Segregation and Civil Rights Movement

Segregation and Civil Rights Movement To understand the overall meaning of this novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) is to come to terms with what it symbolized during the time that it was published. During the 1960's, African-Americans were still trying to fight for equal rights in the United States. They still did not have equal status, nor did they get treated as fairly or as well as Whites did during that time.

To understand Harper Lee's novel from the time that it was published is to be able to put oneself back in that era where things for African-Americans in the South were as if they never changed from the time of slavery. Although slavery was outlawed at the end of the Civil War in the 1860's, these individuals were still going through a hard time trying to adapt to a society that clearly disliked them, and blatantly disrespected their rights as human beings.

Things were still segregated, so even though African-Americans did have their freedom, they still did not have equal access to everything (James, 43-62). By the 1930's, during the time that this story took place, the African-Americans of this generation were either the children or grandchildren of the African-Americans who were slaves, so even though they themselves might not have experienced the treachery of slavery, they sure experienced the negativity and the harshness that the remainder of something that they were once bound to, still had on Whites of this generation.

They still felt superior than Blacks and segregation was a way of life (Loewen, 3-9). There was no such thing as one community; it was the White community and the Black community, and by far, the Black community did not have it as well as even the poorest Whites did. On a hierarchy scale, African-Americans were still seen as the slaves they once were, even though they still had their freedom.

Because of all the discrimination that African-Americans faced during the time that this novel takes place, it was very rare for an African-American individual to get a fair trial, no matter how compelling the evidence was that proved his or her innocence. It was just the way it was.

African-Americans were not even allowed to serve on a jury during that time, and it was a very rare case that an African-American would get a not guilty verdict when the alleged crime involved someone outside of the African-American race (Madison, 43-62). To know this would be to understand why Tom Robinson's trial turned out the way it did. And what was even more astounding was that a lawyer wanted to defend an African-American in the first place, since again, that was an extremely rare occurrence during those times.

The line, "Do all lawyers defend n-Negros, Atticus?" (Lee, 122) depicts the questionable gesture of the holders of the laws intention to do something that should be expected of everyone, and although the answer was, "Of course they do, Scout" (Lee, 123), it was known very well that that was not always the case,.