Race In To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” there is a constant pull between Class, Gender and Race. These three things can make a very powerful person or not so powerful person. In the novel, Atticus Finch, a white man is asked to defend Tom Robinson, a black man. Tom Robinson is accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. The novel is set in the 1920’s and early 1930’s so it has been several years since the slavery has ended. Yet people at that time had been very racist and sexist. Everything at that time was still segregated, bathrooms, movie theaters, restaurants, and lots of other places. So with Tom Robinson being arraigned of this crime was a very big thing.
At this time in the 1920’s and 1930’s Jim Crow laws were enforced. Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that restrained any communication between a white woman and black man. Especially any type of intimacy. At the present time skin color served a very large concern in society. So everyone was flabbergasted by Tom Robinson being accused of this crime.
In this case,
Class played a large role because of the effect it had on everyone. If someone was rich, they were treated as if they were kings. If someone was poor, they did not get much respect. It plays in with “To Kill a Mockingbird” so well that Mayella has always some sort of power throughout the whole novel. Mayella got Tom Robinson into a lot of trouble. Everyone believed her simply because she a white woman. She may have not been a high class white woman but she was still a white woman. Tom Robinson was a black man and that is why no one believed him. He fell into a very low class simply because he is a black man. But somehow Mayella still was the one above him. Even though her actions were bad and his were not. After the trial, Tom Robinson was sent to jail. From there he tried to escape and he was shot. Mayella has a large role in this novel, but also she always has a head above