To Kill A Mockingbird: The Scottsboro Trial

Amber Jazwiecki
Mr. Rosenbaum
P-3
February 21, 2011

English Research
To Kill a Mockingbird

1. The Scottsboro Trials are about when 9 black young men were arrested for assault and later raping two white women on a train coming from Paint Rock, Alabama. Later the court found all nine guilty and they were sentenced to death. A few years later the public found out that the white women were lying but only one of the men were retried and that one man was sentenced to life in prison for not doing anything. It affected America by showing how the court system was segregation in the 1930’s. 2. My feelings about the Scottsboro trials are all negative. I think this is unjust and unreasonable punishment for the nine black men. They didn’t do anything wrong and the court took the word of two white women which isn’t right. This whole
trial was based on lies and racism. 3.
The authorities in the Scottsboro trial were totally wrong. They based their accusations on segregation. If it was white men raping white women they would’ve been let off after learning that the women were lying. 4. The authorities obviously based the accusations on racism. Like I said if It were white men raping those women they would’ve let them go. 5. The decision to sentence all the men effected how America viewed black people. It made the ordeal of segregation a bigger situation than it already was. 6. At the end of the trial all were tried and sentenced to either death or life in prison. Later one was released by 1989 the last of the Scottsboro boys died. 7. Starting in the 1880’s the Jim Crow laws were enforced. They were what gave segregation its name. It prevented the races from doing anything together. 8. The Jim Crow Laws were enacted because of racial disagreement. All the Southern states wanted to limit the freedom of newly freed slaves. 9. The Jim Crow Laws had a selfish purpose. They were created to enforce segregation in schools, transportation, hotels and many more places in the
south. 10. The Jim Crow Laws are so ridiculously unconstitutional. They limit colored peoples rights and give the whites everything. 11. The cause of The Great Depression was mostly caused by Black Tuesday also known as the day the stock market crashed. Other reasons consister od the banks failing, people couldn’t purchase across the border, the American economic policy with Europe, and the big drought which caused the dust bowl and made farmers fail. 12. Well the newly elected President Roosevelt did kind of pacts. Help give people jobs and improve the economy. That is what the government did to help the Great Depression heal. 13. Well the Great Depression made it twice as hard for southern blacks. Since they had just got out of slavery they were poor as it is. Most of them still trying to find jobs when the stock market crashed most white owned businesses wouldn’t hire blacks and most of the rest of the businesses weren’t hiring making it impossible to get a job and earn money for there familys. 14. Sharecropping was kind of a rip-off in my opinion. The newly freed slaves would take care of part of a white persons land for a share of the profit. 15. Separate but equal was about keeping the colors apart in two separate “communities” but giving them equal treatment.