RacismThe belief that some races are by

nature superior to others.

How you treat people in a certain way according to their color (race).

Rosa Parks

Rosa Park is an African American civil rights

activist. The USA Congress used to call her “the first

lady of civil rights” or “ the mother of

freedom movement .”

The Montgomery bus boycott

In the state of Alabama, Rosa refused to obey the bus driver to give up her seat. When she got into the bus, she sat at the colored section, but when more four white men got on the bus and all the white section chairs were taken, the bus driver took the sign that separates between the black and the white and pushed four seats back and asked the black people to stand at the back of the bus to let the whites sit in their place. The

three men stood up but not Rosa, who the police arrested for violating the segregation law .

Rosa’s trial lasted for thirty minutes and she was found guilty because she was black.

Rosa’s action sparked the Montgomery bus

boycott. In her autobiography The Story, she said “ the only tired I was, was tired of giving up”

The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for 381 days, damaging the bus company’s finance. During the

boycott, a lot of black people churches were burned and even Martin Luther King’s house was bombed .

In relation to the story

Rosa stood in the bus defending her right just like Atticus in the novel where he was fighting

racism which is reflected in the novel like when he faced the mad dog alone and also

when he faced the group of people in front of the prison who came to lynch Tom Robinson .

The Jim Crow Laws

The Jim Crow Laws led to providing the white American a better life and a worst one

economically, educationally and socially for the black American. They were segregated by

schools, places, transportation and even military.

In Alabama, where the novel takes place, one of their laws was that all station passengers shall

have separate waiting rooms and ticket windows for the white and colored races.

Black feminismThe black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression from that of white women. The libration of black women entails freedom for all the people since it requires the end of racism, sexism and class oppression. The organizations of black feminists or as it was referred to the War Weary

Warriers had to over come three challenges :1 -prove to other black women that feminism is not for

white women only.2 -to demand that white women share power with them

and affirm diversity.3 -fight the misogynist tendencies of black nationalism.

Racism Quotes

How Atticus tried to teach his kids not to judge people according to their prejudice:

“First of all” Atticus said, “if you can learn a simple trick. Scout you will get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of the view _ until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”P.35

“I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle._ _Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until stand in his shoes and walk around in

them ”.

“It called first purchase church because it was paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves. Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays” p.124

How people segregate others like humans or not according to their skin color:

About mixed children of Dolphus Raymond, they don’t belong anywhere . Colored folks won’t have’em because they are half white; white folks won’t have ‘em ‘cause they’re colored, so they ‘re just in-betweens don’t

belong anywhere ”

A similar accident of Rosa Parks:

“Reverend Sykes came puffing behind us, and steered us gently through the black people in the balcony. Four Negroes rose and gave us their front-row seats.” p.170The way they were treated, unlike human beings:

Tom “Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared, too”.

“Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called the jury every time he answered” “well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro.”p.205

An example how Jim Crow Laws started unconsciously in people mind sets :

“ She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it”p.210

“The evil assumption that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their calibre.” p.211

An example of the starting of the Jim Crow Laws :

“Hypocrites, Mrs. Perkins, born hypocrites” Mrs Merriweather “yes you’re as good as we are but stay away from us.”p.240 An example of treatment:

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people-without even thinking . Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too”p.207