To Kill A Mockingbird/Scottsboro 9 By: Janice Allen Janay Patton Tony Lam & Jordan River

To Kill a Mockingbird In this book, a black man is accused of raping a young white women. Because of the prejudice in the South, the black man is sentenced to death. Not only was the evidence for the black man clear cut, but the case his lawyer made was very good. But because he had an all white jury, he was still convicted.

Scottsboro Trials Two young women were on a train and accused nine black men of rape and they were also accused of assaulting some white men. Even though some of these men had never seen each other in their life, they were still sent to jail. When the trials were held, the jury completely believed the women, and the nine men were sentenced to death.

Scottsboro Trials After the first conviction, a letter surfaces that Ruby Bates was not raped. The case is then heard in the Alabama Supreme Court. Once again, the same verdict. The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case. Eventually, five of the men are freed and 4 stay in jail or around it.

Connections In the story To Kill A Mockingbird, a man is accused of raping a woman. In the Scottsboro trials, two women accuse nine men of rape. In both of these cases, the men were completely innocent, but because the men were black, and the women were white, they got a very harsh penalty.

Connections Both of the women were very young and poor. They accused the black men of something that someone else did. Mayella Ewell is 19, while Ruby Bates is 17, and Victoria Price was 21.

Connections The lawyers that were chosen to represent Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro 9 were both white. Because they were white and defending black people, they were criticized for being “nigger lovers”. Sam Leibowitz was threatened for being Jewish, and Atticus was threatened by Bob Ewell because Atticus made him look bad.

Connections The evidence for Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro 9 was clearly enough to make them innocent. The juries, being that they were all white, still came to a guilty verdict. When you are tried for something, you’re supposed to have a jury that has your peers in it. In the Scottsboro 9, that fact right there was why some of the got free. But in Tom Robinson’s case, he never had a chance to get an appeal.

Connections Unfortunately, four of the Scottsboro 9 were never released from prison, and Tom Robinson was shot dead. The Scottsboro case changed the thinking of America and of how they thought of the prejudiced South. And Tom Robinson’s case changed how people in Maycomb thought about black people.