Building the Context for To Kill a Mockingbird
Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected
President of the United States in
November 1932.
Roosevelt initiates a widespread
social welfare strategy called the
"New Deal" to combat the
economic and social devastation
of the Great Depression.
Jim Crow was the name of the
racial caste system which operated
primarily, but not exclusively in
southern and border states,
between 1877 and the mid-1960s.
Jim Crow was not only a series of rigid
anti-Black laws. It was a way of life.
Under Jim Crow, African Americans
were relegated to the status of second
class citizens.
Christian ministers and theologians taught
that White people were the Chosen people,
Black people were cursed to be servants,
and God supported racial segregation.
Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists,
and Social Darwinists, at every educational
level, buttressed the belief that Blacks were
innately intellectually and culturally
inferior to Whites.
Newspaper and magazine writers
routinely referred to Blacks as
niggers, coons, and darkies; and
worse, their articles reinforced
anti-Black stereotypes. Even
children's games portrayed
Blacks as inferior beings .
All major societal institutions reflected and supported the
oppression of Blacks.
The Jim Crow system was
undergirded by the following beliefs
or rationalizations:
Whites were superior to Blacks in all
important ways, including but not
limited to intelligence, morality, and
civilized behavior.
White people were the Chosen
people, Black people were cursed to
be servants, and God supported
racial segregation.
Sexual relations between Blacks and
Whites would produce a mongrel
race which would destroy America;
Treating Blacks as equals would
encourage interracial sexual unions;
If necessary, violence must be
used to keep Blacks at the
bottom of the racial hierarchy.
The following Jim Crow etiquette
norms show how inclusive and
pervasive these norms were:
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.
Blacks were not allowed to show public
affection toward one another in public,
especially kissing, because it offended
Whites.
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. Blacks had
to use courtesy titles when referring to
Whites, and were not allowed to call them by
their first names.
Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide,
offered these simple rules that Blacks were supposed
to observe in conversing with Whites:
1. Never assert or even intimate that a White person
is lying.
2. Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White
person.
3. Never suggest that a White person is from an
inferior class.
4. Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate,
superior knowledge or intelligence.
5. Never curse a White person.
6. Never laugh derisively at a White person.
7. Never comment upon the appearance of a White
female.
ENTERTAINMENT
Alabama: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at
which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are
effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or
higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided.
Alabama: It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other
at any game of pool or billiards.
Alabama: Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably
accessible and separate toilet facilities.
Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored
people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or under the same license.
Georgia: It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play on any vacant lot or baseball
diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any
amateur colored baseball team to play baseball within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white
race.
Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white
people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at
any time.
Louisiana: All circuses, shows, and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance of more than one race is
invited shall provide not less than two ticket offices and not less than two entrances.
Virginia: Any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or place of public entertainment which
is attended by both white and colored persons shall separate the white race and the colored race.
The New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929
Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
Unemployed men vying for jobs at an Employment Bureau in Los Angeles
Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
FDR’s Inaugural Address (March
4, 1933)
Source:http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugural.html
Daily lineup outside State Employment Office
Memphis, Tennessee, 1938
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
Cabins and outbuildings on a former plantation
Alabama, 1937
Photographer: Arthur Rothstein
Source: http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap05.html
Sharecropper’s Porch, Alabama, 1936
Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
Sharecropping (definition)
System in which landowners allow workers
to use their land for farming in return for a
portion of the crops that the sharecropper
produces.
Sharecropper family: Sunday on the porch
Arkansas, 1935
Photographer: Ben Shahn
Source: http://rs6.loc.gov/pnp/fsa/8a16000/8a16100/8a16176r.jpg
Cotton pickers on a plantation in Arkansas
October 1935
Photographer: Ben Shahn
Source: http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap01.html
Shack in Elm Grove, Oklahoma, 1936
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
Street in Greensboro, Alabama
Summer 1936
Photographer: Walker Evans
Source: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?fsaall:1:./temp/~ammem_t6EC::
Children leaving the schoolhouse
Gee’s Bend, Albama, 1937
Photographer: Arthur Rothstein
Source: http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap05.html
Leland, Mississipi, 1937
Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
Greyhound Bus Station
Memphis, Tennessee, 1943
Source: http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/jimcrowlaw1/ig/Racial-Segregation-Signs/Waiting-Room--Tennessee.htm
“Colored” Drinking Fountain
North Carolina, April 1938
Photographer: John Vachon
Source: http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/jimcrowlaw1/ig/Racial-Segregation-Signs/Courthouse-Drinking-Fountain.htm
Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., 1926
The Scottsboro Trials
Ruby Bates testifying
Victoria Price testifying
Source: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_images
The Scottsboro boys with defense attorney
Sam Liebowitz in jail (March, 1933)
Source: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/Scotts.jpg
Crowd outside Scottsboro courthouse, 1931
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_CROWD.jpg
Postcard from 1930s
Mobile, Alabama
Homework:
Create a postcard and write to someone
back home in Los Altos (year: 2013) as if you
time-traveled back to Mobile, Alabama
(1930s-- the actual town on which Harper Lee
based the fictional Maycomb, in To Kill A
Mockingbird.)
Be sure to create an image, or select an
image from the internet that provides a fitting
representation of the south in the 1930s.
This should be based on your research activity
and the information from class today.
For the writing portion, be sure to write as if
you are a high school student from the year
2013 who is visiting the 1930s but please treat
this assignment with the seriousness it
deserves.