Harper Lee's Treatment of Black People in To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's Treatment of Black People in To Kill a Mockingbird

"To kill a mockingbird" is set in a small imaginary town in the

southern states of America and is described to us as the sort of town

which houses a lot of small minded people who only care for

themselves. We see that these people have an apparent problem with

anyone who is different from themselves; the main example being black

people. It is likely that they feel threatened by those different from

them as they cannot understand them. It is set in the 1930's but was

written in the 1960's at a time where the ever growing civil rights

movement was taking place. The novel tries to show us that within

society black people were beginning to be accepted more and more. The

black community were starting to stand up for themselves and were

questioning the way which they had been treated by society in the

past. Even though in reality black people were growing to be accepted

by most, some people still took the view that they were worthless and

only good for one thing; that thing being slavery. This take upon

black people is reflected in the Novel by the citizens of Maycomb and

their unfair treatment towards people such as Tom Robinson.

Within "To kill a mockingbird" Harper Lee tries to portray Black

people in a new light, one in which she tries to prove to people that

black people are not at all like their stereotypes but are infact

quite the opposite for they can prove to be kind, caring and

hardworking. Examples of this new image are Calpurnia and Tom

Robinson. Harper Lee shows us these characters that have no faults and

by trying to prove one stereotype wrong we see that she c...

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...nd and are most likely scared of due to the fact that he is

different. Throughout the course if the trial we come to see that Tom

is innocent and Mayella is just lying in order to protect her father

but none of that matters to the people of Maycomb for all that matters

is that the accused was black. Being black meant Tom was doomed from

the start, his trial was pointless as the truth didn't seem to matter

at all, the only fact that the jury and the other members of the

community were interested in was that Tom was a black man. This trial

showed just how bad prejudice can be, a man was imprisoned for a crime

he didn't commit all because he was black. His family had to deal with

never being able to see him again knowing that the same thing could

happen to them one day because they too were black members of the

community.