Race, Crime, and Justice in To Kill a Mockingbird and

Beyond

Renee RomanoOberlin CollegeJanuary 7, 2015

Harper Lee

A few of the many

foreign translationsof To Kill a Mockingbir

d

“The First Vote”

Harper’s Magazine, November 1867

Disfranchising Blacks in the South

The blackface minstrel figure of “Jim Crow”

Daily Life Under the Jim Crow

regime

Signs of Jim Crow

"3436 Blots of Shame on the United States: 1889-1922.”A graphic representation of the extent of lynching in the

US, prepared by the NAACP in 1922

A Postcard of a Lynching

Postcard depicting the lynching of Lige Daniels, August 3, 1920.

The back reads, "This was made in the court yard in Center, Texas. He is a 16 year old Black boy. He killed Earl's grandma. She was Florence's mother. Give this to Bud. From Aunt Myrtle."

One of the other most influential books about

race in the United States in the postwar

period

Law enforcement

during the civil rights

movement

A Mississippi Sovereignt

y Commission Pamphlet

The jury at the Emmett Till murder trial deliberated only 67 minutes before acquitting Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam of the crime. The two admitted killing Till for $4000 from Look Magazine several months later.

In this 1962 Clifford Baldowski editorial cartoon, members of the Klan and southern lawmen kidnap “justice” while reassuring her that she is “in good hands.”

Emmett Till

A few of those whose murder cases have been

reopened

James Chaney, Andrew

Goodman, and

Mickey Schwerner

Henry Dee and Charles Moore

Birmingham church

bombing victims

Medgar Evers

5 of the 21 men put in jail since

1994

A jubilant Myrlie Evers after the 1994 conviction of Byron De La Beckwith for her husband’s 1963 murder. In the film about the trial, the white lawyer became the lead figure

Washington Post-ABC Poll of December 27, 2014

Editorial Cartoon from The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) July 16, 2013