".I ain't ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man" (Lee) says one onlooker when the trial is almost at an end. This doesn't bode well for Tom, as he is colored and his accuser is white. Colored people in courts were not given the rights they deserved, even when the law said they should be given those rights. Fair due process was overlooked in favor of racism and prejudice against colored people. Tom Robinson was a crippled colored man who had the audacity to feel sorry for a white woman, and because of this, it was taken as him trying to take advantage of her and from that point, he was not heard; being of a different skin tone was good enough. Deprivation didn't stop there, as in Baltimore the colored folk were not allowed to live near white people, "No black person could occupy a home on a block where more than half the people were white;" (The Editorial Board). Even when the colored families can afford to live in the same neighborhood as white people if the majority of the occupants were white. Not being allowed certain housing because of prejudice deprived multiple colored families of having correct and functional houses and forced them to remain in many poverty stricken areas while whites continued to live in upscale or middle-class neighborhoods. During the late 1930s, there was an influx of industrial work that offered colored people jobs, but even with this new source of income, they could not move out of the slums and to a house that was correct for their circumstances. Deprivation of rights and materials via segregation might have slowly started coming to an end in the workforce, but it certainly hadn't ended in the housing industry.
A quite similar but different form of oppression is a denial of equal access and opportunity, which means that someone is being denied opportunities for work, schooling, living accommodations, etc.
