Among all of the books Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird was the one book that connected to past events. Harper Lee was inspired by the past events. She used actual past-events as inspiration to write her novel To Kill A Mockingbird. There were connections used in the book from the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the issue of racism. The first example of America’s history used in the book is the Jim Crow law. Jim Crow is a set of laws that were put in place to keep the white’s rights higher than the black’s rights. People thought the laws were needed because the blacks offended whites and made social inequality. A few examples of the laws were there were different bathrooms/water fountains for blacks …show more content…
Mob mentality is doing an action as a group that you normally would not alone. A current life example of this is, in a crowded restaurant, the restaurant must be serving food or it might not be as busy. Also a person might choose to listen to different music in a group of friends, then when she would be alone (Smith). Mob Mentality is also part of the country’s past; one example is 80 years ago in Indiana on August 7th 1930, people were having a feeling something was wrong. Three black men were hung on trees while still alive. Abe was one of the three people hung, he was carried and pulled up to a tree alive, he tried to stop them from hanging him and they broke his arms. Tom was another of the three, he was drug out, beaten, and drug down the street. Deter was the 3rd man and the police hung his bloody shirt on the flagpole. The office lady did not even know about the lynching’s going on, there were 10,000 people around the hanging by sunset. They were killing people like it was something that is normal, and they did not care how they were killing people (“Strange Fruit: Anniversary”). The people in the book experienced mob mentality when Scout and Jem follow Atticus to the jail. Mr. Cunningham leads a group to go kill Tom Robinson. They think it is ok to kill him since they are a group of people (Lee # 206). Not only is there Mob Mentality specified in the book but also racism. Racism is poor treatment to people