After reading this book I had a great knowledge of prejudice and justice in the Deep South in the 1930s. In 1861 – 1865 war was on. Parliament abolished slavery in America in 1865 but the south needed slaves for their trade. So they carried on mistreating blacks, disobeying the law. After the war (with the North winning) blacks were still treated with injustice and inequality. The blacks still had bad jobs and most of them worked for the whites for instance a cleaner or maid. When Tom Robinson was on trial in the court there were no black people in the jury. The black people who wanted to watch the trial had to sit on the upper tier where there were limited seats so most of them stood.”Your fathers no better than the niggers and trash he works for” Miss Dubose told Jem. This is an extremely racist and somewhat unnecessary comment for Miss Dubose to make. This implies that Atticus is worse than, in her opinion, the blacks and other lower class of the town. Whites treated blacks like dirt and looked down on them whenever they would pass them in the street.
There was a clear social hierarchy in Maycomb; the whites viewed themselves significantly higher than the blacks. All of Tom Robinson’s evidence in the court case showed that he was not guilty but because he was black the jury sentenced him to prison. Judge Taylor did not want to sentence Tom Robinson but the majority of the jury agreed on him being guilty. They all thought that just because he was black he lied and was cruel to people. Aunt Alexandra had a somewhat haughty attitude towards things like this. Atticus and Aunt Alexandra had very different views on the way of life and the way people should live. For instance they both had very different perceptions on the word trashy. Atticus uses the word trashy to describe a stuck-up white man being racist towards a black man but Aunt Alexandra uses it to describe Walter Cunningham and