How To Kill A Mockingbird Affect The Civil Rights Movement

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Aya AlSaid
Mrs. Price
English 9 Honors
16 May 2016
Civil Rights in To Kill a Mockingbird
Have you ever wondered how Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird affected the Civil Rights Movement? The novel helped people better understand why racial discrimination was wrong. The Civil Rights movement was beginning to take shape in the 1950s, and its principles were finding a voice in American courtrooms and the law. In To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee sets her story in the South of the 1930s, although she wrote the novel in the 1950’s, at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. To Kill a Mockingbird deals with racism and prejudice, and this teaches the reader about equality and empathy. The civil rights movement is connected to To Kill a Mockingbird
“...many lawyers (including Lee’s sister) give credit to the novel for impacting their way of thinking...one must remember that it also fell to white judges and juries of the American South to stand up for African Americans and their rights...it is the unique power of art literature to soften the heart and impel the individual to see the world through new eyes…” (Everitt. "Some Thoughts on To Kill a Mockingbird and Its Influences on Modern America." Goodreads.) The Civil Rights Movement and To Kill a Mockingbird both had an impact on the judicial systems of the 1950s-1960s. Judges and lawyers began to think differently about African Americans, and this helped decrease the amount of racial discrimination in courtrooms in the
Although the Jim Crow laws were quelled, many places stayed segregated. Whites in the south kept their bias and blacks were treated unfairly. “In 1954, with Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine, legally (but not practically) ending segregation. Buses, schools, theaters… they were to be desegregated, but the fight wasn’t over. African Americans, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., utilized nonviolent means and civil disobedience to protest their unequal treatment.” (Earnest, MK "To Kill a Mockingbird and the Civil Rights Movement”, The
OC Blog) In To Kill a Mockingbird, the people of Maycomb County understood that blacks were being treated unfairly and discriminated against, but the townspeople didn’t care much for the blacks. This was similar to the 1950s and 60s because there were some people that understood that this discrimination was wrong while others strongly professed in it. The civil rights movement is connected to To Kill a Mockingbird through segregation, courtrooms, and racial
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