Discuss Harper Lee's portrayal of the black community in To Kill A Mockingbird

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Discuss Harper Lee's portrayal of the black community in To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill A Mockingbird is set in the nineteen thirties, a time when racism was very common and, in America, the Ku Klux Klan were operating, having been reactivated in nineteen fifteen. At that time, despite their loss of the civil war and acceptance (though unwilling) of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Southern states were continuing to practice racism. Many Southern landowners were determined to keep cheap black labour. However, they were not the worst off, as the Southern whites, who were at the bottom of the heap, were threatened by the rising place of black people and became the least respected of people.

In the novel, the black community is portrayed very positively, as they are shown as reacting in an absolutely non-violent way to the racist abuse that they suffer, behaving passively and even still helping white people. In this way, they are portrayed as 'heroes'. Despite some dispute over just how realistic this view was, this was undoubtedly Harper Lee's intention as to what we are meant to think of the black community. The novel is about a white man defending a