1. To Kill A Mockingbird

2. History The book takes place in the mid-1930s
What was going on in history at that point? Economy, race relations, etc.

3. History: Great Depression
13 million Americans lost their jobs
Sharecropping
White landowner divided land into shares & provided small houses, tools, and seeds for the sharecropper
Once crops were harvested, landowners received a percentage of the profits, after taking out expenses they incurred on behalf of the sharecroppers
Landowners pushed sharecroppers to use all of their share for farming, which left no land on which to grow their own food
Sharecroppers then bought food from the grocery store, thus owing money to the store owner and the landowner
During the Depression, it was difficult for sharecroppers to sell their crops-- they could not pay their bills
Not much different than slavery…

4. History: Southern Social Structure
Upper class: Plantation owners, professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.)
Finch family
Middle class: Owners of small farms and small-town businesses
Cunningham family
Lower class: African-American farmers, unskilled laborers
Tom Robinson, Calpurnia, Ewell family
Importance of Heritage
Upper class: people whose family had lived in the same area for generations
Amount of money they had = not as important as the appearance of comfort
In the Depression, since money could not be the differentiating factor, ancestry was used to separate the “elite” from the “common”

5. History: Racism Segregation/Jim Crow laws Voting
Separate restrooms, trains, buses, schools, etc.
African-American schools were not given books or supplies
Voting
1870: Voting rights for African-American men
Many Southern states circumvented this law by having stringent voter registration requirements
Literacy tests: several African-Americans were illiterate, and illiterate white men could invoke the “grandfather clause,” which stated any man could vote if he could prove his grandfather did. The grandparents of African-American voters at the time had not been allowed to vote.
Poll taxes: most African-Americans did not have the money to pay the poll tax

6. History: Racism Poverty Lynching
Textile mills began to open, but skilled and unskilled jobs were reserved for whites
African-Americans received most menial (think minimum wage) jobs, at salaries that kept them below the poverty level.
How did that keep them from working their way up in the world?
Because of their lack of education, most African-Americans worked in farming and domestic positions
The Social Security Act was passed in 1935; provided retirement and unemployment compensation for all American workers, with the exception of those working in farming and domestic positions.
Lynching
KKK founded by Confederate army veterans to oppose changes that occurred during Reconstruction
Exacted their own “justice” – killing

7. History: Scottsboro Trials
Scottsboro Trials– 1931 to 1976
Nine African-American men tried for raping two white women
Significant impact on author Harper Lee
Served as inspiration for To Kill a Mockingbird

8. To Kill a Mockingbird Published in 1960
What was going on at that time?
Civil Rights Movement
1954: Brown v. Board of Education
1955: Rosa Parks
1956: Autherine Lucy admitted to U. of Alabama; violence erupted and the Board of Trustees forbade her return, despite the courts’ ruling
Hit the bestseller list and stayed there for a year and a half– 15 million copies sold
Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961

9. Harper Lee
Many critics say she modeled the narrator and main character, Scout Finch, after herself
Lee, according to some sources, was frightened by the book’s success
She never wrote another novel and gave her last interview to Roy Newquist in 1964– became quite reclusive
Go Set a Watchman, Lee’s first draft, was published in 2015; it is set 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird
Passed away in February 2016 at age 89
Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama in 1926
Lee’s father was a small-town lawyer
Harper Lee’s mother’s maiden name was Frances Finch
Scout was born in Alabama in 1926
Scout’s father, Atticus, is a small-town lawyer
Scout’s last name is Finch

11. What is literary theory/criticism?
Interpretive tools that help us think more deeply and insightfully about the literature that we read.
A “lens.”
Each school of criticism has its own approaches to the act of reading.
New Historicism (1980s–present): An approach that breaks down distinctions between “literature” and “historical context” by examining the contemporary production and reception of literary texts, including the dominant social, political, and moral movements of the time. 
Objective of New Historicism: to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature.