The Cycle of Oppression

            The most obvious forms of oppression in the fictional novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are stereotyping, deprivation of rights and materials, and denial of equal access or opportunities. To Kill a Mockingbird is set during the 1930s during the Great Depression and post-World War Ⅱ. During the Great Depression, colored people found it much harder to find work because of their skin color, and many reverted to being field hands and doing many jobs that used to be considered slave labor in the 1770s to the 1830s. Colored families faced an unemployment rate that was much higher than whites, which caused many to be forced into poverty stricken homes and to settle in small towns where there were less whites and hopefully more jobs. The colored families were met with passive aggressive racism in these towns, but were often given jobs, and the towns like Maycomb from To Kill a Mockingbird soon settled into an easy soft spoken racist mindset. This novel by Harper Lee covers and goes into depth about the racism in a little town called Maycomb in Alabama; narrated by a young girl named Jean Louise Finch, or Scout, as the book references her. Scout is exposed to hatred and racism to colored people as she grows up in Maycomb. In the beginning, the racism is not outright harsh, but as the book continues, it becomes very obvious and detrimental. Scout herself starts out as a young child who doesn't think much of colored folks, which is inadvertently forged by the racism of Maycomb inhabitants. As she gets older and wiser, she comes to the conclusion that the colored men are just like white men and that the world is unfair to colored people. .
             One example of oppression comes in the form of deprivation of rights and materials, which basically means that someone is not allowed the same rights to the constitutional law, rules, and anything of equal status when it comes to legality. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson, a colored man unrightfully convicted of the raping of a white girl, is faced with deprivation of his right to an unbiased jury and court ruling.