Tom's Safety In To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the 1930s, which is the time when segregation was still legal. The novel itself was published in 1960, right in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. Throughout Harper Lee’s novel one of her characters, a young Scout Finch, with the assistance of her father Atticus, learns “how to walk around in others’ shoes” and see life from their perspectives (Lee, 86). This is a lesson in Lee’s made up county of Maycomb could desperately benefit from, since racism and prejudice is running rampant in Maycomb County. Atticus has taken a job that involves defending Tom Robinson, a black man who is wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Tom’s safety is endangered, as townspeople want to take problems into their own hands.