To Kill Society
The Tom Robinson case in To Kill A Mockingbird and the Supreme Court case, Plessy v .
Ferguson reflect how black citizens were treated by the courts during Segregation . Tom
Robinson was charged for raping a white woman . Homer Plessy was was arrested for sitting in a
“white train car” in Louisiana . During this time, only white men were permitted to serve as
Jurors or be judges, and these jurors were more likely to believe the testimony of a white man .
Because To Kill a Mockingbird and the Plessy v . Ferguson case occurred during segregation,
they both have more in common from the case and the man, to the society and repercussions .
In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which cause an uproar in the state . The
act segregated passengers by “white only” and “black only” train cars . Many citizens protested,
and some decided to challenge the law (“History & Impact”) . One of these citizens, a
seven-eighths caucasian man named Homer Plessy, agreed to buy a first class train ticket on the
white car (“Plessy v. Ferguson”) . When he refused to leave the seat, he was arrested and put on
trial . This caused a public outcry . Because Plessy was one-eighth negro, he should have been
able to sit in his seat . Plessy was convicted in trial court . The case was appealed up to the
United States Supreme Court as Plessy v . Ferguson . Plessy argued that the act violated the
provisions of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments . The thirteenth amendment abolished
slavery, and the fourteenth amendment prohibits the government from discriminating against any
person based on their race or ethnicity . Plessy argued the Separate Car Act violated his
constitutional rights by separating the cars into whites and blacks .
Unanimously, the Supreme Court decided against Plessy . The Court upheld Plessy’s
conviction under the “separate but equal” principle (Rothman) . They also held that
the act did
not violate either thirteenth or fourteenth amendments (Duignan) . Although the
Court’s decision was unwise, it played a significant role in the future case of Brown
vs . Board of Education ,
which abolished the “separate but equal” doctrine . Plessy’s case effectively
allowed one race to continue holding unequal power over another . To Kill
aMockingbird was set between the two cases and demonstrated how unequal the
races were during that time in the segregated south .
In Scout’s society in Maycomb, Alabama, races were segregated in places such as the
churches and schools . The church Calpurnia attended, First Purchase African M .E.
Church, “was
in the Quarters outside the southern town limits, across the old sawmill tracks . It
was an ancient
paint-peeled frame building, the only church in Maycomb with a steeple and bell, called First
Purchase because it was paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves . (Lee, 119)”
When Scout
and Jem visited Calpurnia’s church, the people did not seem to accept them at first .
“I agreed:
they did not want us here . Isensed, rather than saw, that we were being advanced
upon . They
seemed to be drawing closer to us… (Lee, 120).” Although Harper Lee never mentions the
student body’s race it is obvious to the reader that Scout’s school is all white
face, mainly her right side . All of these wounds would have been impossible for Tom to make
because of his crippled arm . “If her right eye was blacked and she was beaten mostly on the right
side of the face, it would tend to show that a left-handed person did it (Lee, 180) .”“[Tom]
looked oddly off balance, but it was not from the way he was standing . His left arm was fully
twelve inches shorter than his right, and hung dead at his side . It ended in a small shriveled hand,
and from as far away as the balcony I could see that it was no use to him (Lee, 180) .”Mr . Ewell,
on the other hand, was left-handed . This would have made it easier for him to abuse Mayella .
Although despite this evidence pointing towards Tom’s innocence, the all white, all male jury
shockingly and unanimously voted against Tom . The Tom Robinson trial was a microcosm of the
many racial injustices resulting from segregation in society .
The biased trial resulted in Jem feeling betrayed and wary of the justice system . When he
saw the jury return a verdict of guilty, Jem could not understand how nine people could vote for
an obviously innocent man . Even after Atticus explained, he still could not grasp the idea of the
unfairness . “‘If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a
free man,’ said Atticus . ‘So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process.
Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come
between them and reason … There’s something in our world that makes men lose their
heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried . In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a
black man’s, the white man always wins . They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life (Lee, 224).”
While To Kill a Mockingbird and the Plessy v . Ferguson case took place nearly thirty
years apart, they both highlight issues with segregation, and both had more in common from the
case and the man, to the society and repercussions . Homer Plessy was just a man
who was trying to ride a train, but instead caused a domino effect, which helped end
segregation . During Scout
and Jem’s childhood, everyone and everything was segregated, including the church, school, and
society, which led the jury’s decision in finding Tom Robinson guilty . Everyone in the
book,
from the Finches to the Ewells to the Robinsons, had been raised the way they were, which
affected the trial . Jem was raised to treat everyone equally, which is why he could
not understand
why the jury did not see Mr . Ewell as the perpetrator . Mr . Ewell, and the men of the
jury, were
raised to believe whites were the superior race, so obviously the white witnesses were to
believed, even if the belief was illogical . In both Plessy v . Ferguson and To Kill a
Mockingbird ,
the black defendant was found guilty because how society treated black men .
