That gave Mayella some power at least over the African Americans because in the story even though all of the evidence pointed to Mayella's father. Bob Ewell the judge still convicted Tom Robinson for rape, but everyone knew that it was her father. It shows that Mayella has a lot of power just because she is white. Atticus had said while in the courtroom “The Ewells have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court...confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, and that all Negro men cannot be trusted around our woman”.(DBQ Project, p.19 2013) This shows us that Bob Ewell knew that a lot of the white men in the courtroom would be on his side just because Tom Robinson was an African American and Mayella was a white woman, in which shows she has power over Tom because of her