rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights Marchers.
•
The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers was
convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the others
indictment was dismissed.
3.3 Civil Right Movement
Civil Rights Movement 1955–1968 refers to the movements of black people struggling in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination
against African Americans in southern states. After the disputed election of 1876 resulted in the end of Reconstruction,
White people in the South regained political control of the region, after mounting intimidation and violence in the elections. Systematic disfranchisement of African
Americans took place in Southern states from 1890 to 1908 and lasted until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s. For more than 60
years, for example, blacks in the South were not able to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.
During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party regained political control over the South. The Republican Party, the party of
Lincolnwhich had been the party that most blacks belonged to, shrank to insignificance as black voter registration was suppressed. By the early 1900s,
almost all elected officials in the South were Democrats.
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At the same time as African Americans were being disfranchised, white Democrats imposed racial segregation by law.
Violence against blacks mushroomed. The system of overt, state-sanctioned racial discrimination and
oppression that emerged out of the post-Reconstruction South became known as the Jim Crow system. It remained virtually intact into the early 1950s. Thus, the
early 1900s is a period often referred to as the nadir of American race relations. While problems and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social
tensions affected African Americans in other regions as well. Racist characteristics viewed in this period such as :
•
Racial segregation
By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate white and colored domains. Characteristically,
those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
•
Disfranchisement
When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more inaccessible to blacks. Black voters were forced off the
voting rolls. The number of African American voters dropped dramatically, and they no longer were able to elect representatives. From
1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised most African Americans
and tens of thousands of poor white Americans
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•
Exploitation
Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of
economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.
•
Violence
Individual, police, organizational, and mass racial violence against blacks
and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California
American black people and other racial minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through
lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP was founded in
1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts.
The situation for blacks outside the South was better. In most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination
in housing and jobs. From 1910 to 1970, African Americans American black people sought better lives by migrating north and west. A total of nearly seven
million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration. In the middle of 20th century, African Americans still suffered from many
disadvantages, including poverty rates that were much higher than those among white people and physical health that was much worse, and there’s still different
rights between black and white people where the blacks used to be suffered. This situation pretends the Civil Right Movement.
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Many of those who were active in the Civil Rights Movement, with organizations such as NAACP National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commitee, and SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference, prefer the term Southern
Freedom Movement because the struggle was about far more than just civil rights under law; it was also about fundamental issues of freedom, respect, dignity, and
economic and social equality. By January 1957, Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L.
Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC , of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in
organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights
movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and
discipline, he urges. April, 16, 1963, Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed during anti-
segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama. While during civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene Bull Connor
used fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which were televised and published widely, were instrumental in gaining
sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.
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August. 28, About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King
delivers his famous I Have a Dream speech. Finnaly in July. 2, 1964 President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that forbid racial discimination in
anyplace. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color,
religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. In the next year, he signed Voting Rights Act of
1965. But, in April. 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, at age 39, was shooted by the
murdere as he stood on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime. One week after this
incident President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The civil rights movement had forever changed the face of U.S. law and
politics. It had led to legislation that gave greater protection to the rights of minorities. It had also greatly changed the role of the judiciary in U.S.
government, as the Supreme Court had become more active in its defense of individual rights.
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CHAPTER IV
ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITION IN THE MIDDLE OF 20
TH
CENTURY VIEWED IN HARPER LEE’S NOVEL TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird was published during the time of social class stratification existed in United States after the ending of slavery era
which followed civil right movement led by Martin Luther King. The racial segregation was also existed, while people Blacks and whites would be separated
in all public accommodations such as schools, hotels, trains and streetcars, restaurants, and even cemeteries in an effort to underscore the inferiority of
blacks. In other words, separate facilities would serve as a constant reminder to blacks that they were unequal to whites.
In this middle of 20th century an extrem racist organization called Ku Klux Klan was still doing their racist violence action because of their angryness
didn’t agree with the fact that black people had won their freedom from slavery. After the civil war, slavery era in America was wipe out. But it was replaced by
postbellum social and legal system of separation citizens or social class stratification.
We consider that To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel primarily concerned with race relations and it was written and published amidst the most significant
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and conflict-ridden social change in the South since the Civil War and Reconstruction
Harper Lee in her novel focuses on racial injustice against black people in United States especially in Maycomb, Alabama. In her novel, Harper reveals a lot
about the society of Maycomb and the norms and values of the small town. The reader is constantly able to see throughout the book what Harper Lee’s conception
of Maycomb’s society is. Some black people worked as domestic servants or had poorly jobs. And the worst thing that happened was that if they were charged for
doing something to a white person and it was not true, the court would find the black person guilty over the white person, just like Tom Robinson’s trial.
Maycomb’s society is one deeply filled with racial injustice, social jealousy, and social hatred.
4.1 Social Class Stratification
