Racial Conflict In To Kill A Mockingbird

“It was times like these when my father, who hated guns and has never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived,” Scout expresses when she finds her dad defending a black man in front of an all white jury (115-116). Issues with racial disagreement was a common find in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The different viewpoints and discrimination towards the races is what caused a lot of terror for some.In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee uncovers her views on racial tension in the 1930’s which proves to be more than partially accurate. Henceforth, Lee demonstrates the social norm in the 1930’s with ideas of segregation of the two races. For this reason, when Jem and Scout go to church with Calpurnia, their black nanny, other folks

when Atticus, Scout’s and Jem’s father, defends Tom Robinson, and tries to turn the conviction, he comments “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” (276). The racial tension in Maycomb county prevailed, and when Mayella blamed Tom, a black man, for something he didn’t do, no one thought to questioned it. The Maycomb people’s blindness to the false accusation, resulted in the death of an innocent man who did none of such which he was accused for. When Victoria, the white woman who convicted the nine Scottsboro boys of rape, claimed the boys had raped her on the train, every white southerner believed every word. When the boys were convicted guilty, the crowd cheered as though they had won a prize (Scottsboro) The white Alabamians had used their unity to take advantage of Victoria’s testimony, to convict nine men for doing something there was no physical evidence to prove. When the Groveland boys were convicted guilty, Marshall described his case by evincing his “ defendants were prejudged as guilty, and the trail was but a legal gesture to register a verdict already dictated by the press and public opinion”(220). His portrayal of the case illustrates the intention of the public. The people had made it their goal to convict those boys, and putting them on trial was to give them false hope. The “prejudicial influence outside the courtroom” were too vigorous for the defendants to ever be considered innocent men again.