So no matter what the evidence, a white person's word against a "darkys" would be accepted. So Tom is isolated in that courtroom; he is helpless because he could not break the generations of discrimination that they had come to take as the norm and right.
Harper Lee has structured her story around the life of a young girl, Jean Louise. We see the tale from her eyes. She, at the start is full of superstitious nonsense ,"Boo", a man who lives in a house near her, has gossip spread through Maycomb (the first signs of the prejudicial attitude we see) about him and she believes them. Our first impression of Maycomb as a"tired old town" implies traditional, old-fashioned values, which we will experience with their treatment of Tom. " People moved slowly" This is emblematic of their resistance to change, which is also evident later on.
Through this child's perception we first learn of Tom, as someone at school teased her saying "Finches daddy defended niggers" This is our first taste of racism in American courts in the 1930's as it was a thing Scout wanted to deny - that her father, a lawyer, was on a niggers side. She questions her father about this and he simply says that he is defending a "Negro" Atticus isn't prejudiced and describes Tom as "clean livin" and doesn't assume the worst just because he's black. Therefore, our first impressions are that he is not a criminal but a "member of Calpurnia's church".
We only meet Tom once, in the courthouse. This way of not showing Tom very often to the reader amplifies his isolation, obviously because he is in jail; but also this shows that whites did not have much contact with Negroes. In fact, we do not hear Tom's point of view at all; this is because it was not valued. As a result, he is out of sight and out of mind.
The reader meets Rhoda for the first time through gossip at her work, the dairy. The first physical description of her we receive is a "thin, fading woman of thirty" and we have our attention drawn to her by a fellow milkmaid, who is speaking of the Farmer's new wife and is slyly trying to see Rhoda's reaction.
