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Inherent Racial Biases Woven Into America’S Criminal Justice Institutions: A Reexamination Of To Kill A Mockingbird, Joshua B. Lanphear

Joshua B. Lanphear

This is article considers the concept of inherent racial biases woven into America’s criminal justice institutions as reflected in Harper Lee’s novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman. Mockingbird—published in 1960, but set in the 1930s, in the fictitious racist-south of Maycomb, Alabama—portrays this concept through the trial of Tom Robinson, a sympathetic African American accused of raping the white Mayella Ewell. Key representatives of Maycomb’s institutions—Officer Heck Tate, Judge John Taylor, Mr. Gilmer, Atticus Finch, and Tom’s jury—perpetuate these inherent racial biases throughout Tom’s experience with the criminal justice system until he is ultimately killed under …