To Kill A Mockingbird - The Context

3 Pages 725 Words

Our question was ‘When the novel To Kill a Mockingbird was written in the 1960’s, how were the African Americans treated in society and how does this affect why the novel was written?

We have an extract from a speech spoken by Martin Luther King Jnr. in 1963. ‘I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slaveholders will be able to sit down together and the table of brother hood… I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.’

Martin Luther was an African American who suffered the oppression that society placed upon him but rose above that and against all odds began to change the minds of Americans. The African Americans were seen as lower than slaves, in the 1930’s to 60’s organisations like the Ku Klux Klan were thriving in the South, with about 2 million members. The South had fought against the abolition of slavery in the Civil War, so racial prejudice was much more common in the South where the novel was based.

Harper Lee wanted to speak through Atticus, telling the people the truths of the time, through a character they could trust and respect, just like the leaders that were rising up, such as Martin Luther and Malcolm X. Atticus believed that the colour of someone’s skin should not affect how they were to be treated, which is what the American Constitution stated and still states today, that “all men are created equal.” The novel was written during the time that Martin Luther’s radical beliefs were becoming well known. Atticus, a character set 30 years before, has the same views as people like Martin Luther, and this affects the entire town of Maycomb, as Martin Luther’s new ways of thinking were changing America. This shows how things within the novel were influenced by the society outside the novel. The truth...