Alice McGrath comes from Russian Jewish immigrant family, she became involved in the People v. Zammora case, though during the first part of the case she was hospitalized. After being hospitalized, she started to get involved in the case. She had noticed that the judge, Charles Fricke, was being disdainful and commented “If people were reading the commercial press…they would be getting a picture of a group of gangsters, killers…a very sensationalized picture of the defendants on trial for something they deserved to be punished for.” Meaning she was stating that the public would be looking at these people, these young boys as people who deserved to be punished for what they did, which to her was unfair especially how the judge was treating them.
Tom Robinson was a black man who was being accused of raping a young girl named Mayella Ewell (Lee). Before Tom Robinson ever goes to trial, the legal system and
Miss Gates, Scouts third grade teacher, begins to talk about Hitler and the persecution of the Jews. Miss Gates lectures on how persecution stems from prejudices and how in America we don’t believe in persecuting anyone. She continues to discuss how she doesn’t understand why Hitler doesn’t like the Jews, defending the Jews because they have faith and they contribute to society. Later Scout comes home confused. Miss Gates was at the trial and she was excited to hear Tom Robinson was guilty.
There was also racism in the trial because they were convicted multiple, multiple times
Miranda Fricker dissects and examines the problems of testimonial justice and injustice, in her book, Epistemic Injustice, Power and the Ethics of Knowing. By using the characters of Marge Sherwood in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, Fricker draws in her audience and succinctly identifies two critical components to testimonial injustices. After examining her work, I feel her view of testimonial justice is able to be defended because people are not born to be discriminatory. Rather a person’s community and social interactions shape their development of testimonial justice, but there are ways to lessen a person’s testimonial injustice. Fricker’s argues that familiarity with people of different social identities
She demonstrates this through Tom Robinson’s trial and Mr. Tate trying cover up the murder of Bob Ewell. Having a caste system put into society creates a boundary between each people due to their class. This boundary separating people can create a bias opinion on one another. Having this bias opinion can establish a blurred image of people that seeps into the court of law. This influences the outcome of trials and impacts many people's lives.
latstly , and most imposrtantly, the juryy should have shown compassion to Tom Robbinson. The jury was made up of all white people. They knew how poor and low the Ewell’s were but, as much as the hated the Ewells they hated Tom , and all black men, even more. The cases makes it very clear that Mr. Robinson had not raped Mayella. In fact he had not even beaten her.
The justice system has always been the heart of America. But like this country, it has many faults. Prejudice has played a major role in the shaping of this system. In the 1930’s the way a courtroom was set up was completely different from how it looks to day. In the book To Kill A MockingBird, Harper Lee shows just how different it is.
We must go and overthrow the court, he says!’” (Miller 119). Miller gives insight into how the accusations around 1950-1954 may have also included the pressure of higher authority forcing someone (of the lower authority) with power, money, and etc. to testify false accusations. The author presents an interesting story that mirrors and represents a different time period, displaying the social injustice of people as they are motivated by fear, jealousy, hatred of one another, and more.
Although many may argue that the accusations presented by the plaintiffs seemed quite plausible, further investigation proved many such claims to be false. For example, although Price and Bates accused the young African-American men of raping them on the freight train, “the Scottsboro doctor who examined the girls less than two hours after the alleged rapes […] was able to show on cross examination that the girls were both calm, composed, and free of bleeding and vaginal damage” (Linder). The fact that a certified doctor was able to prove that the young women were virtually unhurt after the supposed rapes shows that the girls were lying to the court. Although their claims made sense to the prejudiced judicial system, Price and Bates were simply using their positions in society as young white women to gain unwarranted sympathy from the all-white jury. Because scientific evidence was able to contradict the prosecution’s allegations, it was evident that false accusations were being made by the plaintiffs.
The book “To Kill a Mockingbird” written by Harper Lee and the article “Scottsboro Boys Trial” both contain controversial court cases. For “To Kill a Mockingbird” a black male named Tom Robinson was accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. In the “Scottsboro Boys Trial” nine young black men and teenagers are accused of raping two white females named Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. Both cases transpired in the 1930s in Alabama. This is bad for the accused as racism was at an all-time in the 1930s especially in the deep south.
In schools across the world, children learn that, despite rampant injustice committed by a few, there is still good in the honorable majority of mankind and the promise of righteousness under the law. These children mature idolizing both superheroes in society and those existing on the big screen, teaching that right will trump wrong and that good will prevail over evil. Unfortunately, however, this is not an all-encompassing theme outside of the fictional realm. In Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, Geraldine Coutts, a rape victim on a Native American reservation, finds only injustice in the very judicial system that sought to protect her.
In the South of the United States in the 1930´s, the justice system was very unfair towards colored people. Colored people that were sent to court could not receive a fair trial because of the prejudice and racism from the jury. This happened all the time, especially in Maycomb Alabama. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a colored man named Tom Robinson was convicted of assaulting a white woman just because of the color of his skin. Tom Robinson should have been found not guilty for many reasons.
The most prevalent group of people to be rejected a true sense of equality are the blacks. The Trials of Tom Robinson from To
Dating as far back as the 1800’s when slavery was an extreme issue, blacks and other minorities were considered to be the most likely to commit a crime and were often convicted on the testimony of a white person. Mr. McMillian is a perfect explain in the book as a
Agard was discriminated for having parents from two different races (English and Guyanese). Leonard was discriminated for having a thick Scottish accent instead of an English one and wrote the poem of a BBC reporter who struggled with the same issue. That is because, it was said that news that was spoken ‘properly’ was truthful news. Their poems have the same message, and that is ‘that there is more