One Book

Beaver County 2005

A Brief Biography of Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, a city of about 7,000 people in Monroe County, which has about 24,000 people. Monroeville is in southwest Alabama, about halfway between Montgomery and Mobile.

She is the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Harper Lee attended Huntingdon College 1944-45, studied law at the University of Alabama 1945-49, and studied one year at Oxford University. In the 1950's she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC in New York City.

In order to concentrate on writing, Harper Lee gave up her position with the airline and moved into a cold-water apartment with makeshift furniture. Her father's sudden illness forced her to divide her time between New York and Monroeville, a practice she has continued. In 1957 Miss Lee submitted the manuscript of her novel to J. B. Lippincott Company. She was told that her novel consisted of a series of short stories strung together, and she was urged to re-write it. Fir the next two and one half years she re-worked the manuscript with the help of her editor, Tay Hohoff, and in 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird was published. To this day it remains her only published book, but it has won a number of prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. The novel was made into a film in 1962, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

To this day, Lee continues to divide her time between New York City and Monroeville Alabama.

About the Book To Kill A Mockingbird

The story of To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Alabama in the Depression, and is narrated by the main character, a little girl named Scout Finch. Her father, Atticus finch, is a lawyer with high moral standards. She and her brother, Jem, and their friend Dill are intrigued by the local rumors about a man named Boo Radley who lives in their neighborhood but never sets foot from his house. Legend has it that he once stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors, and he is made out to be a kind of monster. Dill is from Mississippi but spends his summer in Maycomb at a house near the Finches.

The thrust of the story revolves around a case involving a clack man named Tom Robinson who has been accused of raping a very poor white girl named Mayella Ewell. The Finches all face harsh criticism in racist Maycomb because Atticus's decision to defend Tom, but Atticus insists upon going through with the case because his conscience could not let him do otherwise. He knows that Tom has almost no chance, because the white jury will never believe his story, but he wants to reveal the truth of what happened to his fellow townspeople as well as expose their bigotry.

The trial pits the story of the white Ewells against Tom's evidence. According to the Ewells, Mayella asked Tom to do some work for her while her father was out, and Tom came into their house and forcibly beat and raped Mayella until her father appeared and sacred him away. Tom says that Mayella invited him inside, then threw her arms around him and began to kiss him. When her father arrived, he flew into a rage and beat her, while Tom ran away in fright. According to the sheriff's testimony, Mayella's bruises were on the right side of her face. Tom Robinson's left arm is useless due to an old accident, whereas Mr. Ewell leads with his left. Given the evidence, Tome should go free, but after hours of deliberation, the jury pronounces him guilty. Though the verdict is unfortunate, Atticus feels some satisfaction that the jury took so long deciding. Usually the decision would be made in minutes, because a black man's word would not be trusted.

Atticus is hoping for an appeal, but unfortunately Tom tries to escape from his prison and is shot to death. Jem has trouble handling the results of the trial, feeling that his trust in the goodness and rationality of humanity has been betrayed.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ewell has been threatening Atticus and other people connected with the trial because he feels he was humiliated. He gets his revenge one night while Jem and Scout are walking home from a Halloween play at their school. He follows them home in the dark, then runs at them and attempts to kill them. Jem breaks his arm, and Scout, who is wearing a confining costume, is helpless throughout the attack. However, the elusive Boo Radley stabs Mr. Ewell and saves them. Scout finally has a chance to meet the shy and nervous Boo. The sheriff declares that Mr. Ewell fill on his own knife so that Boo won't have to be tried for murder. Scout walks Boo home. He goes inside and she never sees him again.

Historical Setting - The Scottsboro Trials

There are many parallels between the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird and one of the most notorious series of trials in the nation's history, the Scottsboro Trials. On March 25, 1931, a freight train was stopped in Paint Rock, a tiny community in Northern Alabama, and nine young African American men who had been riding the rails were arrested. As two white women- one underage - descended from the freight cards, they accused the men of raping them on the train. Within a month the first man was found guilty and sentenced to death. There followed a series of sensational trials condemning the other men solely on the testimony of the older woman, a known prostitute, who was attempting to avoid prosecution under the Mann Act, prohibiting taking a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, like prostitution. Although none of the accused were executed, a number remained on death row for many years. The case was not settled until 1976 with the pardon of the last of the Scottsboro defendants.

The Trials Compared

Tom Robinson's Trial	The Scottsboro Trial
- Occurs in the 1930s	- Took place in the 1930s
- Takes place in southern Alabama	- Takes place in northern Alabama
- Begins with a charge of rape made by a white woman against an African American man	- Began with a charge of rape made by a white woman against African American men
- The poor white status of Mayella is a critical issue	- The poor white status of the accusers was a critical issue
- A central figure is Atticus, lawyer, legislator and member of the Alabama bar, who defend an African American man	- A central figure was a heroic judge, a member of the Alabama bar who overturned a guilty verdict against African American men
- Atticus arouses anger in the community in trying to defend Tom Robinson	- This judge went against public sentiment in trying to protect the rights of the African American defendants
- The verdict is rendered by a jury of poor, white residents of Old Sarum	- The first juries failed to include any African Americans, a situation which caused the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the guilty verdict
- The jury ignores evidence, for example, that Tom has a useless left arm	- The jury ignored evidence, for example, that the women suffered no injuries