The novel To Kill a Mockingbird portrays discrimination against Tom Robinson by the Southern community of Maycomb, Alabama, as a result of the Jim Crow Laws, and in disregard of God’s law. The Jim Crow Laws had a strong influence on many people during the time that they were enforced in America. Many examples and traces of this influence can be found in To Kill a Mockingbird. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee, published this book in 1959, a few years before the Jim Crow Laws ended. Many people have the belief that Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, as an autobiography of her own life, including the racism she witnessed (Smith).
Billie Holiday Childhood to Adulthood Billie Holiday was conceived by a thirteen year old single child. Her mother Sadie was basically disowned by her parents because she was pregnant. Sadie Harris had Billie and entrusted her care to her half-sister Eva Miller who happened to be married because Sadie did not have the means to take care of Billie. The first ten years of Billie’s life was pretty much without her mother because Sadie worked as a server on passenger railroads. Although Sadie left Billie with her half-sister, Billie was basically taken care of by Eva’s mother-in-law Martha Miller.
The racist ideals ingrained in him by his own upbringing slowly started to come out as he started to treat Marilyn more like a slave than his wife. That bigot created inside of him by his upbringing was probably only reinforced by his work a police lieutenant, which he cited as exposing him to countless degenerate black males. This dark side of him must not had been as strong they had their fist child, Brittney, or maybe it was because of her lighter complexion, but when Marilyn was pregnant for a second time three years later the bigot inside of him feared the worst. Egged on by his father, he was convinced that it was impossible to raise a male black child to be anything other than a degenerate. This is the
[McCullough, David, Truman, Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 247] for example, he was deeply moved by stories of black war veterans who were the victims of racist attack after they defended America in WW2 and wanted to give them a better opportunity in life then what they were initially provided with. He had been particularly affected by the experience of Isaac Woodard, the African-American sergeant who had been dragged from a bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, and beaten and blinded by police. The October 1947 ‘to secure these rights’ a series of reports that covered a range of topics, including discrimination in the army, lynching between 1882-1945, police brutality, voting rights, employment and education and racial discrimination in the area of health also, each one of the reports followed recommendations of how the problem should be tackled. The first problem discussed in the report was lynching in the years 1882-1945, there had been over 300 lynchings in five of the southern states. Statistics show that although lynching had declined no year after 1882 was free of it for example, from 1882-1968 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States and 3,446 were black.
Gladys Baker Mortensen, her twenty-four-year-old mother, and Charles Stanley Gifford her biological father met working at a Hollywood film lab. Gladys had already been married once to her first husband Jasper Baker, and was legally separated from her second husband Ed Mortensen. Gifford refused to marry Gladys and moved away, neither Norma Jeane nor her mother ever saw him again. Gladys could not afford her daughter or take care of her while trying to find a job, so she began to send her infant daughter to a nearby family for five dollars a week. Norma Jeane spent most of her childhood living in as many as twelve different foster homes and even at one point in an orphanage while her mother was in and out of the hospital suffering from mental illness.
Jones was less critical of the degenerates of society and people took comfort in that. They let down their guards with Jones because they felt accepted by him. They found love and acceptance in Jones that they had missed along the way in life. Even though he was a white man his style and manner of speaking made him approachable and likeable in the beginning. The ability to preach in a style that was familiar to this African American community was crucial to the recruitment and commitment process.
Alicia Ms. Carlson English II 31 April 2011 Symbolism in To Kill a Mockingbird “In her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee drew upon her childhood as the daughter of a southern lawyer to portray the moral awakening of two children in Maycomb, Alabama, during the 1930s.” (“Harper Lee” 239). Contemporary Literary Criticism made known in its article “Harper Lee” that To Kill a Mockingbird “open[ed] with the mature voice of Scout […]” (239). “The plot center[ed] on Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer in Alabama who defend[ed] a young black man falsely accused of raping a white woman […]” (Polk 175). The novel written by Harper Lee was more than just her childhood depicted through one of her characters. Harper Lee has incorporated many exemplifications of allegories in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Source A shows that the blacks did not have to use violence towards the white people to get what they wanted as the black male in the cartoon is simply just saying that he was not going to get on the bus and as we know many black people boycotted the busses meaning the bus companies lost a lot of money making them stop the segregation of busses so that the blacks would use the busses again this shows how non-violence could be effective as not getting on a bus is a non-violent act but it was very successful in the terms of getting fair use of the busses for both blacks and white. Although this source is showing what happened in a specific place we know it did happen and that it worked without violence and brought MLK to the forefront of the black civil rights movement. Source B links in with source A, this is because they are both talking about the same peaceful act that helped the blacks get civil rights. Source C also shows the emergence of MLK as a key theme as it is a speech by him talking about the non-violent tactics being their best weapon showing that what is seen to be one of the main leaders of the movement going against violence and being for no violence which I know from my own knowledge Martin Luther King did as he would use many of the methods of Ghandi to help him along his way and although this is a biased speech it shows us that Martin Luther King was giving speeches to people about how the best was to get your way was by not using violence. Source D shows how the emergence of MLK was a big deal as it was him who was personally attacked showing that the racists must have thought he was someone important to the civil rights movement and they were trying to stop him.
Sample outline for essay about mockingbirds: While one of the main themes of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is understanding another human's perspective, it is also important to look at how people treat each other. The story's protagonist, Scout, is a young girl from Alabama whose father, Atticus Finch, is asked to defend an African-American man who is charged with rape. The southern way of life during The Great Depression won't allow Tom Robinson a fair trial, and Scout and her brother Jem are forced to deal with a county's ignorance and racist attitudes. Atticus and a compassionate neighbor, Miss. Maudie, try to teach the children not to hurt mockingbirds as they don't harm anything and "...don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy" (90).
Ethan Hefley Mrs. Barr Comp II April 17, 2012 “To Kill a Mockingbird” Harper Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird” demonstrates how courage is required when facing something even when it seems impossible. The setting, characters, and symbolism play a huge role in the purpose of the novel. “To Kill a Mockingbird” takes place in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. Though every character Lee wrote into his novel was symbolic and important, the most significant characters are Atticus, Jem, and Scout Finch. Atticus, the narrator’s father, is a lawyer in Maycomb.