...because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit.” (King) Throughout the injustices inflicted on the young men that were in the Scottsboro trial made a profound impact on American history, and marks a realization to many Americans during that time period. The Scottsboro Trials, are the greatest American tragedy, that still chokes up anyone who; hears, reads or watches how it unfolded in real life. These multiple unjust trials started on April 9, 1931, in Scottsboro, Alabama, when nine young African...
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...-The unjust legal system During the time that the novel To Kill a Mockingbird takes place there was a lot of racial injustice in the legal system. Black people would be sent to prison or killed for crimes they either did not commit or for crimes that did not deserve such punishments. The author Harper Lee was aware of this injustice and she based her book To Kill a Mockingbird on one of these trials. The trial that was taking place during this novel was called the Scottsboro boys trial. Once again black men were being accused of a crime but they did not commit. -The Scottsboro boys trial •What Happened On March 25, 1931 in Scottsboro, Alabama a group of nine black teenagers entered onto a train. Their names were Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Hayward Patterson, Eugene Williams, and Andrew and Leroy Wright .When a group of white teenagers saw one of the boys,...
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...The trial of the Scottsboro boys has been one of the most infamous legal injustices in American History. Nine black teenage boys were convicted of a crime that they never committed. Two white women accused the boys of an alleged gang rape on a Southern Railroad freight run. It all began on March 25, 1931 when a fight between white youths and a larger group of black youths broke out on the train. Eighteen year old, Haywood Patterson was hanging on the side of the train when a young white boy stepped on his hand while walking across the top of a tank car. Haywood had a few friends of his on the train. A stone-throwing fight erupted between a group of white youths and a larger group of black youth. Eventually, the blacks were able to force all...
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...1957 federal troops were sent to Little rock Arkansas to protect nine African American students who were going white high school, per the court ordered desegregation of school, were challenging and for some forcing the way in which Americans lived, their beliefs and their treatment of African Americans that had been indoctrinated into their consciousness from the time they were born and many did not understand why this treatment was inappropriate, prejudice and unconstitutional. For some these changes were viewed as not an intrusion or criticism of their way of life but as a positive, needed social awakening but for others it only provoked a fierce need to protect their prejudicial point of view resulting violence and inhuman acts of injustice toward African Americans. During this period a young woman by the name of Harper Lee began writing a story about a young girl in a quiet southern town going up in the south 1930’s with plot encompassing social...
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...townspeople of Maycomb. Justice, as well as injustice, is served time and time again in this novel. An example of both is shown as Scout pummels her cousin’s face when he disrespects her father, consequently, Scout receives punishment. This is a book rich with symbolism and moral testing. After Bob Ewell shatters Jem Finch’s arm, Arthur “Boo” Radley (the town’s recluse) saves the children by knifing Bob under the ribs, killing him. Jem is unconscious in bed while his father, Atticus, argues with Sheriff Tate over how to report the incident. Atticus is a lawyer, an advocate for truth, but Sheriff argues to protect Arthur from the spotlight by reporting that Bob fell on the kitchen knife. Scout, knowing Arthur is introverted, realizes the dilemma of bringing him to court. Then, Scout reveals...
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...The Civil War brought significant changes for African Americans, as they were freed from slavery. However, rather than achieving complete legal, political, and economic equality during the Reconstruction Era, which lasted from the end of the Civil War until 1877, African Americans continued to be second class citizens. As will be argued in this paper, African Americans experienced hardship and significant discrimination after 1877 due to racist laws, social, economic, and educational inequality; however, as laws and cultural sentiments about blacks changed during the Civil Rights Era, African Americans today have more political, economic, and educational opportunities than ever before. On the following pages, this paper will trace the path of African Americans to equality by discussing salient events in African American history from 1877 to the present. Significantly, as the author believes, while progress has been made since the nineteenth century, complete equality remains elusive even today for many African American men and women. The end of slavery did by no means lead to the immediate equality of African Americans in American society. The years after the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era, were characterized by wide-spread discrimination against African Americans. In the South, so-called Jim Crow laws effectively barred African Americans from having very basic civil liberties. Public and social life in the South but also in other places in the United States, was strictly...
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...In the 1920s and early 1930s a movement called the Harlem Renaissance took place. This was a literary, artistic and intellectual movement that created a new black cultural identity ("Harlem Renaissance," n.d.). There was an important group that was created during the Harlem Renaissance known as the NAACP. Also, there were important trials such as Sacco and Vanzetti, and the conviction in Scottsboro, Alabama. During the Harlem Renaissance many famous writers such as Paul Dunbar, and Langston Hughes wrote about what african americans experienced during this time. An influential poem written by Paul Dunbar during the Harlem Renaissance is We Wear the Mask, which talks about disguising our feelings. Langston Hughes also wrote influential poems such as I, Too and Song for a Dark Girl . There were many important things that happened during the Harlem Renaissance, including the creation of influential poems by...
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...“Mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’ gardens, don’t nest in the corncribs, they don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out to us,” Atticus said to Scout (148). Indeed, Atticus’s word was extremely true in the situation of Tom Robinson, one of the characters in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which was written by Harper Lee. This story took place in 1930’s in Southern Alabama when the injustice between black people and white people was very deep. In this period, the black people were considered as the Mockingbirds, the innocuous birds for people’s lives. However, these birds often were killed without any guilt just like the black people were shot and lynched by the white people even though they were innocent. It was the fate for the black people in the South who lived in the 1930’s. Especially, through the court scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird” which was about the trial of Tom Robinson, a married black man, who was sentenced for raping Mayella, a white woman, Harper Lee emphasized deeply the injustice for the black people. Indeed, the black people did not have any justice in the South in 1930’s. Tom Robinson was the defendant who was accused of raping Mayella on the night of August 21st. The truth was that Tom did not do anything bad to Mayella. On that day, he only passed by Mayella’s house and came in to her house to help her as she requested. Suddenly, she hugged him around the waist and kissed his face. She made him so embarrassed...
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...yet to grasp this concept, as seen by the 200 cases of illegal lynching that have occurred in the past decade. We recall the Thirteenth Amendment having abolished slavery in 1865, however it is obvious that many in the White community still view us Black men as unworthy of justice in a court of law. Despite the efforts of the brilliant lawyer Mr. Atticus Finch to present a convincing case, Mr Robinson was still unjustly convicted. Unfortunately, the twelve jurors, all White and by no means “a jury of his peers” ensured that Robinson’s sentence was not one that was justified by his actions, but rather one that was “deserved” by his skin colour. Disgraceful. In light of this injustice, we are reminded of the nine black teenagers who, all but one, were convicted and sentenced to death in 1931, Scottsboro, Alabama. Similarities are seen in the way that, despite an overwhelming lack of concrete evidence against the individuals in question, these men faced a real threat of lynching during the trial. They were eventually...
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...Andrew Holloman ENG 1101 11/13/12 Compare and Contrast Essay Similarities between Harper Lee’s Childhood Life and Scout Finch’s Childhood Life The To Kill a Mockingbird novel written by Harper Lee is commonly considered one of the twentieth century's most widely read American novels. The vast majority of people that have read the novel are of the belief that the events contained within the novel are based on Harper Lee’s childhood experiences growing up in the South. However, absent of Harper Lee actually confirming the inspirational source for her novel; it’s still an assumption made by the masses. Nonetheless, we all have to agree that there are some very distinct similarities between Harper Lee’s childhood life and the childhood life of Scout Finch’s in the novel. Similarities that exist between Harper Lee’s childhood life and that of Scout Finch in the To Kill a Mockingbird novel were the facts that they were both raised in small rural towns, both of them were tomboys during their childhood years, and they both lived through times of racial prejudice. The first similarity between Harper Lee’s childhood life and Scout Finch’s childhood life is that they were both raised in small rural towns in Alabama. Harper Lee grew up in the small rural town of Monroeville, Alabama that. The town has a small closely knit population where everyone knew their neighbors and knew their neighbor’s business. Aside from this the town of Monroeville is riddled with poverty and racial...
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...said Atticus, “It’ll never come back.’”(Lee 196). In the small town of Maycomb, the Klan was not very known, but in years to follow this organization would take many innocent lives. Because of Scout’s young age, she notices the adults around her treating people of different color not as equally, but she does not fully understand the horribleness of it because she has been raised in that environment, and it is all she knows. Her father Atticus, has a more liberal standpoint on this whole issue. After Scout came home from school one day, offended by one of her peers calling Atticus a “nigger lover”, she asks her father about it. Atticus replies that of course he is, and that he tries to love everyone. He explains to her that just because the boy who called him that name meant it in a negative way, that in actuality it does not make you a bad person. He reminded Scout multiple times “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (Lee 39). This important lesson Scout fully learns at the end of the book standing on Boo Radley’s porch. This lesson is important for many people to learn so that they can have a deeper understanding and gain more compassion to...
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...The Media vs The World My face is glued to the television as I await the verdict that I had so anxiously wanted to hear for years. To no surprise, it was not a verdict we had all hoped for, partially due to the media. The Casey Anthony trial, is just one of the many that have fallen into the classification of a “media trial,” a loose term that describes the profound impact media coverage has on a person’s reputation by creating a pre-assumed perception of guilt or innocence, before, or after a case goes to court. This pre-assumed perception gives the general public, potential jury members, an impartial view on a court case, overall, influencing the system of American justice. This injustice, especially in high profile cases, happens when jury members, sometimes court officials, simply want to gain their “five seconds of fame.” Now an additional problem lies within the simple, yet complex, fight between the right of free press and the right to an impartial jury. Let’s face it, there is no such concept as an impartial jury, simply due to the media attention that trials receive these days. Within this main problem, lies many problems that interfere with the American idea of justice. Are we craving, and striving to find entertainment, or justice? One problem that stems from media that could possibly add to jury bias and court outcomes, it is what lawyers refer to as the “CSI Effect.” Named after the hit television show, this phenomenon describes the distorted view crime investigation...
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...My Synopsis The story of To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during three years of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator, six-year-old named Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout become friends with a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. The three children are afraid of their neighbor "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb don’t like to talk about Boo and for many years, few have seen him. The children feed each other's imaginations with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. After two summers of being friends with Dill, Scout and Jem find out someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley house. Boo makes gestures to the children but is never seen in person. Atticus is assigned to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom. Atticus discovers that the accusers—Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk—are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella was making sexual advances towards Tom and her father caught her in the act. Even with convincing evidence of Tom's innocence, the jury convicts him. Tom is soon shot and killed while trying to escape from prison...
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...A COMPARISON OF: - It was like All of Us had been raped: Betty Jean Owens - My Story/ We Fight For the Right to Vote: Rosa Parks - Give Light and the People Will Find Away: Ella Baker - The Problem that had no name: Betty Friedan (For Prof. Jeanne Theoharis –History 43.14) “It was like All of Us had been raped- Betty Jean Owens a catalyst against sexual violence in America A thorough knowledge of American history brings enlightenment to the struggle of African American women to have their bodies, be termed as their own and not for these women to be characterized as beasts for the sexual gratification of white males or any males. Betty Jean Owens (1959) was a young black college woman who was viciously raped repeatedly by four white males at gun point whilst her female friend had escaped and her male friends were allowed to leave. The men that were allowed to leave reported the incident to the local authorities and were involved in a chase to apprehend Owens’s rapist. After the apprehension of the four white males, they gleefully admitted to the crime. Ms. Owens pressed charges, and the men were trialed and found guilty but were saved from the death sentence. The Owens case is not an isolated incident for prior to her case they were hundreds of black women that were brutally raped and beaten but the culprits were never charged, in fact Lisa Bramlet’s is said to have borne twenty three children, twenty of which were...
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...Born on September 4th, 1908, Richard Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi (outside of Natchez) on a plantation where his illiterate father was a sharecropper. Wright was raised by his relatives at by the age of 17, he was ready to get out into the world. He headed into Memphis, Tennessee (his relatives lived right outside the city) where he worked odd jobs and educated himself. He read array of novels as he grew up and his education helped him realize the unjust ways of segregation. In 1927, Wright moved to Chicago after the peak of the Harlem Renaissance (a pivotal time for African Americans to express themselves through music, writings, and art). In Chicago, he worked as a postal worker, but was laid off with the depression. Wright then joined the Federal Writers Project, a state sponsored guild for authors, in which Wright composed his first novel, Uncle Tom’s Children. During this time, Wright joined the Communist party, which was often carried out into his writings. By 1939, Wright had moved to New York City and kept ties with the party for only a few more years. He married in 1941, and had left the communist party by 1944. During World War II, Wright lectured around New York. With the end of the War, Wright moved to France in 1947 where he continued to write his novels, which often contained themes of racism, poverty, and political matters. His books were often partly based on his life and what he had observed in his lifetime. Wright was the first African American...
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