Doomed From the Start Essay -- Harper Lee Kill Mockingbird Essays

Doomed From the Start Throughout the course of history, blacks have always been second to the whites. Even after the Civil War, segregation and racists groups were at large. During this time, white men were disrespectful towards black men. Groups like the K.K.K. wanted nothing less than white supremacy, and they would stop at nothing to obtain this goal. Many blacks were lynched, or even killed only because of the color of their skin. The following are examples of this; the Scottsboro case, lynching by the Klan, and many forms of segregation from the 1920’s till 1930’s. Also in Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson never has a chance to plead innocent because of his black skin. During the 1930’s, nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train near Paint Rock, Alabama. Ruby Bates and Victoria Price accused Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Andy and Roy Wright, and Eugene Williams of this crime. The boys were arrested on March 25, 1931. All but Roy Wright were sentenced to the death penalty. They were all convicted on very little evidence. It came down to two white women’s words against the black men’s. After many lawyers failed to win the defendant’s release in 1936, a plea bargain was arranged where four of the defendants were released. However, the remaining five continued to carry out their sentence. Because there was no real evidence to keep them in jail, the last defendant was freed in 1950 (Kelly 1-2). After the Civil War, lynching was practiced by the K.K.K. Lynching is the legal execution of a person by a mob. On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the editor of the Al... ...he balcony. This proved that the whites thought that they were better than any black man. Finally, the jury was all white. Since a white man would never believe a black man word over a white women’s word, Tom Robinson just like the Scottsboro Boys, were doomed from the start. Work Cited Kelly, Robin. "The Case of The "Scottsboro Boys"." Online posting. 23 Jun.1996. . 12 March, 2001. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/scottsboro.html>. Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1982. Reich, Steve. "Implementation of Segregation." Online posting. 22 Feb.1996. . 12 March, 2001. <http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~south/archives/threads/segregation.html>. Simkin, John. "Lynching." Online posting. . . 12 March, 2001. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm>.