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Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Did you know there were fourteen Jim Crow laws that impacted the lives of blacks in that time period? Did you also know that there were 4,730 known lynchings? Currently, in the United States the death penalty is not allowed, but it was acceptable to lynch people in that time period. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee used real-life events as inspiration for her novel. There are similarities to Jim Crow, mob mentality, and the issues of racism in that time period. In To Kill a Mockingbird the first connection to America’s history is the presence of the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were a way to segregate blacks from whites. Some examples of the laws were segregated buses, prisons, mental hospitals, and reform schools. If …show more content…
This is shown in current examples like, “These factors sometimes make a person believe that they can act a certain way within a group and not have the same consequences that the same actions would have if he or she acted alone” (Smith). Mob mentality is also a part of America’s past. One example is that the police were proud of what they have done; the police hung a bloody shirt from their flagpole (“Strange Fruit: Anniversary of a Lynching”). The townspeople and farmers in the book also experienced mob mentality. In chapter 15, an example of mob mentality was shown when one of the men in the group said, “’You know what we want, another man said, Get aside from the door, Mr. Finch’” (Lee 202). Those quotes show that the men acted the way they did because they were in a group; alone they most likely would not have said that. In To Kill a Mockingbird a prime example of mob mentality is when Jem said, “Don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard-“ (Lee 279). That quote displays that Atticus has all the evidence to prove that Tom Robinson is not guilty, but the court still says he is guilty. The court said he is guilty because all the whites are like a mob; they think and act based off of what others are doing. Mob mentality can be directly connected to the Scottsboro

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