The Scottsboro Trial of 1931 and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

When Scout complains about her teacher, Atticus tells her that “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (Lee 33). In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch teaches his daughter moral values as he prepares to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been charged with raping a white woman. Harper Lee was influenced by court cases that were based on the racial prejudice of blacks. One of those cases was the Scottsboro Trial of 1931, in which nine African American males were falsely accused of raping two white women while on a train to Memphis. The trial began on April 6, 1931, and lasted just three days. Eight of the nine boys were found guilty and sentenced to death. Because the Scottsboro Boys’ first trial was appealed, it was sent to the Alabama Supreme Court, and then sent to the United States Supreme Court. The Court ordered new trials because the Scottsboro defendants had not had adequate legal representation. (Gerdes 250). The case against one of the boys, Haywood Patterson, began in Decatur, Alabama, on March 27 with Judge James Horton presiding. During this trial one of the white girls, Ruby Bates, said they were not raped while two physicians concluded that the girls were not raped either. On April 9, 1933, the first defendant, Haywood Patterson, was sentenced to execution, but Judge Horton ordered a new trial because the evidence did not warrant conviction. Even though the novel is fictional and the court case is real, the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Scottsboro Boys trial were similar be...

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Johnson, Claudia Durst. "Judge James E. Horton's Address." Understanding To Kill A Mockingbird. Greenwood Publishing, Inc. Web. 16 Feb. 2011.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Warner Books, 1982. Print.

Linder, Douglas O. "Judge James E. Horton." UMKC School of Law. 1999. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. .

Gerdes,Louise I.,ed. The 1930s. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2000. 246-60. Print.

Napoli, Tony, ed. "The Scottsboro Court Case: A Nightmare That Doesn't End." Our Century, 1930-1940. Milwaukee: Gareth Stevens Pub., 1993. Print.

Weiner, Mark S. Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Print. This book part is called Uplift the Race, 1903- 1970, and contains the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, Alabama, 1931.