To Kill a Mockingbird Prejudice Quotes

“Lemme tell you somethin’ now, Billy,” a third said, “you know the court appointed him to defend this n*****.”
“Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it.”
This was news, news that put a different light on things: Atticus had to, whether he wanted to or not. I thought it odd that he hadn’t said anything to us about it – we could have used it many times in defending him and ourselves. He had to, that’s why he was doing it, equaled fewer fights and less fussing. But did that explain the town’s attitude? The court appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed to defend him. That’s what they didn’t like about it. It was confusing.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16. Scout hears the chatter from court spectators that Atticus had to defend Tom Robinson because he was appointed by Judge Taylor. But he hadn’t told his children that. She is further confused when the chatterers say Atticus aims to put on a defense for Tom and they don’t like this. Atticus wanted to take on Tom’s case because he wants justice to be served and wants to protect people’s rights, and he needs his children to understand how deeply he cares about this. Always the morally principled and excellent father who teaches by example.

The jury sat to the left, under long windows. Sunburned, lanky, they seemed to be all farmers, but this was natural: townsfolk rarely sat on juries, they were either struck or excused.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16. Scout describes the jury. It is made up of the country folk of Maycomb, farmers, since the townspeople were usually able to get out of jury duty. The all male, all white jury, with no women or minorities on it, is not representative of Maycomb County. Straight away a black accused is at a disadvantage.

“Well, Mayella was raisin’ this holy racket so I dropped m’load and run as fast as I could but I run into th’ fence, but when I got distangled I run up to th’ window and I seen – ” Mr. Ewell’s face grew scarlet. He stood up and pointed his finger at Tom Robinson. “– I seen that black n***** yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Bob Ewell says this at Tom Robinson’s trial, condemning him to prison and ultimate death with his deadly lies. Ewell uses racist and dehumanizing language, doesn’t speak Tom’s name, emphasises his color and compares him to an animal – “ruttin.”

White people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she was white. She couldn’t live like Mr. Dolphus Raymond, who preferred the company of Negroes, because she didn’t own a riverbank and she wasn’t from a fine old family. Nobody said, “That’s just their way,” about the Ewells. Maycomb gave them Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of its hand.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Scout is talking about Mayella Ewell and the kind of lonely and abandoned life she had as a young woman who was poor and lived with an abusive father.

Until my father explained it to me later, I did not understand the subtlety of Tom’s predicament: he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expect to live long, so he took the first opportunity to run – a sure sign of guilt.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Scout realized that Tom Robinson had no choice, one option was as bad as the other, because being a black man weighed against him in the legal system. Had he defended himself against Mayella Ewell he would likely have been killed, but running away made him look guilty.

Mr. Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury. “You’re a mighty good fellow, it seems – did all this for not one penny?”
“Yes, suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n the rest of ’em – ”
“You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?” Mr. Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling.
The witness realized his mistake and shifted uncomfortably in the chair. But the damage was done. Below us, nobody liked Tom Robinson’s answer. Mr. Gilmer paused a long time to let it sink in.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Poor black field worker Tom Robinson’s compassion for white woman Mayella Ewing is used against him at his trial in the prejudiced and racially-divided society of Maycomb.

“If you had a clear conscience, why were you scared?”
“Like I says before, it weren’t safe for any n***** to be in a – fix like that.”
“But you weren’t in a fix – you testified that you were resisting Miss Ewell. Were you so scared that she’d hurt you, you ran, a big buck like you?”
“No suh, I’s scared I’d be in court, just like I am now.”
“Scared of arrest, scared you’d have to face up to what you did?”
“No suh, scared I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Prosecutor Horace Gilmer questions Tom Robinson on the witness stand. While Gilmer is trying to suggest that Tom didn’t have any reason to be scared if he wasn’t doing anything wrong, the fact that Tom ends up on trial shows his fears were well-founded. Because of Maycomb’s prejudices black people have a whole other set of fears in addition to those of white people.

“Well, Mr. Finch didn’t act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called him ‘boy’ all the time an’ sneered at him, an’ looked around at the jury every time he answered – ”
“Well, Dill, after all he’s just a negro.”
“I don’t care one speck. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ’em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that – it just makes me sick.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Dill Harris complains to Scout about the way prosecutor Mr. Gilmer questioned Tom Robinson in court. Dill is not like a lot of the children in Maycomb, who are products of their parents racist teaching. Rather he is sensitive to the unjust treatment meted out to a black man in the judicial system.

“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.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Dolphus Raymond is predicting that Dill won’t cry about these things when he gets older. Once Scout and Dill get accustomed to the world as it is, they will no longer be shocked by the prejudices and injustices they witness. To Dolphus, it seems children have more moral outrage than adults.

“The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption – 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 caliber.”
“Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men cannot be trusted around women – black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Atticus Finch’s impassioned speech to the jury at the climactic trial of Tom Robinson, in which he tries to appeal to the jury’s moral compass. He exposes the unfair assumption that in court a white man’s word is more credible than a black man’s. He challenges the jurors not to convict simply because Tom is black and because black is bad, but to see him as a man and human being like themselves.

“She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Atticus tells the jury that Mayella Ewell is also a victim in the Tom Robinson case, poor, kept ignorant, abused by her father and prevented from having a relationship with the single person who was nice to her – black man Tom Robinson. She violated the code by making advances to a black man.

“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, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Atticus to the jury. Mayella Ewell broke Maycomb’s rigid social code, which says that a white woman must not kiss a black man. But rather than accept this some prefer to believe that the black man raped the white woman.

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal – there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Atticus in his speech to the jury speaks of the courts as the great equalizer, where all men are equal and justice reigns supreme. He highlights the clash between what he knows to be morally right and the expectations of the Maycomb community. He is hoping the jury will rise above the limitations and prejudices of the local community.

“Miss Jean Louise?”
I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes’s voice was as distant as Judge Taylor’s:
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 21. Though Tom Robinson is found guilty, Rev. Sykes and other members of the black community show their great respect for Atticus because he believed Tom was innocent and didn’t just assume he was guilty simply because he was black.

“How could they do it, how could they?”
“I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it – seems that only children weep.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. Jem asks his father Atticus why the jury found Tom Robinson guilty. In his reply Atticus suggests that the racism involved in the verdict is part of the community’s past, present and future. Jem had left the courtroom angry and crying, having been certain Atticus was going to get the black man set free.

“Don’t fret, Jem. Things are never as bad as they seem.”
Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something lengthy she settled her fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did, and we waited.
“I simply wanted to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. Atticus Finch has just lost the Tom Robinson trial and faces some isolation and backlash from his town. Neighbor Miss Maudie brings the children to her house for cake and offers them some encouragement and wisdom. She is one of the few locals who stands against racism and behind Atticus’s decision to defend Tom Robinson.

“It’s like bein’ a caterpillar in a cocoon, that’s what it is…Like somethin’ asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that’s what they seemed like.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. Shocked by the Tom Robinson guilty verdict, Jem is struggling with the actions of the people in Maycomb, people he thought were good. He feels he has been protected from reality, kept innocent like a caterpiller in a cocoon. Now he is losing that innocence and his eyes are opening to Maycomb’s prejudice.

“I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. Miss Maudie to Jem and Scout, who are disappointed that Atticus lost the racism-driven Tom Robinson trial. She sees some hope that the community is taking “a babystep” against prejudice by the fact it took so long for the jury to reach a guilty verdict.

“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
“Yes, sir, a clown…There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.”
“You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.”
“Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. Dill is upset and traumatized after witnessing racial injustice firsthand as Tom Robinson is wrongly convicted of assaulting and raping Mayella Ewell. He decides that he is going to be a clown when he grows up, a non-traditional one who laughs at people.

“Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night in front of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn’t go as reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads – they couldn’t be fair if they tried.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23. Atticus is talking to his son Jem about the mob mentality, explaining how reasonable individuals can lose their reason and humanity when they act together as a group. Examples being the mob that planned to lynch Tom Robinson and the jury that convicted him.
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