Compare and Contrast: “to Kill a Mockingbird” & Scottsboro Trials

Its prestige stems from the topic it pertains to: racism and the treatment of African Americans. The novel narrates the tale of how a young girl’s father is appointed to the trial Tom Robinson, an African American man who has been falsely accused of raping a white lady, Mayella Ewell. Despite the conclusive evidence, the verdict of the trial favored Ewell, inevitably sending Robinson to prison. The heavily deluded mindset of both the judge and jury opened the eyes of Harper Lee’s readers to the grating truth.

Some other small contrasts between the trials could be the evidence used in the trials and the number of people involved in the crime. But the biggest difference between the fictional story and the real event was the outcome of the two trials. Tom Robinson was sentenced to death and was put into the electric chair to be executed even with Atticus’s best efforts and a majority of evidence supporting him. But in the Scottsboro trial, the Scottsboro boys were the first group of black men to be accused of raping a white woman and leaving the courtroom without a death sentence but instead with 20-105 years of prison

in Scottsboro Trials says, “...two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, accused the black men of raping them.” (Scottsboro:American Tragedy) Another similarity is that the main plaintiffs Victoria Price and Mayella Ewell lied about their cases to defend their white womanhood and protect themselves from getting caught illegally riding the train. The Scottsboro Trials document declares that Victoria Price and her friend Ruby Bates avoided arrest from riding the train by saying that they were raped. (Scottsboro: An American Tragedy)

In the Scottsboro Trials, there were 9 boys all accused falsely of a crime they did not commit. Knowing how much worse the racist back in the early 1900s was shows we have come a long way, but are still far from a completely non-racist world. To Kill A Mockingbird is also a great example on how things were back then, seeing as the two cases carry the nearly exact same things. Both were falsely accused by poor white women that had no medical evidence provided at the ‘crime scene’. Both of these things were horrible things, but have helped us move on from our past mistakes. In today’s world, most of the racism has moved on from blacks, but is still there, and onto the Middle Eastern population. Hopefully, people will learn from our mistakes

There are many basic parallels between the Scottsboro Trial and Tom Robinson’s Trial, in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. As Harper Lee grew, up, she was surrounded with news of the Scottsboro Trial, which had a large impact in her novel. But there are also many deeper parallels between these two. Both trials contained African-American(s) being accused of rape to a white woman, but Lee had a way to show this through a child’s eyes, presumably, her as a young child experiencing the Scottsboro Trials firsthand. The characters involved within Tom’s Trial are also fabricated from the people involved with the Scottsboro Trial. There are many examples within both texts to prove these statements. The Scottsboro Trial is filled

Some people knew it was Bob Ewell that abused his daughter, Mayella. I thought that it was very shocking how prolonged it took for the judge to convict Tom guilty because usually when a black is accused of raping a white, they would plead them guilty within seconds after the trial ended. Also, I think it is very ridiculous that they still convicted Tom to a death sentence when it was Bob Ewell that attacked Mayella. There was no justice served in the Tom Robinson trial, but there was justice served in the Scottsboro trial because the boys did deserve a death sentence for raping two females. I think moral courage wasn’t a factor in the decision of the Scottsboro Trial because they made their decision quite swiftly, but I think moral courage was a factor in the decision of the Tom Robinson trial.

Rabinfranch says “No civilized society can thrive upon victims who’s humanity has been permanently mutilated.” Society plays a monumentos role in who we are. Every decision we make is based on what we are told is right and what we are made to believe we have to do. Mayella Ewell, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price are perfect examples of victims of society. To Kill A Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Trials are parallel situations that reflect upon how society affects decision-making. Although the choice was theirs whether to be accusers or not, they were put into a position that they believed they had to lie to get themselves out of.

Comparison There are many similarities and some differences between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. No crime in American history produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a southern railroad freight run on March 25, 1931. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, was a young girl during the Scottsboro trial and based the trial of Tom Robinson in her novel off of the Scottsboro trial of 1931. Both trials were based off of false accusations against black men. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was accused of rape by Mayella Ewell.

Similar reactions from each community arose. In both cases, it seems as though everyone either got involved or was kept updated on what was going on. Scout and the rest of the gang “knew there was a crowd, but had not bargained for the multitudes in the first floor hallway,” (Lee 217). Just as the Tom Robinson case, the Scottsboro case blew out of proportion. People all across the country got involved. According to Horne and his work of literature entitled Powell vs Alabama: The Scottsboro Boys and American Justice, the Ku Klux Klan paraded down streets, instigating lynchings. They even tried to break into the prison where the Scottsboro boys were being held. A familiar situation occurred in To Kill a Mockingbird when a group of men tried to break into Tom Robinson’s

The Scottsboro Trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are almost identical in the forms of bias shown and the accusers that were persecuted. The bias is obvious and is shown throughout both cases, which took place in the same time period. Common parallels are seen through the time period that both trials have taken place in and those who were persecuted and why they were persecuted in the first place. The thought of "All blacks were liars, and all blacks are wrongdoers," was a major part of all of these trails. A white person's word was automatically the truth when it was held up to the credibility of someone whom was black. Both trials were perfect examples of how the people of Alabama were above the law and could do whatever they

In the story of the Scottsboro Boys, the boys were arrested due to a brawl with a couple of white men. They were tried for fighting, but also were tried for allegedly raping two females by the names of Ruby Bates and Victoria Price (Linder, “The Trials Of The Scottsboro Boys”) As the trials went on, the boys repeatedly were sentenced

There are many similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. “No crime in American history—let alone a crime that never occurred—produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern railroad freight run on March 25, 1931” (Linder 1). The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, was a young girl during the Scottsboro trial and based the trial of Tom Robinson in her novel off of the Scottsboro trial of 1931. The three main similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are the geographic settings, the portrayal of racism, and the specifics of the court

The Scottsboro Trials were among the largest legal injustices in the South. The events that started the trials began in the early spring of 1931, when nine young black men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train. The cases were tried and appealed in Alabama and twice argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. The state pursued the case and all-white juries delivered guilty verdicts that initially carried the death penalty. Several of the accused were sentenced to prison terms and all had long stays in prison as the case made its way through the legal system. The case later was one of the inspirations for Harper Lee's book “To Kill A Mockingbird”

Victims, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, displayed no signs of gang rape, including bruises, emotional distress, or open wounds. The nine boys were arrested and tried twelve days after the allegation. Because they could not be tried individually nor all together, groups of two and three from the nine were tried at a time. Six out of the nine boys claimed the event of rape never took place while the other three hesitantly agreed that the event took place due to the threats they had received (Linder). Consisting of four trials, the lawsuit resulted in the conviction and death sentences of seven of the boys. Roy Wright and Eugene Williams, the youngest of the convicted boys—at the ages of twelve and thirteen, respectively—were not given death sentences due to their young age and inability to be tried as adults. Months after the conviction, alleged victim Victoria Price admitted to fabricating the dispute to cover her violation of the Mann Act (Linder): a law that prohibits the interstate transportation for the purpose of prostitution (PBS). The Scottsboro Boys’ lawsuit draws similarities to the litigation Atticus defends in the novel. An all-white jury judged each of the four litigations belonging to the case, resulting in an indisputable bias among them all. Bias of an all-white jury parallels to the Robinson v. Ewell dispute due to the faulty conviction of an innocent, African American man. The presence of the all-white jury led to a bias in the results and continued to exist throughout the 1950s and 1960s as all-white juries remained in effect for crimes with African American

This caused many rallies, riots, peaceful protest. This case informs us now because it also tells us how bad they were treated back then, the people believed the girls because they were white, and mostly overlooked the boys because they were black. So to end this long unfair trial, they were cleared.The latter mentioned in the book To kill a Mockingbird, by author Harper lee.