This document provides background information on the author Nelle Harper Lee and the historical context of her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, where she still lives today. She studied law at the University of Alabama but did not complete her degree. Her childhood friend was author Truman Capote, who inspired the character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is set in the 1930s during the Great Depression and addresses issues of racial injustice and segregation under Jim Crow laws in the rural Southern town where Lee grew up.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
Background Notes

2. Nelle Harper Lee

3. 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

4. Monroeville Courthouse

5.  Friends/Family cont...
 Sister: Lawyer in Monroeville
 Childhood Friend: Truman Capote,
author. Dill is modeled after him.

6. Truman Capote
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood

7. 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 NYC
 Airline reservation clerk
 Started to write seriously

8. 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

9. Two Big TKAM Awards
 1961: Pulitzer Prize
 1962: Bestseller’s Paperback of
the Year

10. To Kill a Mockingbird
Historical Context

11. 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

12. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

14. Irony

15. Poor Whites

16. Poor Blacks

17. Jim Crow

19. The onset of The Great
Depression probably made
people more class- and race-
conscious rather than bringing
them together. WHY?

20. 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