Theme Of Segregation In To Kill A Mockingbird
In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee takes readers to the roots of human behaviour, to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, and the struggle between blacks and whites. The novel explores several racial issues to do with this struggle between blacks and whites, one of the main being the racial issue of segregation, the discriminating separation between these two races.
In much of the country of the United States, black people, “negroes”, were pretty much forbidden to share the same spaces as whites. This included public transport, recreational areas, and schools. Having separate schools for African Americans branded their whole race with the humiliation of degradation and inferiority.
Any African American child attempting to enrol in a segregated white school was denied. In Topeka there were around eighteen neighbourhood schools for white children, and yet African American children only had access to four of those eighteen schools.
In Harper Lee’s novel, the majority of the black community is illiterate because there are no schools for them in Maycomb County. Their only way of learning is from their parents, or another elder. For example, Mrs Buford taught Calpurnia, and Calpurnia taught her son. Including Cal and her …show more content…
son, Zeebo, only four African Americans in the church can read.
In Topeka, of the United States, laws to oppose segregation were starting to be introduced.
This was a significant turning point in the development of the country. The Brown V Board of Education of Topeka took it upon themselves to dismantle the legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other facilities. This was laying the foundation for shaping future national and international policies regarding human rights. However not everyone agreed with this. Many Whites protested against desegregation and declared that violence was threatening if it occurred in schools and that they should keep peace by turning the black students away. So desegregation began with soldiers standing in classrooms to ensure the rule of
law.
The struggle for freedom was long and difficult. Charles Houston made the most success in eliminating discrimination and segregation. He devised a systemic assault “use the court as a laboratory” to develop a succession of test cases and gradually chip away at the “separate but equal” doctrine
Because of segregation laws and the general ‘stay in your place and we will in ours’ sentiment of both white and black communities both communities grow up with a warped impression of the other. Like the Mr Cunningham being of country folk and uneducated he had experienced inability to accept new perceptions of a race that he had always regarded as improper in the novel
An example of how segregation affected Scout is when visiting Calpurnia’s church. She has never been to “that part of town” and is unfamiliar with the Church’s way of singing hymns (“lining”), and doesn’t understand “nigger talk”. Even Lula, who is one of the church members, says, “They got their church, we got our’n.”
In much of the country of the United States, black people, “negroes”, were pretty much forbidden to share the same spaces as whites. This included public transport, recreational areas, and schools. Having separate schools for African Americans branded their whole race with the humiliation of degradation and inferiority.
Any African American child attempting to enrol in a segregated white school was denied. In Topeka there were around eighteen neighbourhood schools for white children, and yet African American children only had access to four of those eighteen schools.
In Harper Lee’s novel, the majority of the black community is illiterate because there are no schools for them in Maycomb County. Their only way of learning is from their parents, or another elder. For example, Mrs Buford taught Calpurnia, and Calpurnia taught her son. Including Cal and her …show more content…
son, Zeebo, only four African Americans in the church can read.
In Topeka, of the United States, laws to oppose segregation were starting to be introduced.
This was a significant turning point in the development of the country. The Brown V Board of Education of Topeka took it upon themselves to dismantle the legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other facilities. This was laying the foundation for shaping future national and international policies regarding human rights. However not everyone agreed with this. Many Whites protested against desegregation and declared that violence was threatening if it occurred in schools and that they should keep peace by turning the black students away. So desegregation began with soldiers standing in classrooms to ensure the rule of
law.
The struggle for freedom was long and difficult. Charles Houston made the most success in eliminating discrimination and segregation. He devised a systemic assault “use the court as a laboratory” to develop a succession of test cases and gradually chip away at the “separate but equal” doctrine
Because of segregation laws and the general ‘stay in your place and we will in ours’ sentiment of both white and black communities both communities grow up with a warped impression of the other. Like the Mr Cunningham being of country folk and uneducated he had experienced inability to accept new perceptions of a race that he had always regarded as improper in the novel
An example of how segregation affected Scout is when visiting Calpurnia’s church. She has never been to “that part of town” and is unfamiliar with the Church’s way of singing hymns (“lining”), and doesn’t understand “nigger talk”. Even Lula, who is one of the church members, says, “They got their church, we got our’n.”