Setting and Background To Kill a Mockingbird Setting and Background

The Great Depression Started in the United States with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Incomes, profits & prices dropped. Unemployment was sky high. _ 

People in the U.S. and all over the world battled their governments and each other to find food, jobs, and basic necessities.

Jim Crow State and local laws, primarily in the American South, to segregate blacks and whites. Began in the late 1800’s and was not completely repealed until 1965.

“Separate but equal” was a phrase seen in every walk of life: schools, restrooms, transportation, even drinking fountains.

March 25, 1931 Victoria Price Lower class white woman from Huntsville, AL. Promiscuous, hard drinking, swearing, and sarcastic. 21 year old spinner at the Margaret cotton mill in Huntsville making $1.20/day. Worked only 5-6 days a month because of the Depression. Unsuccessfully looking for a new job in Chattanooga, TN, and hoboing back home on a train.

March 25, 1931 RUBY bates Also a lower class white millworker from Huntsville, AL. Mother was a prostitute and father was an abusive drunk. Lived in a shack as the only white family on the block. A 17 year old described as a “notorious prostitute.” On the same train with Victoria Price, a woman she had never met, heading back to their hometown of Huntsville.

JAIL HEAD ASKS TROOPS AS MOB SEEKS NEGROES Riot Feared in Scottsboro Ala., After Arrest of Nine, Held for Attacking Girls Special to The New York Times HUNTSVILLE, Ala., March 25, 1931     Fearing a mob outbreak at Scottsboro, county seat of Jackson County, following the arrest of nine Negroes charged with attacking two white girls, a detachment of militia was ordered to the Jackson County jail tonight.     Sheriff Waun at Scottsboro asked for troops when a crowd which had gathered about the jail became threatening.  The Sheriff wired to Montgomery that the crowd numbered 300.     Later, however, the sheriff reported that the mob was dispersing as the night was cold, and danger seemed averted.    

The girls, who gave their names as Ruby Bates, 17, and Victoria Price, 21, were in a box car with seven white men when the Negro tramps got in at a point between Stevenson and Scottsboro.  They threw six of the white men off the train.     The seventh and the girls are said to have fought desperately until the white man was knocked unconscious.     The men who had been thrown out of the car telegraphed ahead to Paint Rock.  When the train arrived there a Sheriff's posse surrounded the car and captured the Negroes after a short fight.     The Negro prisoners and their white accusers were taken to Scottsboro where the Negroes were formally charged with criminal assault on a woman, a capital offense in Alabama.  The white men who had been in the box car were held as material witnesses. 

Crowd gathers in Scottsboro during the first trials    

The Scottsboro Boys Haywood Patterson (18) Charlie Weems (16)     The Scottsboro Boys Charlie Weems (16)     Olen Montgomery (17)     Andy Wright (17) Clarence Norris (19)     Willie Roberson (16)     Eugene Williams (13) Roy Wright (13)     Ozie Powell (16)