Kill a Mockingbird (Novel) by

¶ … Kill a Mockingbird (novel) by Harper Lee Harper Lee's to Kill a Mocking Bird The Scottsboro Trials and the Civil Rights Movement Historical Timeline Harper Lee's only novel, to Kill a Mocking Bird, takes place during an extremely tumultuous period in American history. The social economical climate of the age is highly important for the understanding of the events that are harbored by the novel.

First of all, at that time, the country was shook by the Great Depression, a terrible economic crisis which accentuated the conflict between the white and the black by creating a competition for the few jobs available on the market (Johnson, 16). The aftermath of the Civil War and the segregation movements also enhanced the existent tension between the white and the blacks. On March 25, 1931 a few groups of young people, both white and black, ride on the Southern Railroad's Chattanooga to Memphis freight train.

Soon after the train crossed the Alabama border, a white man walks across the top of a tank car. He steps on the hand of a black youth named Haywood Patterson, and thus a conflict ensues between the white and the black gangs of young men. During the fight, some of the white people are forced off the train, and they report a 'black gang attack' at the station in Stevenson.

The train is stopped, and a group of nine black men from the train, later known as the Scottsboro boys, are arrested. One of the two mill workers from Huntsville, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, tell the posse members that they had been raped by a gang of twelve blacks with pistols and knives. This leads to one of the greatest trials in American history, curiously set off by a crime that never occurred. The events are reflected in Tom Robinson's case from Harper Lee's novel.

On April 9, 1931, eight of the nine are sentenced to death; a mistrial is declared for the ninth because of his youth. The executions are suspended pending court appeals, which eventually reach the Supreme Court of the United States. On March 27, 1933, the new trials ordered by the Court begin in Decatur, Alabama, with the involvement of two distinguished trial participants: a famous New York City defense lawyer named Samuel S. Leibowitz.

Testimony is given by one of the women, Ruby Bates, who now openly deny that she or her friend, Victoria Price, had ever been raped (Johnson, 18). Despite all this, the black men are still convicted in April. However, judge James Horton effectively overturns the conviction of the jury and, in a meticulous analysis of the evidence that had been presented, orders a new trial on the grounds that the evidence presented does not warrant conviction. During this time all the defendants remain in prison.

Finally, on April 1, 1935, the United States Supreme Court overturns the convictions of Patterson and Norris on the grounds that qualified African-Americans had been excluded from all juries in Alabama, including on this trial. (Johnson, 20) the trials are reflected in the fictional trial of Tom Robinson, which parallels the tensions and prejudices existent between the black and white communities. The novel also deals with a fake accusation of rape by a racist white man.

Atticus Finch, Scout's father in the novel, who is a lawyer in the fictional town of Maycomb, is attacked by the white community for his attempt to do justice and defend Tom Robinson. The novel thus perfectly mirrors the beginning of the Southern community's awakening from racism. As a response to the injustice and discrimination against the blacks, the Civil Rights Movement begins in the fifties. The Movement spans a long and uncertain period of time, which begins in the late fifties.

It includes many separate movements and protests which attempt to abolish segregation and denounce the unconstitutional treatment of the black people. On December 1, 1955, for instance, the Montgomery Bus Boycott officially starts. Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the 'colored section' of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. The Bus Boycott starts as a response to her arrest. In September 1957, nine black students are blocked from entering the formerly all-white Central High School.