To Kill a Mockingbird in reference to the Scottsboro Trials
Dewji
To Kill a Mockingbird:
In Relations to the Scottsboro Trials
No other trial in American history creates so much turmoil, trials, appeals, and convictions as the alleged rape of two white women by nine black youths on March 25, 1931 (Linder, par. 1). Over the course of the next two decades the justice of the American judicial system as well as its people would be tested in this case. The nine black youths, or the “Scottsboro Boys” as they were called, will be made into celebrities as they fight for their freedom. The fate of the nine Scottsboro Boys is on everyone’s mind during the Scottsboro Trials; Harper Lee takes aspects from this trial and illustrates it in her own novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
The beginning of both the Scottsboro Trials and the Tom Robinson case bears a striking resemblance to each other. Mayella Ewell is a lonely girl who has to take care of her seven younger brothers and sisters. She regularly asks Tom Robinson to come and do some work for her. According to Tom it “Seemed like every time I [he] passed by yonder she’d have some little somethin’ for me [him] to do” (Lee 191). However, one day she “did something that in our society is unspeakable… she tempted a Negro” and thus she must “destroy the evidence of her offence” (Lee 203, 204). As a result her father beat her and together they accused Tom Robinson of raping her. The Scottsboro Trials became into existence on the freight train headed towards Alabama. On the train “black and white men began fighting” and most of the white men are thrown of the train (Johnson 16). Then the Scottsboro Police searched the train when it arrived, and arrest the nine black men on “charges of assault and battery” also finding two women dressed as men (Watkins 89). The two women Victoria Price and Ruby Bates immediately accuse “the African American men of raping them” (Johnson 16). Without any questions the nine black youths are charged with rape. Even though the two white women only say this because they are in fear of being arrested under violation of the Mann Act. This act “prohibited the taking of a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, like prostitution” (Johnson 16). To clarify, in both cases the accusers are poor white women, Victoria being a prostitute and Mayella being a pauper. Also both women had secrets that they wanted to cover up, which is why the charges of rape are put upon the black men. Victoria and Ruby wanted the charges to cover up their violation of the Mann Act; while Mayella wants them to cover up the fact that she tempted a Negro and that her father has beaten her. And therefore, the believability of the accusers and their testimonies becomes critical issue in both trials.