Ernest J. Gaines wrote a powerful novel, A Lesson Before Dying, based in a small Cajun town in Louisiana in the 1940s. Gaines tells the story of a young African-American, Jefferson, who was wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to death. Through his story, he describes how the justice system shows injustice towards the black population. Behind the justice system, there is still an assumption that people of color are criminals due to bias. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In the courtroom, the two lawyers adopt a position that only dehumanizes Jefferson, causing him to lose his dignity as a man. His lawyer claims he is inferior to a man because of his physical characteristics and lack of intelligence. Jefferson spent his entire life on a plantation, working for poor wages. He did everything he could without any problem, because he always thought he was of low status. The prosecutor believed that Jefferson and his friends, who were African-American, intended to rob and kill Mr. Grope so that he could not identify them. Then he went on to say that when Mr. Grope and his friends were dead, he compared Jefferson to an animal because he didn't care that there were dead bodies around him and didn't call the police, instead. Instead, he put money in his pockets and celebrated by drinking. Jefferson's lawyer defended him by insisting that he was a boy, a pig and a fool, thus proving that he is incapable of committing robbery and murder. However, the white jurors did not side with Jefferson from the start. The judge was white, the lawyers were white, and everyone on the jury was white. Jefferson was on trial in a community populated by whites who had deprived him of his legal rights. His lawyer pleads his innocence based on white prejudice, rather than the evidence. It was therefore a question of the fact that the judge had no mercy on the legality of the situation, by sentencing him to death by electrocution. Emma, ​​Jefferson's godmother, is upset by the accusations against Jefferson. She hated the fact that the prosecutor called her godson a “pig” and not a man. However, she couldn't do anything about this situation because she didn't have much education or money. So she went to her nephew, Grant, to ask him to go teach Jefferson how to be a man before he died. Grant is an elementary school teacher who went to school to get a degree. But before they could do so, they had to go to Henri Pichot to get permission from his brother-in-law, who is the sheriff. Miss Emma was once a slave cook for the Pichot family and did much for them in the past. More than anything, Miss Emma felt like the Pichot family owed her the favor of giving Jefferson the proper education before his death. Being an uneducated African American slave, Miss Emma was not able to provide Jefferson with the proper resources to receive an education, much less in a community full of African Americans who could not read or write or know what which was right. fake. Black men convicted of a crime mainly come from low socio-economic difficulties and low education levels. By 2005, 65 percent of black men had dropped out of high school, and by the time they reached their 20s, they were unemployed or incarcerated. The unemployment rate for black men aged twenty and over increased from 15.4% to 17.2%. The race, the