1 To Kill a Mocking Bird By Harper Lee

2 Context Understanding the personal, social and historical context of the novel is important. As you view this PowerPoint you should make notes about life in the American south in the 1930s. Consider the economic conditions, living conditions and race relations.

3 The Novelist Nellie Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama Lee’s father was a lawyer and among her childhood friends was future novelist and essayist Truman Capote Lee maintains that her novel was intended to portray not her childhood home but rather a non specific southern town. “People are people anywhere you put them,” she declared in a 1961 interview

4 Life in the 1930s The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn that peaked in the 1930s. During the Great Depression unemployment rose as high as 25% Life was very difficult for most workers and many people had rely on food handouts and travel to find interim work

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6 Food Queues The book includes several references to the “crash’ and its effects on the population. In chapter 12 Scout says," bread lines in the cities grew longer, people in the country grew poorer.” When Scout asks Atticus whether they are poor, he explains the financial interdependence of the farming and professional people.

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8 Cotton Picking Cotton plantations – along with tobacco and rice growing – was one of the earliest form of farming in the US – begun in the mid-17th century The need for cheap labour on the plantations was largely responsible for the growth of the slave trade which brought 1,000s of black people from Africa in terrible conditions Five or six hundred men, women and children would be crammed into ships with no sanitary arrangements and little food. Many died on the voyage and were thrown overboard

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10 Once they arrived they were made to work, with no rights of any kind.Some slave owners took pride in their treatment of slaves and even educated them to a degree, most were harsh and their treatments of slaves was brutal Families were separated, the working day was long under the punishing sun and living quarters were primitive Even after emancipation (1865), conditions were slow to improve, wages were low and resistance, especially in states like Alabama, to the idea of black people having civil rights, was very strong

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12 The Great Depression was particularly painful for black workers, who, in the 1920s had been grossly underemployed. With worsening economic conditions they found the menial jobs they had once had, such as cotton picking, had been taken by whites.

13 The South, which was still steeped in agricultural traditions in the 1930s was hit hard by the Great Depression. Small farmers often could not earn enough cash from their crops to cover their mortgages, let alone living expenses.

14 Racism There was little opportunity for African Americans to advance themselves in the South. Schools were segregated between whites and blacks. In the early 1930s there was not a single high school built for black students in the south. The result was that nearly half of all blacks in the South did not have an education past the fifth grade.

15 Race Relations In the 19th Century, Alabama grew rich on the proceeds of the cotton plantations and, after the civil war and emancipation, had a large black population with no means of support other than selling their labour Poverty meant that black people worked for very low wages Many white people were also very poor in the 1930s and had very poor living conditions There still very little social contact between blacks and whites and, often, deep suspicion characteriised race relations

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17 Black people in the 1930s weren’t allowed to vote, they were educated separately, had separate sections on buses and even park benches were labeled ‘Whites only’. However, there were many individuals, campaigners and families who worked hard to make more socially cohesive and united communities

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19 Justice? Even after emancipation, black people could not be confident of justice Often people took the law into their own hands. Mob violence in the form of lynching and summary hanging persisted and few white people would be apprehended for these sorts of attacks if the victims were black and suspected of criminal acts In June 2005, a white man was finally convicted of the manslaughter of three black civil rights workers in This was a case involving the notoriously racist Ku Klux Klan, mentioned by Jem and Atticus in Chapter 15.

20 The vigilante practice of lynching was still common in the south in the early 1930s, only North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky and Alabama had laws specifically outlawing lynching. By 1935 public outrage had reached a point where lynchings were no longer tolerated, even by whites.

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22 In 1931 nine young men were accused of raping 2 white women near Scottsboro, Alabama, after a series of lengthy, highly publised and often bitter trials, five of the nine men were sentenced to long prison terms. Many prominent lawyers and citizens saw the sentences as spurious and motivated by racial prejudice

23 The First Purchase African Methodist Episcopal ChurchThis is an important name because it suggests the importance to the black population of their religion, their sense of community , their own history and of their pride It is one of the few things they can be seen to won in a society which only very slowly accepted that slavery was finished The children’s visit to the church gives them – and us- an insight into this community which is important for the later trial scene

24 Mockingbird The actual appearance of the mocking bird matters far less than what is said about it and its symbolic value. It is linked to the ideas of innocence and ignorance, enjoyment of different kinds, social responsibility and the moral backbone of the society provided by Atticus and Miss Maudie. There is a contrast between the bird and the dangerous mad dog and the mocking bird which is blameless and entertaining.

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