Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird And Scottsboro Trial

"I got somethin' to say an' then I ain't gonna say it no more. That nigger yonder took advantage of me an' if you fine fancy gentlemen don't wanta do nothin' about it then you're all yellow stinkin' cowards, stinkin' cowards, the lot of you." (Lee 251) Mayella Ewell said this in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird in Tom's trial. For this essay I will be informing you on Tom Robinson's case and the Scottsboro Boys case. Tom was accused of raping Mayella Ewell.

Throughout history, there have been many “witch hunts” that have created mass hysteria. Two of which were called the Salem Witch Trials and the Scottsboro Case. The two trials have many similarities to each other and so have many other trials. The Scottsboro Trials, in summary, was about nine young black men being accused of raping two young white women.

Relationships among races have evolved within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The majority of race-related conflicts were negative. Some of the trials that took place throughout this time period were the Scottsboro Trials, the Emmett Till Murder Trial, Loving v. Virginia, the Trial of Peter Liang, and the Johnson v. California trial. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, there was a fictional trial that dealt with the relationship between a black man and white woman. Racial relations does not only deal with African-Americans and whites but other races including Asians, South Africans, etc.

During the second trial of Haywood Patterson in March 1933, Victoria Price was again questioned as a witness, but her testimony was slightly different than in the original trial; she reacted to the questioning and accusations against her with “angry defiance” (1). Price’s testimony was further weakened after Ruby Bates testified. She denied that any of the Scottsboro boys had attacked or raped them at all, explaining that Price told her to make up a story to avoid charges being put against them (7). However, her testimony was not considered by the jury, and Patterson was sentenced to death, like in the original trial. In June 1933, a few months after Patterson’s second trial, Judge James Horton ordered a new trial for the case.

The trial consists of Mayella Ewell, a white woman, and Tom Robinson, a black male. In the Great Depression era, the white juries would have believed a white woman’s word than a black male’s. Even in Tom’s defense, Atticus could not help but say, “But I cannot pity her: she is white” (272). Even though Mayella Ewell is at fault trying to frame Tom Robinson guilty, she is still in a higher power over Tom Robinson. As soon as Tom Robinson was shot, the town of Maycomb killed a mockingbird as well as their innocence.

Victoria had a bad reputation, she was seeking attention. Victoria had been known around as a prostitute in the different places she had lived.  She lived with her mother in a little unpainted shack, in Huntsville. She was married but was separated from her husband. On the other hand, in the fictional story To Kill a Mockingbird Mayella had an abusive drunk father, but she had no mother growing up.

In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the story is set in the 1900’s, Maycomb, Alabama. During this time there was racism in the south and segregation which separated the whites and blacks from everything. There was also the Great Depression, the whole country was poor and people living in the country had to trade and do other jobs for people to either pay them off or to buy something from them. The trial in this book is about Mayella and Bob Ewell, two white people, claiming and arguing that Tom Robinson, a black person, raped Mayella Ewell. This trial is really important because at that time in the south, white people took advantage of black people and their kindness and thought they would take that or shut up just because they were black.

The fact that Mayella hesitated about her facts shows that Bob Ewell had something to do with this court case. Bob Ewell hit his daughter and made her possibly lie so Tom Robinson would get killed. Mayella is bold to be saying all of this, to me this seems as if it's a

The Scottsboro boys trial and the Tom Robinson trial in To Kill a Mockingbird are similar for these reasons. Mayella Ewell represents Victoria Price and Ruby Bates because Mayella made the crowd fell bad for her because she was a white, shy, and an unstable women. I think Lee kept these details the same because in the Scottsboro trial Price and Bates were the ones “raped”, and in the Robinson trial Mayella was the one “raped”. As I said Price and Bates are being represented by Mayella in the Robinson trial. Another similarity was that both trails were about rape.

She is stunned by a society who thinks that she lives “among pigs”[Doc A], after the trail she and her father are told to “get back to your dump” [Doc A]. Mayella also shows stupidity when she gets called ma’am or miss by

In a small town like maycomb, most people do not have much money but Mayella Ewell is stuck as the lowest of lows. Due to her family’s low income, Mayella does not have many opportunities to make a life of her own or do anything for herself. She is stuck with her father where Mayella babysits her younger siblings. Also Mayella did not have much of an education to get a job or make money for herself.

Most Americans 65% including majorities across racial and ethnic groups say it has become more common for people to express racism toward other ethnicities. Throughout this essay, there will be two examples of racism that will be discussed. Number one the Scottsboro trial and number 2 the To Kill A Mockingbird novel . These examples genuinely show the negative factors of racism.

Nine boys Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, and Andrew and Roy Wright were accused of raping two white women on a freight train, on March 24, 1931. The boys were caught for illegally riding on a freight train, and were originally charged with that until one of the police found the two white women VIctoria Price, and Ruby Bates and pressured them into saying that the boys had raped them on the freight tra in. All the Scottsboro boys were sentenced to death in the first trial, except Roy Wright who was only 13 was sentenced to life in prison. After two more trials with an all white jury, got the attention of the nation because it was showing how racist the U.S court system was. Ruby Bates eventually went out and retold her statement saying that she was pressured into telling the jury that the Scottsboro boys had raped them.

On March 25, 1931, the lives of nine young African American boys would be changed forever, and certainly not for the better. The boys, ages ranging from thirteen to twenty, were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train and tried multiple times in court. The set of trials is a largely forgotten and overlooked landmark case for not only the Civil Rights Movement, but all of American history. The Scottsboro Boys Trials have shaped modern American society by evolving and inclusifying constitutional law, shedding a national light on legal misconducts, and acted as a beacon of hope for the Civil Rights Movement in one of its earliest stages. Charlie Weems, Willie Robeson, Olen Montgomery, Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Roy and Andy Wright,

The Tom Robinson trial has many similarities and numerous differences to the Scottsboro trial. In both cases, black men were falsely accused of rape by white people. Also in both trials, there was no physical evidence of rape, the only evidence of rape was the ‘victims’ of the crime. Next, in both trials, the defendants were convicted only because they were black and the jury had racial prejudice against them. Several differences between the two cases were Tom being the only defendant in the Tom Robinson Trial case, meanwhile, there were nine teens in the Scottsboro Trial case.