To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) is set in a small Southern town in the 1930s. An idealistic white lawyer (Gregory Peck) defends a black man (Brock Peters) who is falsely accused of raping an ignorant white woman. Although the lawyer proves his client is not guilty, the all-white jury finds him guilty just because he is a black man, and they refuse to take the word of a black over that of a white. Prejudice wins out over justice. That is one of the movie's themes, but another is the importance of standing up for your beliefs, as the Peck character does. A subplot centers on the lawyer's two young children, and their prejudice of a mysterious neighbor.
There are many emotions in the movie and most of them are due to prejudice, mostly racial. Just about all the town's white population feel hatred toward black people, and this emotion does not change and is responsible for the unjust verdict. Many black characters fear the whites, and with good reason; they could be falsely accused, jailed and killed because of white racism. Fear is also the emotion felt by the two young children who believe there neighbor Boo is a dangerous bogeyman. When Boo rescues them from harm, they realize how wrong their feelings are, how dangerous it is to jump to conclusions, and their emotion toward him change from fear to love. Although the emotion of fear is illustrated in two different ways in the movie, it has the same root: fear is based on ignorance.
A Raisin in the Sun (1961) is a movie about a black family trying to overcome the bigoted society in which they live. It is also about dreams and how they can come true in spite of hardships, poverty and racism. When the father in the Younger family dies, his wife receives a $10,000 insurance policy, and both children want at least part of the money to fulfill their dreams of bettering their place in American society. The daughter wants to become a doctor, and the son, Walter, wants to open a liquor store...