Rohan Rajesh
Ms. Stelle
9H Period 3
To Kill a Mockingbird Essay
15 November 2017
The Scottsboro Trial and Emmett Till in To Kill a Mockingbird
Tick. Tock. The time is running out for another black citizen’s life to be taken by a group of white people with no substantial evidence against the black citizen. In the 1900s, there was a major problem at the time, which was the white population discriminating and segregating against blacks. This problem led to many cases to spur in the 1900s, like the cases of the Scottsboro Boys and the murder of Emmett Till. These cases and the issue around the time period influenced Harper Lee to write the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee incorporates the Scottsboro case and the murder of Emmett Till to her book using of the unfairness of the cases, the exaggeration of the cases, and the race the cases are against.
Harper Lee incorporates the Scottsboro case to her book because of the prejudiced cases. The Scottsboro Boys case is a case in which Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, two white and young prostitutes, tried to hide their wrongdoings by saying to the police that a group of black boys raped both of them. The police believed Ruby Bates and Victoria Price and they put the Scottsboro Boys into jail. Before the court case started, the Scottsboro Boys did not get a proper judge who would defend them. Samuel Leibowitz, a New York lawyer, came to Scottsboro to defend the boys. During the case, Leibowitz came up with multiple reasons why Ruby Bates and Victoria Price should be guilty and the Scottsboro Boys should be released. Leibowitz even brought Ruby Bates as a witness to testify against Victoria Price, but because the jury was all-white, the jury believed that Ruby Bates and Victoria Price did not do anything wrong, and the Scottsboro Boys were guilty. This is because, in the 1900s, the white population held a belief that it was a crime for black men to interact with white women, even if the white girl instigates the situation. According to Alan Blinder, “Within weeks of the reported rapes, an Alabama judge had sentenced eight of them to death following their convictions by all-white juries” (Blinder). This shows that after the Scottsboro case had happened in the courtroom, with most of the strong evidence hinting that the Scottsboro Boys should be free, the Alabama judge had sentenced all of the Scottsboro Boys to death. The Alabama judge had sentenced the Scottsboro Boys to jail, simply because the Scottsboro Boys were black. This is incorporated to To Kill a Mockingbird, because Tom Robinson has put in jail by an all-white jury despite the strong evidence showing that Tom Robinson should be acquitted. But, the only reason why the jury put Tom Robinson into jail is that Tom Robinson is black. According to Alan Blinder, “[The Scottsboro Boys] were convicted again and initially sentenced to death or decades in prison” (Blinder). This explains that the four of the Scottsboro Boys that were pardoned, this means that the boys released from their charges, got convicted again and either got sentenced to death or served decades in prison. This is incorporated to To Kill a Mockingbird, because Tom Robinson was put into jail, and he had to serve a long time in jail, until he was shot seventeen times. To Kill a Mockingbird and the case of the Scottsboro boys are very closely related because of the unjust behavior of the jury. The case of the Scottsboro Boys is not the only case where racial segregation was shown.
Harper Lee incorporates the murder of Emmett Till to her book because of amplification of the cases. The murder of Emmett Till was a case where Emmett Till, an innocent boy, got brutally beaten up and got shot by J.W Milam and Roy Bryant for supposedly “harassing” a white woman. According to History.com, “Emmett Till was a Chicago Native was visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi when he got accused of harassing a local woman” (History.com). This shows how Emmett Till was an innocent boy who was visiting his relatives in Mississippi, when a local accused him of harassing Ms. Bryant. After this situation, in the early morning, Emmett Till was shoved into the car of Bryant. After this, Emmett Till was brutally beaten by Bryant and Milam, until he got shot. After he died, Bryant and Milam tied a gin fan around his neck. Then, Emmett Till was thrown in Tallahatchie River. According to History.com, “Till purchased bubble gum, and some of the kids with him would later report that he either whistled at, flirted with, or touched the hand of the store's white female clerk [Bryant’s wife]” (History.com). This shows that after Emmett Till bought bubble gum at the store, some of the people reported that he flirted with Roy Bryant’s wife. This is similar to To Kill a Mockingbird, because Bob Ewell told Mr. Tate that Tom Robinson raped his daughter. This happened after Bob Ewell gave a good beating to Mayella Ewell, but he blamed Tom Robinson that he raped her. According to History.com, “They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water” (History.com). This shows how Milam and Bryant brutally killed Emmett Till. This connects to the death of Tom Robinson when he tried to escape jail. When he tried, the guards shot him seventeen times and he died (Lee). The two stories are tied together, because Emmett Till and Tom Robinson were both innocent, and they both didn’t deserve to die. But, because of the amplification of the cases, both of them died. Both the Scottsboro case and the murder of Emmett Till have something in common that connects to To Kill a Mockingbird.
The Scottsboro Boys case and the murder of Emmett Till case both correlate to To Kill a Mockingbird, because of the race the cases are against. According to Alan Blinder, “they were falsely accused and wrongly convicted in the rapes of a pair of white women” (Blinder). This shows how the Scottsboro Boys, they were black, got falsely accused of raping two white women. According to Hodding Carter, a newspaper writer for the Saturday Evening Post, he said that a “murder of a fourteen-year-old Chicago Negro boy, Emmett Till, and the subsequent acquittal of the two Mississippi white men accused of his kidnapping and slaying” (Carter). This shows that Emmett Till, a black boy, was killed by Bryant and Milam, two white men, and they got away with killing Emmett Till because of a biased all-white jury. In To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus was explaining his point in the courthouse, he said, “To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. This case is as simple as black and white” (Lee 271). This shows that Atticus is trying to explain that the case of Tom Robinson is a case between black and white and that the white will always win, because of the white and bias courtroom. As one can see, all of the cases are white against black, and white always wins, because of the bias courtroom and the mentality of the whites at the time.
Clearly, the Scottsboro Boys trial and the murder of Emmett Till are similar to Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. This is because of the prejudice of the cases, the exaggeration of the cases, and the race the cases is against. These tragic cases happen because of the racial discrimination and thoughts against other races. Saving one life can save many other lives. Tick. Tock. The time is running out.
Works Cited
Blinder, Alan. Alabama Pardons 3 ‘Scottsboro Boys’ After 80 Years. 21 Nov. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/us/with-last-3-pardons-alabama-hopes-to-put-infamous-scottsboro-boys-case-to-rest.html.
Carter, Hodding. "Racial Crisis in the Deep South." Saturday Evening Post, vol. 228, no. 25, 17 Dec. 1955, pp. 26-76. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=19963684&site=ehost-live.
Emmett Till. www.history.com/topics/black-history/emmett-till.
Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. Grand Central Publishing.