Atticus, the lawyer and father who defends Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl, recognizes that he is up against a jury that has already decided Tom's fate before they ever went to trial. When Atticus loses the case, Tom tries to escape and is killed. The town doesn't even blink at eye at his death.
Stated by Atticus at the end of the trial: "and so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to "feel sorry" for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people's."(204)
"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box."(220)
After Tom was killed by the prison guards, Atticus relays the story to his sister and Calpurnia. He makes the following statement about Tom's death.
"What was one more Negro, more or less, among two hundred of em?"(235)
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