Our African American communities after being freed from slavery wasn’t what they expected, they were segregated just because of the color of their skin along with anyone else of color. To help with these issues the 13th and 14th amendments were made to help protect the African Americans and give them rights. This Topic relates to our novel To Kill a Mockingbird because it shows issues that shouldn’t have existed due to these amendments, disproves these civil rights, and shows that some laws just don’t mean anything to some people. The amendments should’ve been valued and obeyed by everyone even if it doesn’t do anything for them.
In our novel, the African American/ colored community of Maycomb was very small and had little, and were treated unfairly and not like the people they are. Whites were dominant in the small town of Maycomb County, and were very racist, even forming groups to kill a black man for something that he had never done and was only accused of. This isn’t just something fictional that happens in books, things even worse than this happen in real life back then and still today these kinds of things happen. The 13th and 14th amendments that were given to protect the African American & colored communities didn’t seem to be enough to stop the poor treatment they received because they were still treated poorly as they were when they were slaves, and they couldn’t get any jobs, or go any places that a white person could, this made living very hard for these people of color. In the novel, a group of white men go to the towns jail to torture/ kill a black man who was never convicted guilty of a crime. “In ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows became substance as lights revealed solid shapes moving toward the jail door” (Lee 151).
The men who had came to attack Tom Robinson at the jail had been ignoring the 13th amendment and what it stands for. The men were going to punish a man who had never been convicted of a crime. The 13th amendment states that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (history.com). The men had ignored this amendment that says that they cannot punish someone for a crime unless they had been convicted for it. What these men did in the novel was completely unacceptable and should have never taken place, unless he had been convicted guilty for the accused rape.
Shortly after being in jail, Tom Robinson has a court trial for the crime that he had been accused of. His trial was unfair and had showed to favor the white woman who said that she had been raped by Tom, rather than relying on evidence they took her word. There were some bruises on Mayella (the woman who accused Tom) but no evidence showing Tom had done it. “Found her lying on the floor in the middle of the front room…She washed her face in a bucket in the corner… I asked her who hurt her and she said it was Tom Robinson” (Lee 167). She washed away some of the possible evidence and so they just took her word that Tom had done this to her without investigating. Tom was treated unfairly in this case that should have never taken place due to this lack of evidence without due process of law.
The 14th amendment relates to the chapter of Tom’s trial very well, to the point of the amendment being non-existent in this courtroom. The 14th amendment is supposed to treat people equally in the courtroom or any situation dealing with the law, and should not show any privilege to anyone. The 14th amendment states that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (law.cornell.edu).
This amendment should have made it so Tom would receive a fair trial with no privilege to the white woman who accused Tom without any evidence showing that it was caused by him. Some of the so called “evidence” from her bruises couldn’t have even been caused by Tom since he only had one arm. They had deprived Tom of liberty, and without due process of law in the courtroom and only took someones word for what had occurred that night.