Before the
twentieth century in the United States when the definition was broadened, rape was defined as
the crime of sexually violating a woman forcibly.
This charge of rape made by
Mayella Ewell against the quiet and kind Tom Robinson is the cruelest thing she could have done
to him. For within the 1930s setting of 's narrative, Jim Crow laws were in effect. One of the
perspectives of these laws was the imperative of keeping blacks separated from whites.
Restaurants, bathrooms, schools, churches, etc. were all segregated.
Also,
there was a fear among the upper classes of whites that blacks might "infiltrate"
white society if they were able to marry or have children with white women. Therefore,
"miscegenation" was unlawful. And, to enforce this law, lynchings took place whenever
any familiarity between a black man and a white woman was just suspected, let alone a fact. For
example, in 1931, there was a trial of nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women.
All but the youngest boy were convicted even though there was medical evidence that no rapes
occurred. Before "the Scottsboro Boys" (the crime was supposedly committed in
Scottsboro, Alabama) were even indicted, a lynch mob came for them. The arrest and trial of Tom
Robinson are influenced by this equally tragic history of innocent black men.
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