Mob Mentality In To Kill A Mockingbird

The Great Depression occurred during the 1930s when the stock market crashed and all the banks closed. The United States of America became poor and all the citizens had little money and there was barely any jobs. Most men looking for jobs had to take a train and just head in the direction it was going until they found a job (McCabe). In To Kill a Mockingbird the Great Depression is occurring and it has some references to how it was hard to find jobs. There was also the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials that influenced a few things in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The Jim Crow laws have the first influence in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The Jim Crow laws are a set of laws that set a racial caste system in the
Mob mentality is a unique behavioral characteristic that emerges when people are in big groups (Smith). When people would get into larger groups their behavior would completely change due to another person’s actions. Peer pressure is another reason why people change when they are in a group. Like when teens are around the wrong crowd they can be pressured into things they would not do usually (Smith). Also moods of mobs change depending on what occurs, like one small act of violence can trigger a mob to be very violent and angry (Smith). People do not think when they are in mobs they usually just do what everyone else does. Some people use a mob as an excuse to loot through people’s homes and steal belongings. They also have a chance to destroy houses and private properties of the town (Smith). Behaviors can vary from happy to confused to angry to furious. Like prison mobs tend to get violent and angry and shopper mobs get tend to be faster and trample people in the way. Mob mentality is shown a few times in To Kill a Mockingbird. When Atticus took on the Tom Robinson case a lot of the Whites in Maycomb did not support him. They called him names and kids at school made fun of Jem and Scout. A mob men also met Atticus at the jailhouse, because they did not like the fact Atticus was defending a Black man. Scout, Jem, and Dill interrupted the “meeting” and Scout did not know most of the men that were
The Scottsboro trials occurred in the 1930s and had nine African American boys aging from thirteen to seventeen and they were accused of raping two girls on a train. Eight of the nine boys were sentenced to death and one of them was too young for the death penalty so he was sentenced to life in prison. There was a lot of evidence that pointed to them being innocent. Like the two girls were examined by a doctor and he found no evidence of rape, but he was not called to court, but he told a lot of people. Also they found out the girls were prostitutes and they were crossing a border illegally so they covered it up saying they were raped. Later on, during the case one of the girls admitted that she was never raped. Also the boys were not in the same train cart as the girls (Johnson). The Scottsboro trials are a lot like Tom Robinson’s trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. The cases are a lot alike, because they both took place during the Great Depression and they both are rape cases. Also the towns took the white person’s side instead of the African Americans sides (Johnson). That is why the Scottsboro trials are like the trials in To Kill a