The Scottsboro boys with their lawyer, under guard, 1932.

1. Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, a sleepy small town similar in many ways to Maycomb, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like Atticus Finch,Lee’s father was a lawyer. Among Lee’s childhood friends was the future novelist and essayist Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration for the character Dill. These personal details notwithstanding, Lee maintains that To Kill a Mockingbirdwas intended to portray not her own childhood home but rather a nonspecific Southern town. “People are people anywhere you put them,” she declared in a 1961 interview. In high school, Lee developed an interest in English literature. After graduating in 1944, she went to the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Lee stood apart from the other students—she could have cared less about fashion, makeup, or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and on her writing. Transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Lee was known for being a loner and an individualist. She did make a greater attempt at a social life there, joining a sorority for a while. Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee contributed to the school’s newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. She eventually became the editor of the Rammer Jammer. In her junior year, Lee was accepted into the university’s law school, which allowed students to work on law degrees while still undergraduates. The demands of her law studies forced her to leave her post as editor of the Rammer Jammer. After her first year in the law program, Lee began expressing to her family that writing—not the law—was her true calling. She went to Oxford University in England that summer as an exchange student. Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester. She soon moved to New York City to follow her dreams to become a writer.

2. No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25,1931.   Harper Lee was five years old when nine young black men were accused of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Alabama. The original nine young black defendants were accused of raping two white women on a freight train, and eight were quickly convicted in a mob atmosphere. The juries were entirely white, and the defense attorneys had little experience in criminal law and no time to prepare their cases. As each of the nine cases successively went to the jury, the next trial was immediately begun. All but one of the defendants were sentenced to death on rape convictions. It was eventually established that the men were all innocent by which time they had served between 6 and 19 years in prison. Many prominent lawyers and other American citizens saw the sentences as spurious and motivated only by racial prejudice. It was also suspected that the women who had accused the men were lying, and in appeal after appeal, their claims became more dubious. There can be little doubt that the Scottsboro Case, as the trials of the nine men came to be called, served as a seed for the trial that stands at the heart of Lee’s novel. The story of the Scottsboro Boys is one of the most shameful examples of injustice America’s history.  It makes clear that in the Deep South of the 1930's, jurors were not willing to accord a black charged with raping a white woman the usual presumption of innocence.  In fact, one may argue that the presumption seemed reversed: a black was presumed guilty unless he could establish his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.  The cases show that to jurors, black lives didn't count for much.  The Scottsboro boys with their lawyer, under guard, 1932.

3. The American Civil War (1861 – 1865) The American Civil War took place between 1861 and 1865. It occurred when a group of Southern states, including Alabama, formed the Confederate Sates of America and broke away from the main union of states. After four years of bitter fighting they were defeated and rejoined the Union. One of the results of the Civil War was the end to black slavery when the 13th Amendment finally freed all slaves in the Southern states. Although in theory the Negroes were equal to the whites, in fact most of them continued to live separate lives, reluctantly accepting their inferior status. To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the 1930’s, yet by the this time – seventy years since the end of the war – the situation for Negroes had hardly changed. Negroes were still segregated. When Lee wrote the novel in the 1950’s things had begun to change, with civil disturbances and rioting proving that the black people were no longer prepared to put up with their inferior status. Segregation - The policy or practice of separating people of different races, classes, or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, and public or commercial facilities, especially as a form of discrimination.

4. The Great Depression • The Wall Street Crash of 1929 caused many shares suddenly to become worthless and poverty swept the country. • The Great Depression lasted from the end of 1929 until the early 1940’s. • In 1933, at the worst point in the Depression, more than 15 million Americans – one-quarter of the nation’s workforce – were unemployed. • President Roosevelt made substantial attempts at economic recovery. After the National Recovery Act, Roosevelt told the people ‘they had nothing to fear but fear itself’. However the strategies he put in place took time to lift the depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt – 32nd president of the United States. In Office from 1933 to 1945

5. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for refusing to obey a Montgomery bus driver's order to give her seat up for a boarding white passenger as required by city ordinance. Some blacks sat at “all white” lunch counters and others rode “freedom” buses through the south where they helped others in the fight for equal rights. Many whites also believed in equality for all. Together, blacks and whites, marched for Civil Rights. • The Black Civil Rights Movement • The Civil Rights Movement took place in Alabama during the 1950s and 1960s. • Efforts made to guarantee African Americans equal access to public and private transportation, schools, voting booths, economic opportunities, and housing caused tremendous social turmoil all over the South, where legal discrimination against black Americans was most pronounced. • From Alabama emerged two of the leading figures in the struggle. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to prominence here as a spokesman for African Americans seeking equality, while Governor George C. Wallace became the symbol for white resistance to racial integration. • Boycotts, demonstrations, and protest marches by Civil Rights activists provoked sometimes violent responses from whites determined to resist integration. • In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, making it illegal for any American to be discriminated against.

6. The Ku Klux Klan (The KKK) Men in an organization called the Ku Klux Klan used terror and cruelty to frighten African Americans. They did not want them to try to be equal in any way. The Ku Klux Klan even used murder as a tool of terror. In August 1955, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till visited relatives in Mississippi. At Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, a store owned by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, Till is said to have whistled at Mrs. Bryant. Several days later, on Aug. 28, Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

7. The Mockingbird is the most significant symbol in the novel. It represents an innocent, gentle, harmless creature. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. Miss Maudie explains that they are neither harmful nor destructive and only make nice music for people to enjoy. Atticus tells the children “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”. Many characters in the novel can be identified as mockingbirds, mainly Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. A Motif is a repeated theme, image or character which gives the work a symbolic structure. The mockingbird is a motif in the novel.

8. The story is set in a small town in the southern state of Alabama. Although the town, Maycomb County, is fictitious, there are references to real places. The state capital, Montgomery, is referred to on several occasions as is reference to the industrialised northern part of the state and the rural southern part, where Maycomb is situated. Maycomb Maycomb is a small town in Alabama. Most of the population and that of the surrounding community are poor. The population has remained virtually unchanged for decades, with the result that newcomers are not accepted easily. Cars are few, cinemas non-existent. The people are very religious, mainly Baptist or Methodist. Everyone knows everyone else and local gossip is rife. The Negroes are segregated and most people want them to remain so. Anyone who does not conform to accepted patterns of normal behaviour, like Boo Radley or Dolphus Raymond, is regarded as an oddity. So little happens that major events such as the rape trial are regarded as a day out for the whole county. Maycomb is a “tired old town” that is long overdue a change.