These laws are of segregation between blacks and whites to give blacks fewer rights. Christians and Ministers believed that Whites were the chosen people; Blacks were lesser people and only suppose to be servants, and that God Supported Ra
In To Kill a Mockingbird the children both learn the pitfalls of humanity in racism. If the definition of innocence in this essay is not having the guilt to being exposed to racism, then they both lost their innocence. The first example portrayed in the novel occurred when Scout went to the jail to find out what Atticus was up to, only to find that a nonsensical mob had arrived to lynch Tom Robinson. This unexpected event left Scout with the notion of a mob mentality. A big turning point in the story is when Scout was exposed to the trial which in turn caused her to be exposed to prejudice and injustice. Lastly, she experienced a big jolt when Bob Ewell tried to kill her and her brother Jem. All of these events led Scout to be exposed to some of the pitfalls of the human race.
The novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is a simplistic view of life in the Deep South of America in the 1930s. An innocent but humorous stance in the story is through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch. Scout is a young adolescent who is growing up with the controversy that surrounds her fathers lawsuit. Her father, Atticus Finch is a lawyer who is defending a black man, Tom Robinson, with the charge of raping a white girl. The lives of the characters are changed by racism and this is the force that develops during the course of the narrative.
In “To Kill a Mockingbird” there are many examples of racism. During the 1960s when the book was published, racism was acceptable and Black people were constantly dominated and ridiculed by Caucasian people. This novel written by Harper Lee is based on racism against Black people and the refusal of people to treat everyone equally.
Jim Crow was the name associated with the racial caste group. Which operated primarily, but not exclusively, in the southern and border states between 1877 and the mid-1960’s. The name was derived from a blackface character in a minstrel show. Jim Crow was a system of bylaws that was followed by millions. Whites were superior to blacks in all important ways like, intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior
laws. Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that “African Americans were relegated to the status of
Jim Crow, a series of laws put into place after slavery by rich white Americans used in order to continue to subordinate African-Americans has existed for many years and continues to exist today in a different form, mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws when initially implemented were a series of anti-black laws that help segregate blacks from whites and kept blacks in a lower social, political, and economic status. In modern day, the term Jim Crow is used as a way to explain the mass incarcerations of blacks since Jim Crow laws were retracted. Through mass incarceration, blacks are continuously disenfranchised and subordinated by factors such as not being able to obtain housing, stoppage of income, and many other factors. Both generations of Jim Crow have been implemented through legal laws or ways that the government which helps to justify the implementation of this unjust treatment of blacks.
Today, racism is a problematic situation that can break nation apart. Discrimination on one’s personal characteristics can sway a community's opinion greatly. Harper Lee was indulged in numerous racist encounters in her life, many of which transpire into her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, one is seen as an animal when enduring the venom of racism. Throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, racism leads to the dehumanization of both the victims and the infectors.
The novel TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee has numerous accounts of racism and prejudice throughout the entire piece. The novel is set in the 1930's, a time when racism was very prevalent. Although bigotry and segregation were pointed in majority towards blacks, other accounts towards whites were also heard of, though not as commonly. There are acts that are so discreet that you almost don't catch them, but along with those, there are blatant acts of bigotry that would never occur in our time. Lee addresses many of these feelings in her novel.
Harper Lee uses symbolism extensively throughout To Kill a Mockingbird,, and much of it refers to the problems of racism in the South during the early twentieth century. Harper Lee's effective use of racial symbolism and allegory can be seen by studying various examples from the book, namely the actions of the children, of the racist whites, and of Atticus Finch.
“The ‘Jim Crow’ laws got their name from one of the stock characters in the minstrel shows that were a mainstay of popular entertainment throughout the nineteenth century. Such shows popularized and reinforced the pervasive stereotypes of blacks as lazy, stupid, somehow less human, and inferior to whites” (Annenberg, 2014). These laws exalted the superiority of the whites over the blacks. Although equally created, and affirmed by the Supreme Court, and because of the Civil War officially free, African Americans were still treated with less respect than many household pets. The notorious Jim Crow laws mandated segregation and provided for severe legal retribution for consortium between races (National, 2014). Richard Wright writes about this, his life.
To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel written in the late 1930’s that deals with great amounts of racism. Although the narrator is a young girl who is surrounded by prejudice, she doesn't grasp the reasons why they are happening. One example is the act of Lynching. This was a major idea going on around the time of the story.