Historical Background for
To Kill a Mockingbird
By Harper Lee
“ I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin, but by the content of
their character."
Dr. Martin Luther King
“Jim Crow” Laws


From the 1880s to the
1960s most states
enforced segregation
through the “Jim
Crow” laws named
after a black-faced
character in minstrel
shows.
Through these laws
legal punishments
could be imposed
on people for
having contact with
members of another
race.
Jim Crow Guide
1. A Black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a White
male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a Black male
could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a White
woman, because he risked being accused of rape.
2. Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did
eat together, Whites were to be served first, and some sort of
partition was to be placed between them.
3. Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the
cigarette of a White female -- that gesture implied intimacy.
4. Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one
another in public, especially kissing, because it offended Whites.
Jim Crow Guide
5. Blacks were introduced to Whites, never Whites to Blacks.
6. Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to Blacks,
for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, Blacks were called
by their first names or by “boy” or “girl” (regardless of age). Blacks had
to use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and were not allowed to
call them by their first names.
7. If a Black person rode in a car driven by a White person, the Black
person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck.
8. White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.



After the Civil War, The Ku Klux
Klan was formed as a secret society
that promoted white supremacy
using violence and terrorism to
undo the gains that former slaves
had made.
The Ku Klux Klan was originally
organized in the winter of 1865-66
in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social
club by six Confederate veterans.
However, after the 1920s the KKK
was no longer secretive about their
work and public violence against
Blacks, including lynching, became
common occurrences.
• Served the broad social purpose of maintaining white supremacy in
the economic, social and political spheres
• Frequently committed with public display-often advertised in
newspapers and drew large crowds of white families
• Lynchings were covered in local newspapers with headlines
spelling out the horrific details. Photos of victims, with exultant
white observers posed next to them, were taken for distribution in
newspapers or on postcards. Body parts, including genitalia, were
sometimes distributed to spectators or put on public display. Most
infractions were for petty crimes, like theft, but the biggest one of
all was looking at or associating with white women. Many victims
were black businessmen or black men who refused to back down
from a fight.
• In the South, an estimated two or three blacks were lynched each week in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Mississippi alone, 500 blacks
were lynched from the 1800s to 1955. Nationwide, the figure climbed to
nearly 5,000.
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in
Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, when he reportedly
flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days
later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in
the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white,
male jury acquitted them.
After WW1

Even though Blacks had
fought bravely for the US
in WW1, they returned
home from Europe to find
the same, if not worse,
discrimination and
segregation.
 The economic struggles
of the 1930s seemed only
to worsen the situation.
“Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?”
…I am a Negro American
Out to defend my land…
I’ve seen my buddy lying
Where he fell.
I’ve watched him dying
I promised him that I would try
To make our land a land
Where his son could be a man –
And there’d be no Jim Crow birds
Left in our sky…
So this is what I want to know:
When we see Victory’s glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
hold me back?
…will Dixie Lynch me still
When I return?…
Langston Hughes
(1902-1967)
The Great Depression (1930s)

The Depression hit the
South especially hard
 Everyone seemed to be
living in poverty
 Americans turned away
from the rest of the world
and away from each other
 During these years of
turmoil, discontent started
to grow in the minds of
Whites and Blacks alike.
- Worst and longest economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial
world, lasting from the end of 1929 until the early 1940s
- Effects of the Great Depression…
-rapid declines in the production/sale of goods
-a sudden, severe rise in unemployment;
-In 1933, at the worst point in the depression, more than 15 million
Americans— one-quarter of the nation’s workforce— were unemployed.
-Businesses and banks closed their doors
-People lost their jobs, homes, and savings
-Many depended on charity to survive.
-25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers were
completely out of work
Who knows what the nation’s
unemployment rate is today?
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
2004
5.7
5.6
5.8
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.5
5.4
5.4
5.5
5.4
5.4
2005
5.3
5.4
5.2
5.2
5.1
5.0
5.0
4.9
5.0
5.0
5.0
4.9
2006
4.7
4.8
4.7
4.7
4.6
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
2007
4.6
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
4.6
4.7
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.7
5.0
2008
5.0
4.9
5.1
5.0
5.4
5.6
5.8
6.1
6.1
6.5
6.8
7.3
2009
7.8
8.3
8.7
9.0
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.8
10.0
9.9
9.9
2010
9.7
9.8
9.9
9.9
9.6
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.8
9.4
2011
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.0
8.8
8.6
8.5
2012
8.2
8.3
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.1
7.8
7.8
7.8
7.9
2013
7.9
7.7
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.3
7.2
7.2
7.2
7.0
6.7
2014
6.6
6.7
6.7
6.3
6.3
6.1
6.2
6.1
5.9
Hoovervilles



As people lost their jobs and savings, mortgages on many
homes and farms were foreclosed.
Homeless people built shacks and formed shantytowns, which
were called
“Hoovervilles” out of bitterness toward President Herbert
Hoover, who refused to provide government aid to the
unemployed.
The Dust Bowl

Natural forces inflicted another blow on farmers. Beginning in Arkansas in
1930, a severe drought spread across the Great Plains through the middle of the
decade.

Once-productive topsoil turned to dust that was carried away by
strong winds, piling up in drifts against houses and barns.

Parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado
became known as the Dust Bowl, as the drought destroyed the livelihood of
hundreds of thousands of small farmers.

Packing up their families and meager possessions, many of these
farmers migrated to California in search of work.
What was it like growing
up during
the Great Depression?
Families unable to pay the mortgage lost their homes and farms. As a result,
about 250,000 young people were homeless in the early years of the
Depression. Many became nomads, traveling the highways and railways.
20% of America's children were hungry and without proper clothing.
Children went without shoes and warm clothes for the winter.
Thousands of schools had to close down because they lacked the money to
stay open.
About 3 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 had to leave school,
many to go to work.
To Kill a Mockingbird

It is in this setting
that the novel To
Kill a Mockingbird
takes place.
 In a small town, in
the deep South, in
the early 1930s
TKAM—Society at that time…

A definite class
structure existed
 Upper and middle class
whites lived in nice
neighborhoods. (The
Finch family)
TKAM—Society at that time…

Lower class whites
lived on the outskirts of
town in rundown
shacks. (The Ewell and
Cunningham families)
TKAM—Society at that time…

African Americans lived
even farther away from
civilization.
 Often many generations
shared a home.
Characters

Scout Finch-- the
protagonist and
narrator
 Semiautobiographical
character

Lee would have been
the same age as
Scout at the time the
novel took place.
 Lee’s father was a
lawyer like Scout’s
father.
 Lee’s hometown of
Monroeville shares
similarities with
Maycomb.
Characters
Atticus Finch—Scout’s father (a widower)
 An attorney
 Respected in the community

Characters




Jem Finch—Scout’s older brother
Dill—Scout’s friend who lives with his aunt in the house next
to the Finches during the summer months
Calpurnia—The Finch’s housekeeper and caretaker of Scout
and Jem
Boo Radley—a very mysterious neighbor
These are the first characters introduced. Be sure to add to the
character list as reading continues…
What is a mockingbird?


The Texas state bird, which
does not have its own song.
Instead, it imitates the songs
of other birds. Killing a
mockingbird is illegal.
In the novel, the
mockingbird is an important
symbol of innocence
destroyed by evil.
Harper Lee (1926-)






To Kill a Mockingbird is her
only novel.
Submitted TKAM in 1957;
rejected
Spent two and one-half years
revising
In 1960, TKAM published to
widespread acclaim.
Pulitzer Prize—1961
Movie version won four
Academy Awards--1962
Brown vs. Board of Education

In 1954, after 2 years in court,
the nation was shocked by a
landmark decision to grant
Linda Brown, a Black fifthgrader, admission into a white
elementary school in Topeka,
Kansas.
 The decision engendered
feelings of triumph and outrage
across a country that had lived
under the weight of racial
segregation and discrimination
for over 100 years.
The Winds of Change

Soon, average
Black citizens
across the country
began speaking out
against oppression
and demanding
equal rights. This
was the beginning
of America’s Civil
Rights Movement.
Rosa Parks (1913-2005)


In 1955, after a long
day of work, 42year-old Rosa Parks
refused to give up
her seat to a white
man on a
Montgomery County
bus
This set off peaceful
and violent protests
throughout the
South.
Television Changes Everything

By this time, many families had
televisions and as images of
Southern race riots and violent
protests reached into American
homes the magnitude of Southern
racism began to sink into the
American consciousness.

Moreover, the rest of the world
began to frown upon America’s
treatment of Blacks, and
segregation, like slavery, became
a national embarrassment for a
country who had fought in two
world wars as great liberators of
the down-trodden masses.
Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

Black HeroLeaders began to
rally together
Black Americans
in order to fight
oppression and
for a country
where all men
were truly
treated as equals.
Desegregation

A national and international call
for desegregation of the South
rang out and Blacks and Whites all
over the country started putting
pressure on governments to amend
the segregation laws.
 Those individuals, both Black and
White, who fought for Civil
Rights were under constant attack
from White Supremacists who
were unwilling to accept Black
Americans as equals
 Many freedom-fighters died for
their efforts
To Kill a Mockingbird



In the Fall of 1960, in the
middle of the Civil Rights
Movement, To Kill a
Mockingbird was published.
It shot to the top of the New
York Times best seller list.
A country was finally ready
to listen to the story of
segregation and open their
minds to the possibility of an
America where Whites and
Blacks could live together as
equals.