The Civil Rights Movement and To Kill a Mockingbird

The beginning of the Civil Rights Movement era corresponds with the time that Harper Lee was writing about Scout Finch and her brother Jem. They live in the very state that events like the Montgomery Bus boycott would take place. The fictional town of Maycomb is in Alabama, the same state where Martin Luther King Jr. would rise to be the voice of African Americans aching for equality. The actual movement may have started in 1960 but that is the same year that To Kill a Mockingbird was published and huge events were rupturing the south, throughout the novel readers can see the attitude of a want and need for equality in characters and some events.

The civil rights movement was introduced to national headlines in the 1950s and 60s but in places like Georgia began as early as the 40s. In Georgia groups of African Americans were organized to try and vote. People like Thomas Brewer “a medical doctor in Columbus, organized Primus Kings and several [groups] who attempted to vote in the July 4, 1944, primary but were turned away”( Stephan Tuck). Those events took place before the Brown vs. Board Of Education trial in 1954, even more protest sprung up after the case. Even before the 1940s, African Americans were not treated as equals in society.

One year after the Brown vs. Board Of Education case, the Montgomery Bus Boycott took place. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a woman from Montgomery Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back. Rosa Parks had gone against the “southern custom” (Clayborne Carson) of sitting in the back of the bus only because she was black. She was thrown in jail but the black community came together and boycotted the buses. The boycott lasted more than a year and is ...

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... how when the jury was deliberating, the verdict took more than the expected five minutes. This tells the reader that there was some type of dispute about the verdict.

Works Cited

“Civil Rights Movement.” 2013. The History Channel website. Dec 13 2013, 8:47 http://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/119368/American-civil-rights-movement """American civil rights movement"". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013

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Tuck, Stephen. "Civil Rights Movement." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 06 November 2013. Web. 13 December 2013

The death of Emmett Till.” 2013. The History Channel website. Dec 17 2013, 1:00 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till.