Emmett Till Trial

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In chapter 12 of To Kill a Mockingbird, we find out that Tom Robinson, an African American man, is accused of raping a white woman. Based on the trial of Emmett Till, I believe that Tom Robinson doesn’t have a chance at winning his trial. Dealing with Jim Crow laws as an African American in the South during segregation was already very difficult, with society racist and biased against them in every court case.
Living down south was not easy at all for African Americans, as proven through the murder of Emmett Till. This fourteen-year-old was visiting his family in Money, Mississippi when he was dared by his friends to flirt with a Caucasian woman behind the counter of a country store. He first bought some candy in the store before saying “Bye, …show more content…
His assailants furiously, “made Emmet carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river” (“August 28, 1955”). The unfairness shown toward African Americans led Emmett Till to unjustly receive a harsh “punishment” for merely talking to a white woman. Afterwards, a trial was held to determine whether the husband and the brother who killed Emmett Till were guilty or not of murder. After hearing Till’s great uncle positively identify the two criminals as the murderers, the segregated courthouse reached a verdict. The article explains that, “the all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of ‘not guilty’” (“August 28, 1955”). It is obvious that the jury already knew their decision before …show more content…
All of Maycomb has already decided that Tom must be guilty merely because of his skin color. They view Atticus, Tom’s defendant, as an aberration and a traitor to his own race and town. Even Francis, Atticus’s own nephew, remarks: “If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that’s his own business, like Grandma says, so it ain’t your fault. I guess it ain’t your fault if Uncle Atticus is a n-word-lover besides, but I’m here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family” (Lee 110). Similar to the Emmett Till case, Atticus’s community is not open to change. They do not want to view African-Americans as equals, and are already biased against them before the trial even starts. Additionally, in chapter 12, we find out that Tom Robinson was accused of raping Mr. Ewell’s daughter. Because of this supposed crime, everyone is spurning and mistreating him and his family, No one doubts the Ewell’s word at all. At last, someone thinks twice, and Scout, Atticus’s daughter, questions: “Mr. Ewell?... Why, Atticus said they were absolute trash- I never heard Atticus talk about folks the way he talked about the Ewells… if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d be glad to hire Helen...” (Lee 164-165). Just as with the murder of Emmett Till, a racist society overlooks any flaws in a white man’s story, like
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