To Kill a Mockingbird

Background Notes

Nelle Harper Lee

Author: Nelle Harper Lee

Born: Monroeville, Alabama, 1926—Still lives there

Family/Friends

Mother: Francis Finch

Father: Amasa Coleman Lee

Descendent of Robert E. Lee

Lawyer in Monroeville

Monroeville Courthouse

Friends/Family cont...

Sister: Lawyer in Monroeville

Childhood Friend: Truman Capote, author. Dill is modeled after him.

Truman CapoteBreakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood

Lee’s Education/Career

1944-45: Huntington College

1945-49: U. of Alabama (law)

Exchange Student: Oxford U. (UK)

Dropped out of college 6 months prior to receiving her degree

1950: Moved to NYCAirline reservation clerk

Started to write seriously

Education/Career cont…

1960: TKM published just as Civil Rights Movement began to “heat up”

Lee has never published another novel

1962: TKM movie—Double-Oscar winner

Two Big TKAM Awards

1961: Pulitzer Prize

1962: Bestseller’s Paperback of the Year

To Kill a Mockingbird

Historical Context

The Great Depression

Story takes place in early 1930s, the height of The Depression

Franklin Delano Roosevelt=pres.

Harsh life for rural South became tougher

Blacks: House workers, farm-hands

White Farmers: Might own land, but no $

Professional whites also hit hard

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Irony

Poor Whites

Poor Blacks

Jim Crow

The onset of The Great Depression probably made people more class- and race-conscious rather than bringing

them together. WHY?

Segregation: 1930s

Worse in the South

Emancipation Proclamation, 1863. Blacks were not slaves anymore, but had few “real” rights

Jim Crow laws

Lynchings not uncommon