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The Great Depression's Effect on African Americans

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The Great Depression's Effect on African Americans

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African Americans were heavily discriminated against when the Great Depression began while minorities being singled out was not a uncommon occurrence America already had a long history with discrimination against African Americans. Violence against African Americans doubled and many were fired from their jobs to make room for white workers. This discrimination would continue until America's entrance to WWII after a local leader of an African American work union threatened to march on Washington.

“Race During the Great Depression - American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation: Teacher Resources.” Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/race/.

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Information to help give perspective on just how much the Great Depression shaped the world.

The Great Depression effected the entire world not just America. America was hit the hardest by the economic crash but other nations like Germany, Italy and,Japan felt the hit as well. Italy was the birthplace of fascism and the rise of Nazis in Germany could be attributed to the Great Depression. Military dictatorships rose up in Latin America and in western and European countries like Britain and France governments had to take control over distributing wealth so the poor were less affected.

Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3433.

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This is a video of a man describing sharecropping and how it was very similar to slavery
"Sharecropping as Slavery." PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/slavery-another-name-sharecropping-slavery/

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https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/scottsboro-boys

"The Scottsboro Boys." Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/scottsboro-boys Accessed 7 Jan. 2020.

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This gallery of photos gives a live look into the lives of people during this time.  The photos exploit the rough living conditions and lack of sanitary locations.

"Great Depression History."

History.com, 29 Oct 2009. 'Photo Galleries: Soup Kitchens and Breadlines; Farm Security Administration’s Resettlement Administration Photographs.' www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history. Accessed 7 January 2020.

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This image shows how black people and white people were separate because and there skin color
GoodmanTheater.org Separate But "Equal": A Brief History of Jim Crow Laws
accessed January 2020

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The Great Depression was a major economic crisis that followed the crash of the stock market. The crash of the stock market created a huge panic and people began to take all their money out of the banks, but the banks did not have this money so people became angry. People lost all their money with the bank and went into poverty.

History.com. "Great Depression History." History, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history. Accessed January 2020.

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Sharecropping was used after the Civil War as work for many of the former slaves.  Many of these tenants lived in worn down houses, and even some in sod houses. This was because many of these former slaves worked for former slave owners and made very little. The image shown below is a picture of one of the houses that these tenants lived in when sharecropping.

David E. Conrad, "Tenant Farming and Sharecropping," The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=TE009.

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This video describes what Jim Crow laws were and the affect it had on the African American people at the time.  This video sets the imagery of all the hardships that these people went through and what changes it brought to their live's.  This video is made by David Cunningham, the chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University.
“Understanding Jim Crow (Setting the Setting).” Facing History and Ourselves.

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Understanding Jim Crow (Setting the Setting)

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David Cunningham, chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University, explores systems of racial separation and institutionalized segregation known as Jim Crow.

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, the main character's name is Scout. Harper Lee relates many of this character's experiences with her own experiences as a child. This article compares the two as well as tells Harper Lee's biography.

"Harper Lee Biography." Chicago Public Library Foundation. https://www.chipublib.org/harper-lee-biography/.

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"Nelle" Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. She grew up in Monroeville, a small town in southwest Alabama. Her father was a lawyer who also served in the state legislature from 1926-1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader. After she attended public school in Monroeville she attended Huntingdon College, a private school for women in Montgomery for a year and then transferred to the University of Alabama. After graduation, Lee studied at Oxford University. She returned to the University of Alabama to study law but withdrew six months before graduation.

She moved to New York in 1949 and worked as a reservations clerk for Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways. While in New York, she wrote several essays and short stories, but none were published. Her agent encouraged her to develop one short story into a novel. In order to complete it, Lee quit working and was supported by friends who believed in her work. In 1957, she submitted the manuscript to J. B. Lippincott Company. Although editors found the work too episodic, they saw promise in the book and encouraged Lee to rewrite it. In 1960, with the help of Lippincott editor Tay Hohoff, To Kill a Mockingbird was published.

To Kill a Mockingbird became an instant popular success. A year after the novel was published, 500,000 copies had been sold and it had been translated into 10 languages. Critical reviews of the novel were mixed. It was only after the success of the film adaptation in 1962 that many critics reconsidered To Kill a Mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird was honored with many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was made into a film in 1962 starring Gregory Peck. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It actually was honored with three awards: Gregory Peck won the Best Actor Award, Horton Foote won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and a design team was awarded an Oscar for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration B/W. Lee worked as a consultant on the screenplay adaptation of the novel.

Author Truman Capote was Lee's next-door neighbor from 1928 to 1933. In 1959 Lee and Capote traveled to Garden City, Kan., to research the Clutter family murders for his work, In Cold Blood (1965). Capote dedicated In Cold Blood to Lee and his partner Jack Dunphy. Lee was the inspiration for the character Idabel in Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He in turn clearly influenced her character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee divides her time between New York and her hometown of Monroeville, Ala., where her sister Alice Lee practices law. Though she has published no other work of fiction, this novel continues to have a strong impact on successive generations of readers.

Harper Lee had many childhood experiences that are similar to those of her young narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch:

Harper Lee's Childhood

She grew up in the 1930s in a rural southern Alabama town.

Her father, Amasa Lee, is an attorney who served in the state legislature in Alabama.

Her older brother and young neighbor (Truman Capote) are playmates.

Harper Lee is an avid reader as a child.

She is 6 years old when the Scottsboro trials are widely covered in national, state and local newspapers.

Scout Finch's Childhood

She grew up in the 1930s in a rural southern Alabama town.

Her father, Atticus Finch, is an attorney who served in the state legislature in Alabama.

Her older brother (Jem) and young neighbor (Dill) are playmates.

Scout reads before she enters school and reads the Mobile Register newspaper in first grade.

She is 6 years old when the trial of Tom Robinson takes place.

Content last updated: October 31, 2001

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"Nelle" Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. She...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmsYLmqx3wg

"Emory University." YouTube, uploaded by Emory University, 7 Jan. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmsYLmqx3wg

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This is a brief history of what the Jim Crow laws and how it had an impact on people in the time

“A Brief History of Jim Crow.” Constitutional Rights Foundation
https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow accessed January 2020

A Brief History of Jim Crow - Constitutional Rights Foundation

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Nine African American boys were convicted of raping two white women on a train they illegally boarded to get jobs. Eight of the boys were sentenced to death while the youngest was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Kindig, J. (2007, December 16) Scottsboro Boys Trial and Defense Campaign (1931–1937). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/scottsboro-boys-trial-and-defense-campaign-1931-1937/

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Here is a link to an article that goes into deep detail about sharecropping.
"Sharecropping." PBS,
https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/sharecropping/

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One-fifth of all the Americans recieving federal relief during the Great Depression were black. Farm and Domestic work were not included in the 1935 Social Security Act, which were common areas of employment for a black person at the time. Despite this, Roosevelt had every New Deal agency have a black advisor. In this time the amount of African-American working with the government tripled.

Women were some of the few Americans to actually gain jobs. From 1990 to 1940, the mount of employed women rose 24%.  There was also a 22% decline in marriage rates which led to more single women looking for jobs. The jobs that were available to women paid less but were stable during the Great Depression.

History.com Editors. “Great Depression History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history.

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What Caused the Great Depression?

Throughout the 1920s, the U.S. economy expanded rapidly, and the nation's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, a period dubbed " the Roaring Twenties."

The stock market, centered at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City, was the scene of reckless speculation, where everyone from millionaire tycoons to cooks and janitors poured their savings into stocks. As a result, the stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929.

By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stock prices much higher than their actual value. Additionally, wages at that time were low, consumer debt was proliferating, the agricultural sector of the economy was struggling due to drought and falling food prices and banks had an excess of large loans that could not be liquidated.

The American economy entered a mild recession during the summer of 1929, as consumer spending slowed and unsold goods began to pile up, which in turn slowed factory production. Nonetheless, stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year had reached stratospheric levels that could not be justified by expected future earnings.

Stock Market Crash of 1929

On October 24, 1929, as nervous investors began selling overpriced shares en masse, the stock market crash that some had feared happened at last. A record 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as "Black Thursday."

Five days later, on October 29, or "Black Tuesday," some 16 million shares were traded after another wave of panic swept Wall Street. Millions of shares ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks "on margin" (with borrowed money) were wiped out completely.

As consumer confidence vanished in the wake of the stock market crash, the downturn in spending and investment led factories and other businesses to slow down production and begin firing their workers. For those who were lucky enough to remain employed, wages fell and buying power decreased.

Many Americans forced to buy on credit fell into debt, and the number of foreclosures and repossessions climbed steadily. The global adherence to the gold standard, which joined countries around the world in fixed currency exchange, helped spread economic woes from the United States throughout the world, especially in Europe.

Bank Runs and the Hoover Administration

Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931.

Meanwhile, the country's industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America's towns and cities. Farmers couldn't afford to harvest their crops and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved. In 1930, severe droughts in the Southern Plains brought high winds and dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing people, livestock and crops. The " Dust Bowl " inspired a mass migration of people from farmland to cities in search of work.

In the fall of 1930, the first of four waves of banking panics began, as large numbers of investors lost confidence in the solvency of their banks and demanded deposits in cash, forcing banks to liquidate loans in order to supplement their insufficient cash reserves on hand.

Bank runs swept the United States again in the spring and fall of 1931 and the fall of 1932, and by early 1933 thousands of banks had closed their doors.

In the face of this dire situation, Hoover's administration tried supporting failing banks and other institutions with government loans; the idea was that the banks in turn would loan to businesses, which would be able to hire back their employees.

FDR and the Great Depression

Hoover, a Republican who had formerly served as U.S. secretary of commerce, believed that government should not directly intervene in the economy and that it did not have the responsibility to create jobs or provide economic relief for its citizens.

In 1932, however, with the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression and some 15 million people unemployed, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election.

By Inauguration Day (March 4, 1933), every U.S. state had ordered all remaining banks to close at the end of the fourth wave of banking panics, and the U.S. Treasury didn't have enough cash to pay all government workers. Nonetheless, FDR (as he was known) projected a calm energy and optimism, famously declaring "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Roosevelt took immediate action to address the country's economic woes, first announcing a four-day "bank holiday" during which all banks would close so that Congress could pass reform legislation and reopen those banks determined to be sound. He also began addressing the public directly over the radio in a series of talks, and these so-called " fireside chats " went a long way toward restoring public confidence.

During Roosevelt's first 100 days in office, his administration passed legislation that aimed to stabilize industrial and agricultural production, create jobs and stimulate recovery.

In addition, Roosevelt sought to reform the financial system, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ( FDIC) to protect depositors' accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash.

The New Deal: A Road to Recovery

Among the programs and institutions of the New Deal that aided in recovery from the Great Depression was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built dams and hydroelectric projects to control flooding and provide electric power to the impoverished Tennessee Valley region, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a permanent jobs program that employed 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943.

When the Great Depression began, the United States was the only industrialized country in the world without some form of unemployment insurance or social security. In 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act, which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, disability and pensions for old age.

After showing early signs of recovery beginning in the spring of 1933, the economy continued to improve throughout the next three years, during which real GDP (adjusted for inflation) grew at an average rate of 9 percent per year.

A sharp recession hit in 1937, caused in part by the Federal Reserve's decision to increase its requirements for money in reserve. Though the economy began improving again in 1938, this second severe contraction reversed many of the gains in production and employment and prolonged the effects of the Great Depression through the end of the decade.

Depression-era hardships fueled the rise of extremist political movements in various European countries, most notably that of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany. German aggression led war to break out in Europe in 1939, and the WPA turned its attention to strengthening the military infrastructure of the United States, even as the country maintained its neutrality.

African Americans in the Great Depression

One-fifth of all Americans receiving federal relief during the Great Depression were Black, most in the rural South. But farm and domestic work, two major sectors in which Black workers were employed, were not included in the 1935 Social Security Act, meaning there was no safety net in times of uncertainty. Rather than fire domestic help, private employers could simply pay them less without legal repercussions. And those relief programs for which African Americans were eligible on paper were rife with discrimination in practice since all relief programs were administered locally.

Despite these obstacles, Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet," led by Mary McLeod Bethune, ensured nearly every New Deal agency had a Black advisor. The number of African Americans working in government tripled.

Women in the Great Depression

There was one group of Americans who actually gained jobs during the Great Depression: Women. From 1930 to 1940, the number of employed women in the United States rose 24 percent from 10.5 million to 13 million Though they'd been steadily entering the workforce for decades, the financial pressures of the Great Depression drove women to seek employment in ever greater numbers as male breadwinners lost their jobs. The 22 percent decline in marriage rates between 1929 and 1939 also created an increase in single women in search of employment.

Women during the Great Depression had a strong advocate in First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who lobbied her husband for more women in office-like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to ever hold a cabinet position.

Jobs available to women paid less but were more stable during the banking crisis: nursing, teaching and domestic work. They were supplanted by an increase in secretarial roles in FDR's rapidly-expanding government. But there was a catch: over 25 percent of the National Recovery Administration's wage codes set lower wages for women, and jobs created under the WPA confined women to fields like sewing and nursing that paid less than roles reserved for men.

Married women faced an additional hurdle: By 1940, 26 states had placed restrictions known as marriage bars on their employment, as working wives were perceived as taking away jobs from able-bodied men-even if, in practice, they were occupying jobs men would not want and doing them for far less pay.

Great Depression Ends and World War II Begins

With Roosevelt's decision to support Britain and France in the struggle against Germany and the other Axis Powers, defense manufacturing geared up, producing more and more private-sector jobs.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to America's entry into World War II, and the nation's factories went back into full production mode.

This expanding industrial production, as well as widespread conscription beginning in 1942, reduced the unemployment rate to below its pre-Depression level. The Great Depression had ended at last, and the United States turned its attention to the global conflict of World War II.

Photo Galleries

HISTORY Vault

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Great Depression: Black Thursday, Facts & Effects

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The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. At its peak, the U.S. unemployment rate topped 20 percent.

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This is a link to an article that gives a brief his about Jim Crow Laws and the affects it had.  This article was wrote by the Constitutional Rights Foundation.
“A Brief History of Jim Crow.” Constitutional Rights Foundation.

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“I can ride in first-class cars on the railroads and in the streets,” wrote journalist T. McCants Stewart. “I can stop in and drink a glass of soda and be more politely waited upon than in some parts of New England.” Perhaps Stewart’s comments don’t seem , In 1890, in spite of its 16 black members,…

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This image shows many examples of signs that didn't allow black people and white people to use the same bathroom, shower, or even the same door.

Jim Crow Museum. Big Rapids, Michigan.

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“I can ride in first-class cars on the railroads and in the streets,” wrote journalist T. McCants Stewart. “I can stop in and drink a glass of soda and be more politely waited upon than in some parts of New England.” Perhaps Stewart’s comments don’t seem , In 1890, in spite of its 16 black members,…

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Harper Lee grew up in southwest Alabama she was a tomboy as a kid. He father was a lawyer and a civil rights activist this inspired her novel.
“Harper Lee Biography.” chipublib.org. Accessed 6 January 2020.

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The courts demanded a retrial because they did not believe they had adequate legal representation.
"The Scottsboro Boys" Smithsonian
https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/scottsboro-boys

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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The case of the Scottsboro Boys, which lasted more than 80 years, helped to spur the Civil Rights Movement. The perseverance of the Scottsboro Boys and the attorneys and community leaders who supported their case helped to inspire several prominent activists and organizers. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by white author Harper Lee, is also loosely based on this case.

On March 25, 1931, nine African American teenagers were accused of raping two white women aboard a Southern Railroad freight train in northern Alabama. Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems and Roy Wright were searching for work when a racially-charged fight broke out between passengers. The fight is said to have started when a young white man stepped on the hand of one of the Scottsboro Boys. The young white men who were fighting were forced to exit the train. Enraged, they conjured a story of how the black men were at fault for the incident. By the time the train reached Paint Rock, Alabama, the Scottsboro Boys were met with an angry mob and charged with assault. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two white women who were also riding the freight train, faced charges of vagrancy and illegal sexual activity. In order to avoid these charges, they falsely accused the Scottsboro Boys of rape.

The original cases were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama. Only four of the young African American men knew each other prior to the incident on the freight train, but as the trials drew increasing regional and national attention they became known as the Scottsboro Boys. On April 9, 1931, eight of the nine young men were convicted and sentenced to death. The judge granted Roy Wright, the youngest of the group, a mistrial because of age-despite the recommendation of the all-white jury. After this initial verdict, protests emerged in the north, leading to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the convictions in 1932, in Powell v. State of Alabama. The Supreme Court demanded a retrial on the grounds that the young men did not have adequate legal representation. A series of retrials and reconvictions followed and the Scottsboro Boys collectively served more than 100 years in prison. Subsequently, the national conversation and protests of unfair and unequal court proceedings led to two additional groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions in 1935 on jury diversification: Patterson v. State of Alabama and Norris v. State of Alabama.

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The case of the Scottsboro Boys lasted more than 80 years and helped spur the Civil Rights Movement.

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This is a video explaining the Jim Crow laws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_gOtZ--4WE
YouTube, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_gOtZ--4WE.

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This website gives several first hand accounts, personal stories, and events from the Jim Crow era. The information brings you inside the lives of the individuals who were affected by the laws.

Thirteen. Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2002. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories.html. Accessed 7 Jan. 2020.

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Harper Lee's father was a lawyer who served in the state legislature from 1926-1938 his name was Amasa Coleman Lee and he was a civil rights activist. He defended two black men accused of murder. He was not intimidated intellectually, economically, and politically by blacks. Being the daughter of him changed her outlet on races.

“How To Kill a Mockingbird Reflects the Real Civil Rights Movement.” Time.com. Accessed 6 January 2020.

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This website describes the museum exibit based on Harper Lee's childhood and life, as well as her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This website offers a unique view of Harper Lee as seen through her hometown. It provides photos and memorobillia from Harper Lee's life. While Lee rarely granted interviews this exhibit draws on the few she did during the 1960's. These first hand accounts give tremendous insight into her writting.

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird Exhibit. Monroe Country Museum, 2018, www.monroecountymuseum.org/mockingbird. Accessed 6 January 2020.

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Jim crow made African Americans and white people segregate.  The 13th and 14th amendment guaranteed equal rights for all american citizens but, many white people had been taught that African Americans were not as smart or important as white Americans.  In this video it will talk about how the Jim Crow law affected African Americans.

Green, John. "Segregation and Jim Crow." YouTube, uploaded by Studies Weekly, 27 January 2015, m/watch?time_continue=173&v=2yJA7LdJNwU&feature=emb_title

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https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/scottsboro-boys

"The Scottsboro Boys", The Nature museum of african american history and culture,,

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Harper Lee also planed on writing another books about the murder of Maxwell, but never finished writing it. Later, "Furious Hours"  was writen by Casey Cep which was about Harper Lee's unfinished work, and built upon her story.

Ilana Masad “'Furious Hours' Tells The Tale Of Harper Lee And Her Unfinished Work.” NPR, 8 May 2019, www.npr.org/2019/05/08/721435957/furious-hours-tells-the-tale-of-harper-lee-and-her-unfinished-work

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When the kerfuffle over the impending release of Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman was cluttering up my news feeds in 2015, I confess that I didn't pay much attention.

Having not grown up in the United States, where Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is often required reading in children's education, I first read the classic when I was 20. It was part of a yearlong attempt of trying to catch up with what most of my college friends and professors considered canonical. It was with some trepidation, then, that I approached Casey Cep's new book, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.

I expected to be charmed by the writing; Cep writes regularly for The New Yorker, and her style is detailed and evocative, sometimes dramatic in a fun way, as when she wrote of Harper Lee that "only Jesus made his father more famous." As a relatively recent convert to the true-crime genre, I was hopeful that the book would deal responsibly with its subjects, and I wasn't let down there either. But what I didn't see coming was the emotional response I would have as I blazed through the last 20 pages of the book - yet there I was, weeping.

Furious Hours begins with a brief prologue that introduces its premise. In 1978, a largely unrecognized Nelle (pronounced Nell, not Nellie - apparently the reason she left the name off her famous book was frustration at the common mistake) Harper Lee sat in a courtroom in Alexander City, Ala., taking notes on the trial of Robert Burns, who was charged with killing the Rev. Willie Maxwell. Oddly, Tom Radney, the lawyer defending Burns - who everyone agreed did shoot Maxwell, as he did so at close range, inside a packed funeral home - had spent years defending Maxwell previously. Lee - who either never finished the book she wrote about the case or stashed a draft away somewhere that even the lawyer now handling her estate can't find it - took copious notes, interviewed as many people as would speak to her and began considering how she could tell the complicated story of these three men.

Briefly, the story is this: Maxwell, an African-American man living in Alabama, was accused of killing his first wife, Mary Lou, but was exonerated. He cashed in on her life insurance and, apparently, was hooked - several other people in his circle died over the next few years, including his next-door neighbor Abram Anderson, who was married at the time to the woman who soon became Maxwell's second wife, Dorcus; his brother, John Columbus Maxwell, known as J.C.; Dorcus herself; his nephew James Hicks; and his third (!) wife's adopted daughter, teenager Shirley Ann Ellington. There was never enough evidence to charge him with any of the deaths after his wife's; the copious numbers of life insurance policies he had taken out on each of them were considered circumstantial. But his community believed he was a killer, and rumors abounded that he was using voodoo to get away with it.

It was at Shirley Ann's funeral that Robert Burns had, apparently, had enough, and shot Maxwell. Lawyer Tom Radney, who had also been a prominent, socially progressive politician in Alabama, defended Maxwell in the one and only murder charge brought against him, but went on to help him get insurance money for each of the first five deaths from companies that were trying to maintain that they didn't meet the criteria for payouts. While Radney said he wouldn't have defended Maxwell after Shirley Ann's death, there's no knowing for sure - but the point is that he chose to defend Maxwell's killer.

Where Lee failed or gave up on this story, Cep took up the challenge, using Lee's own notes as well as her own research. Furious Hours is divided into three parts, telling the tales of the reverend, his lawyer, and the famous writer each in turn. Along the way, Cep dives into a dozen obscure topics that she manages to relate with fascinating detail and social commentary - from the racist structures of the 20th century insurance business to the stigmatization of voodoo, one of various spellings and names encompassing ancient religious and spiritual practices brought to the Americas from Africa by their enslaved practitioners who were, often and early, forbidden to practice their faith, causing it to become a secret, fiercely protected underground endeavor.

In the last portion of the book, Cep turns to Lee's eventual fascination with the Maxwell case, attempting, along the way, to correct many biographical mistakes that her family has had to see printed in unauthorized accounts of Lee's life. Cep explores Lee's complexities without flinching, recognizing them as human: On the one hand, she was eager to criticize the Southern tendency to erase or rewrite inconvenient history and the less-than-obvious racist ideologies that she saw around her, wherein people both disavowed the KKK and still favored segregation; on the other hand, she never came out in support of the civil rights movement. Another example: She helped Truman Capote with the majority of his research and note taking for In Cold Blood and was deeply troubled by the inaccuracies and whole-cloth inventions that ended up in the book, yet still wrote a glowing profile of him prior to its release. And, of course, Cep shows Lee's complicated relationship to writing, the success that seemed to block her forever after, and the human flaws and foibles that could never match the lionized reputation she held.

Each section of the book could stand on its own, making it feel, in a way, like three books in one. But, ultimately, Furious Hours delivers a gripping, incredibly well-written portrait of not only Harper Lee, but also of mid-20th century Alabama - and a still-unanswered set of crimes to rival the serial killers made infamous in the same time period.

Ilana Masad is an Israeli-American fiction writer, critic, and founder/host of the podcast The Other Stories. Her debut novel, All My Mother's Lovers, is forthcoming from Dutton in 2020.

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'Furious Hours' Tells The Tale Of Harper Lee And Her Unfinished Work

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When the kerfuffle over the impending release of Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman was cluttering up my news feeds in 2015, I confess that I didn't pay much attention. Having not grown up in the United States, where Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is often required reading in children's education, I first read the classic when I was 20.

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on March 25, 1931, 9 African American boys were accused of 🤬 after a fight broke out. 8 of them were sentenced to death, but the youngest was not. After a retrial, and medical exams from the women that accused them of 🤬, they still were sentenced to death. They eventually let 4 of the accused boys out on parole.
History.com Editors
"Scottsboro Boys"
HISTORY
February 22, 2018
A&E Television Networks
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/scottsboro-boys

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Who Were the Scottsboro Boys?

By the early 1930s, with the nation mired in the Great Depression, many unemployed Americans would try and hitch rides aboard freight trains to move around the country searching for work.

On March 25, 1931, after a fight broke out on a Southern Railroad freight train in Jackson County, Alabama, police arrested nine Black youths, ranging in age from 13 to 19, on a minor charge. But when deputies questioned two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, they accused the boys of raping them while onboard the train.

The nine teenagers-Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, brothers Andrew and Leroy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson and Eugene Williams-were transferred to the local county seat, Scottsboro, to await trial.

Only four of them had known each other before their arrest. As news spread of the alleged rape (a highly inflammatory charge given the Jim Crow laws in the South), an angry white mob surrounded the jail, leading the local sheriff to call in the Alabama National Guard to prevent a lynching.

Initial Trials and Appeals (1931-32)

In the first set of trials in April 1931, an all-white, all-male jury quickly convicted the Scottsboro Boys and sentenced eight of them to death.

The trial of the youngest, 13-year-old Leroy Wright, ended in a hung jury when one juror favored life imprisonment rather than death. A mistrial was declared, and Leroy Wright would remain in prison until 1937 awaiting the final verdict on his co-defendants.

At this point, the International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal wing of the American Communist Party, took on the boys' case, seeing its potential to galvanize public opinion against racism. That June, the court granted the boys a stay of execution pending an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.

The ILD spearheaded a national campaign to help free the nine young men, including rallies, speeches, parades and demonstrations. Letters streamed in from people- Communists and non-Communists, white and Black-protesting the guilty verdicts.

But in March 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven of the defendants; it granted Williams a new trial, as he was a minor at the time of his conviction.

Powell v. Alabama

In November 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. Alabama that the Scottsboro defendants had been denied the right to counsel, which violated their right to due process under the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court overturned the Alabama verdicts, setting an important legal precedent for enforcing the right of Black Americans to adequate counsel, and remanded the cases to the lower courts.

The second round of trials began in the circuit court in Decatur, Alabama, 50 miles west of Scottsboro, under Judge James Horton. One of the boys' accusers, Ruby Bates, recanted her initial testimony and agreed to testify for the defense.

But even with her revised testimony and evidence from the initial medical examination of the women that refuted the rape charge, another all-white jury convicted the first defendant, Patterson, and recommended the death penalty.

Having reviewed the evidence and met privately with one of the medical examiners, Judge Horton suspended the death sentence and granted Patterson a new trial. (The judge would be rewarded for this brave action by losing his bid for reelection the following year.)

Prosecutors got the cases in front of a more sympathetic judge, and both Patterson and Norris were retried, convicted and sentenced to death in late 1933. With prominent defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz arguing the case for the ILD, the Alabama Supreme Court unanimously denied the defense's motion for new trials, and the case headed for a second hearing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Norris v. Alabama

In January 1935, the Supreme Court again overturned the guilty verdicts, ruling in Norris v. Alabama that the systematic exclusion of Blacks on Jackson Country jury rolls denied a fair trial to the defendants, and suggesting that the lower courts review Patterson's case as well.

This second landmark decision in the Scottsboro Boys case would help integrate future juries across the nation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) and other civil rights groups joined the ILD that year to form the Scottsboro Defense Committee, which reorganized the defense effort for the next set of retrials.

Early in 1936, Patterson was convicted for a fourth time, but sentenced to 75 years in prison. The day after the verdict, Ozie Powell was shot in the head after attacking a deputy sheriff with a knife; both men survived.

After the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Patterson's conviction in June, and Norris's third trial ended in another death sentence, Andy Wright and Weems were both convicted of rape and sentenced to long prison terms as well.

Through negotiations with the defense, prosecutors agreed to drop rape charges against Powell, but he was convicted of assaulting the deputy sheriff and sentenced to 20 years.

They also dropped rape charges against the four remaining defendants-Montgomery, Roberson, Williams and Leroy Wright-and all four were released. Alabama Governor Bibb Graves commuted Norris' sentence to life imprisonment in 1938, and denied pardon applications by all five convicted defendants that same year.

Scottsboro Boys Legacy

Alabama officials eventually agreed to let four of the convicted Scottsboro Boys-Weems, Andy Wright, Norris and Powell-out on parole.

After escaping from prison in 1948, Patterson was picked up in Detroit by the FBI, but the Michigan governor refused Alabama's efforts to extradite him. Convicted of manslaughter after a barroom brawl in 1951, Patterson died of cancer in 1952.

The trials of the Scottboro Boys, the two Supreme Court verdicts they produced and the international uproar over their treatment helped fuel the rise of the civil rights movement later in the 20th century, and left a lasting imprint on the nation's legal and cultural landscape.

Harper Lee

Author Harper Lee reportedly drew on the boys' experience when she wrote her classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird, and over the years the case has inspired numerous other books, songs, feature films, documentaries and even a Broadway musical.

Clarence Norris, who received a pardon from Governor George Wallace of Alabama in 1976, would outlive all of the other Scottsboro Boys, dying in 1989 at the age of 76.

In 2013, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to issue posthumous pardons to Patterson, Weems and Andy Wright, bringing a long-overdue end to one of the most notorious cases of racial injustice in U.S. history.

Sources

Daren Salter, Scottsboro Trials, Encyclopedia of Alabama.
Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, PBS.
History, Scottsboro Boys Museum.
Alan Blinder, "Alabama Pardons 3 'Scottsboro Boys' After 80 Years," New York Times, November 21, 2013.

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Scottsboro Boys: Trial, Case, Harper Lee & Names - HISTORY

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The Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women on a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931, endured several lengthy court trials.

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The case was one of the major stepping stones for the civil rights movement and established important rights for criminal defendants

ACLU History: The Tragedy of the Scottsboro Boys
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-tragedy-scottsboro-boys

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Jump to navigation Skip navigation

ACLU lawyers played a major role in the infamous 'Scottsboro Boys' case, which began in 1931 and would ultimately have far-reaching effects. The case marked the first stirrings of the civil rights movement and led to two landmark Supreme Court rulings that established important rights for criminal defendants. Nine young black Alabama youths - ranging in age from 12 to 19 - were charged with raping two white women near the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama. Their trials began 12 days after the alleged crime and, despite ample evidence that they were innocent, eight of the nine were found guilty by all-white juries and sentenced to death in the electric chair. As national outrage over the convictions grew, numerous organizations came forward to assist with appeals, including the ACLU.

The Scottsboro defendants were ultimately saved from execution, but they languished in prison for years. Even after being released, most never fully recovered from their ordeal. Their story has rightly been called 'an American tragedy.'
RESOURCES

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ACLU History: The Tragedy of the Scottsboro Boys

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ACLU lawyers played a major role in the infamous 'Scottsboro Boys' case, which began in 1931 and would ultimately have far-reaching effects. The case marked the first stirrings of the civil rights movement and led to two landmark Supreme Court rulings that established important rights for criminal defendants.

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The Jim Crow laws made it like African Americans were second class citizens. They had separate but equal things. African Americans things were not nearly as good as the whites.

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Nine African American teenagers ages 13 to 20 in Alabama were accused of raping two white women on a train. 8 of the boys received a pending death sentence. 4 of the boys were let out on parole and the rest spent their lives in prison or died by the death sentence.
History.com Editors. “Scottsboro Boys.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 22 Feb. 2018, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/scottsboro-boys.

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Harper Lee wrote a total of two books in here career. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015. This article tells why the second book was published so much later than the first.

"Why Harper Lee kept her silence for 55 years." The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/go-set-a-watchman/why-harper-lee-kept-her-silence-for-55-years/.

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Harper Lee has died only a few months after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird's long-shelved prequel, Go Set a Watchman (2015). This article, originally published in 2011, asks why Harper Lee was so burdened by her early success.
The professional lives of most novelists closely resemble each other. They write a novel; it is published; they embark on a round of publicity. They appear at literary festivals, where they garner a quarter of the audience of some television chef in the tent next door, and at signings in bookshops, with the aim of signing as much stock as possible.

Through it all, the novelist attempts to remain amusing, affable and patient. Three years later, he will publish another novel, and the whole experience repeats itself. As Samuel Beckett wrote in Worstward Ho: "All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

To Kill a Mockingbird is a great novel and, unusually, was quickly made into a great film. But then, everything stopped for Lee's writing.

For some writers, however, the need to try again, to fail again, hardly arises. The extraordinary career - or perhaps non-career - of Harper Lee bears witness to a quite different way of conducting a writing life. She wrote one novel, an immediate classic and perhaps the best-selling novel of the 20th century, To Kill a Mockingbird. Since its publication in 1960, Lee has published no other book. A second novel, entitled The Long Goodbye, apparently came to an abrupt end on the day her agent, JP Lippincott, expressed an interest in her first. "Her pen froze," he said.

Lee, who turned 85 in 2011, has not been entirely absent from the public record since, and her neighbours in Monroeville, Alabama, wouldn't agree that she is a recluse, either. Politely refusing to talk to journalists since 1964 is not the same thing as withdrawing from society. Since that has been her policy, her agreeing to co-operate with a new literary biographer, Marja Mills, who claims to tell the true story behind her years of silence, is important and surprising news. Will this biography tell the whole truth? Can anyone ever really know why an author falls silent - even the author herself?

Credit: AP

Lee came from one of the 20th century's richest literary schools, the American South. Work by Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor examined the South's flavour of intense, self-regarding decorum and passionately defended injustice and violence.

It is sometimes regarded as extraordinary that Nelle Harper Lee came from the same small town as another great Southern writer, Truman Capote - that, indeed, they were neighbours as children. Some have gone as far as to speculate wildly that To Kill a Mockingbird might actually have been a near-collaboration between the pair, as Capote's documentary study In Cold Blood seems to have been.

The idea that a coincidence of implausible proportions would be needed to explain the emergence of two such gifted writers from a small place ignores how different their style is. It also ignores the way in which writers encourage, criticise, develop each other by proximity. That is true not just of Lee and Capote, but of Lee and the whole Southern school of novelists. She could hardly have predicted that she would quickly come to be seen as the epitome and climax of the grand Southern tradition.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a great novel and, unusually, was quickly made into a great film (Gregory Peck and his family subsequently became close friends with Lee). But then, everything stopped for Lee's writing. She spoke in an early Sixties interview, the last she ever gave, of wanting "to leave some record of small-town, middle-class Southern life", apparently thinking of the novels she wanted to write in the future.

Credit: Rex Features

What stays in the memory of To Kill a Mockingbird are the grand coups - Scout unknowingly deflecting a lynching, or the great moment when the Reverend Sykes, after the verdict, says to Scout: "Miss Jean Louise, stand up: your father's passing." But the rich texture of the novel comes from its loving delineation of the relationships and tensions in a small town. That is the direction she would have gone in, and what we have lost in her subsequent silence.

The novelist of social texture, of the quiet relationships between people, is perhaps one peculiarly vulnerable to the impact of fame. We have plenty of witnesses to Jane Austen's personal modesty, the way in which she would hide her writing at anyone's approach. A novelist who had become a celebrity would find it almost impossible to pursue their task of listening, of modest disappearance into the background, of observation. Some writers manage to tough it out; others find the weight of expectation impossible to manage.

The cynic would say that Harper Lee, with a novel which still sells millions every year, over half a century after its publication, hardly needed to go on writing anyway. Would she have wanted her career to work out like this? But writing is not like hedge-fund trading. The author who voluntarily retires from writing, after having made a pile, is a rare creature; it is the strangest of facts about Shakespeare that he stopped writing, apparently of his free will, at the height of his artistic powers after The Tempest, and retired to Stratford.

Credit: Rex Features

Much more common is the writer who is effectively destroyed by a single huge success. The burden of fame and acclaim weighs down particularly on the creative faculties. Ian McEwan has spoken of feeling, when he embarks on promotion of his books, like "an employee of his own former self".

The task of balancing the awareness of past success with the necessary task of producing new work is not one that every writer can achieve. And, perhaps, these single huge successes are much harder to deal with when they come early on in a writer's career, before they have learnt to, in Kipling's words, "treat the two impostors" of triumph and disaster "just the same". It's striking that out of the four novelists, for instance, who have won the Booker Prize in the last 40 years with a first novel, none has so far managed to write a successful follow-up.

Lee has succeeded in protecting herself over the last half-century, and living a life which is of her choosing. In a rare statement recently, a letter to Oprah Winfrey's magazine, she suggested how out-of-touch with modern life she has become: "In an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books." That detachment is, clearly, necessary to her. It is the paradox of the novel that it could not have been written by someone in love with literary fame; that the fame it achieved and deserved killed off any prospect of a succeeding masterpiece.

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Why Harper Lee kept her silence for 55 years

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Harper Lee has died only a few months after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird's long-shelved prequel, Go Set a Watchman (2015). This article, originally published in 2011, asks why Harper Lee was so burdened by her early success. The professional lives of most novelists closely resemble each other.

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Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year. It was practiced worldwide but commonly practiced in the south by former slaves.

History.com Editors. “Sharecropping.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 24 June 2010, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sharecropping.

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In 1931 nine young African American men were pulled off a train in Scottsboro, Alabama by police officers who accused the men of raping two white women on that train. When the case went to trial, the jury sentenced 8 of the men to death and one of them life in prison. In 1937 all of the sentences were over turned.
Lanset, Andy. Scottsboro: A Civil Rights Memorial
https://www.wnyc.org/story/250323-scottsboro-civil-rights-milestone/

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Scottsboro: A Civil Rights Milestone | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News

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This video is helpful.

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This website is a bibliography on Harper Lee . It describes the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird and its enduring value in the literary world. The website also shows how Harper Lee and her childhood experiences are similar to the character Scout Finch's. This source allows the reader to learn more about the author when reading her novel To Kill a Mockingbird and gain perspective on her inspiration for writting the novel.

Harper Lee Biography. Chicago Public Library Foundation, www.chipublib.org/harper-lee-biography. Accessed 6 January 2020.

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The Jim Crow laws made whites and blacks have seperate things. The African Americans things were much not nearly as good as the whites.  Here our some examples of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_gOtZ--4WE
What Was Jim Crow Image Gallery - Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University, Ferris State University, 2008 https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what2.htm. Accessed 6 Jan. 2020.

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This website has a gallery of pictures from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University. These images represent the racist laws and way of life set by Jim Crow. The images wide range of propaganda designed to convince people that white people were superior to all other races.

What Was Jim Crow Image Gallery - Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University, https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what2.htm. Accessed 6 Jan. 2020.

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This video shows what happened after the abolishment of slavery and the things that led up to the creation of sharecropping and what happened during this time period.

Green, John. “CC Reconstruction and Sharecropping.” YouTube,  Neil Talbot, 15 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTJw7J-Pm0Y.

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A world-wide depression had struck countries with market economies at the end of the 1920's. The Great Depression was particularly severe in the United States. The Depression reached its peak in 1933. 37% of all people who didn't work on farms were out of work. Many others lost their farms and homes. A lot of people packed up in their cars and went to California where rumors of plentiful jobs were on flyers and spread by mouth. These people were called the "Okies". The economy did start to recover in 1934 and 1935 but it was slow and stalled. Near the end of 1935 into 1937 the process sped up. Then another depression occured. The economy had still not fully recovered when America got dragged into World War II. The entire decade of the 1930's is called the Great Depression because of the agonizingly slow recovery and the many other outside factors.

History.com Editors. “Great Depression History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history.

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A worldwide depression struck countries with market economies at the end of the 1920s. Although the Great Depression was relatively mild in some countries, it was severe in others, particularly in the United States, where, at its nadir in 1933, 25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm…

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The Depression was an extreme low point in the economy started by the stock market crash of 1929. It led to very little spending which meant companies weren't producing as much which led to unemployment which led to even less spending... and the cycle went on. Some fun facts of The Depression were that about 15 million Americans were unemployed and more than half of the banks failed.
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history
History.com Editors. “Great Depression History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history.
People Walk between Shacks in Hooverville in 1932.

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The Jim Crow museum is full of pictures and descriptions of what life was like when the Jim Crow laws were still around.  Jim Crow was the name of a racial system between 1877 and the mid 1960s.  This system taught that black people were 2nd class and were cursed to be servants.  Jim Crow laws included things like a black male could not shake hands with a white male because it would imply that they are equal,  white motorists had the right of way at all intersections and if a black person were to ride in a car driven by a white person, they would sit in the back seat or the back of the truck.

Pilgrim, David.Ferris.edu.2012,Ferris State University,Accessed 6 January 2020.

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what2.htm

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This is a link to a video that explains how the sharecroppers were not the ones benefiting from sharecropping, and how the landowners got the most out of it.
"Sharecroppers: Definition & History."  study
https://study.com/academy/lesson/sharecroppers-definition-history-lesson.html#courseInfo

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In Harper Lee's novel, "to kill a mocking bird" , there is a main character named Atticus. It is belived that this character is loosly based on her own father. He was a compassionate lawyer and was unsucessful in defending two african americans in a case. The other character is based off a childhood friend, and there were rumors that he had written some of her novel, but those were shut down in 2006.
Cite
Laura Fine and Anna Foca. Encyclopædia Britannica.Encyclopædia Britannica, inc, September 06, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird, January 8, 2019.

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Table of Contents

What inspired Harper Lee to write To Kill a Mockingbird?

How did people respond to To Kill a Mockingbird?

Why is To Kill a Mockingbird a significant text?

Is there a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird?

To Kill a Mockingbird, novel by American author Harper Lee, published in 1960. Enormously popular, it was translated into some 40 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and is one of the most-assigned novels in American schools. In 1961 it won a Pulitzer Prize. The novel was praised for its sensitive treatment of a child's awakening to racism and prejudice in the American South.

Plot summary

To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. The protagonist is Jean Louise ("Scout") Finch, an intelligent though unconventional girl who ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel. She is raised with her brother, Jeremy Atticus ("Jem"), by their widowed father, Atticus Finch. He is a prominent lawyer who encourages his children to be empathetic and just. He notably tells them that it is "a sin to kill a mockingbird," alluding to the fact that the birds are innocent and harmless.

When Tom Robinson, one of the town's Black residents, is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman, Atticus agrees to defend him despite threats from the community. At one point he faces a mob intent on lynching his client but refuses to abandon him. Scout unwittingly diffuses the situation. Although Atticus presents a defense that gives a more plausible interpretation of the evidence-that Mayella was attacked by her father, Bob Ewell-Tom is convicted, and he is later killed while trying to escape custody. A character compares his death to "the senseless slaughter of songbirds," paralleling Atticus's saying about the mockingbird.

The children, meanwhile, play out their own miniaturized drama of prejudice and superstition as they become interested in Arthur ("Boo") Radley, a reclusive neighbour who is a local legend. They have their own ideas about him and cannot resist the allure of trespassing on the Radley property. Their speculations thrive on the dehumanization perpetuated by their elders. Atticus, however, reprimands them and tries to encourage a more sensitive attitude. Boo makes his presence felt indirectly through a series of benevolent acts, finally intervening when Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout. Boo kills Ewell, but Heck Tate, the sheriff, believes it is better to say that Ewell's death occurred when he fell on his own knife, sparing the shy Boo from unwanted attention. Scout agrees, noting that to do otherwise would be "sort of like shootin' a mockingbird."

Famous Novels, Last Lines Quiz

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To Kill a Mockingbird | Summary, Characters, Book, & Facts

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To Kill a Mockingbird, novel by Harper Lee, published in 1960. Enormously popular, it was translated into some 40 languages and sold over 40 million copies worldwide. In 1961 it won a Pulitzer Prize. The novel was praised for its sensitive treatment of a child's awakening to racism and prejudice in the American South.

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Harper Lee's father, Amassa Coleman, was the son of a Civil War veteran and a disciplined Methodist upbringing, which instilled in him that a life worth living included devotion to helping others. He had many careers, like country school teacher, bookkeeper, lawyer, etc. He was good person with good judgement, which inspired the main character of To Kill a Mocking Bird, Atticus Finch.
"About the Author: To Kill a Mockingbird." Utah Shakespeare Festival, https://www.bard.org/study-guides/about-the-author-to-kill-a-mockingbird

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The Jim Crow laws made it so African Americans were like second class citi

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The Jim Crow laws made it so African Americans were like second class citi

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The Great Depression, also commonly referred to as "The Depression", was a major economic crisis that followed the crash of the stock market in 1929.  The crash of the stock market created a huge panic on Wall Street, eliminating millions of investors.  With the continuous downward motion of the economy, people began trying to withdraw all of their money from the banks.  The banks didn't have all of this money on hand, leading to angry citizens and riots.  People lost almost all the money that they had kept with the bank, further hurting the economy due to the new lack of supply and demand.   The country fell to times of low living standards, poor working conditions, and major poverty.  This video provides an over view of The Depression.

History.com. "Great Depression History." History, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history. Accessed 7 January 2020.

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The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. Only 4 of the boys new each other before the 🤬 allegation. The trials and repeated retrials of the Scottsboro Boys sparked an international uproar and produced two landmark U.S. Supreme Court verdicts, even as the defendants were forced to spend years battling the courts and enduring the harsh conditions of the Alabama prison system. As news spread of the alleged 🤬, an angry white mob surrounded the jail, leading the local sheriff to call in the Alabama National Guard to prevent a lynching.

History.com. "Scottsboro Boys." History,  History, A&E Television Networks,22 Feb. 2018, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/scottsboro-boys. Accessed 7 January 2020.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmsYLmqx3wg

"Emory University" Youtube

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The term Jim Crow comes from a New York comedian, Thomas Dartmouth.  He performed Jump Jim Crow.  It became very popular and Jim Crow as entertainment grew throughout the United states and eventually the world.  Eventually the term Jim Crow was applied to the body of racial segregation laws and practices throughout the nation.  Laws began to form in the southern states between the years 1876 and 1965.  The laws required that public schools, public accommodations, and public transportation, including buses and trains, have separate facilities for whites and blacks.

Waggoner, Cassandra. “Jim Crow/Jump Jim Crow.” Black Past, 21 July 2019, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jim-crow/.

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This is an 8 minute video briefly describing the Scottsboro Boys.

Anderson, Carol. YouTube, uploaded by Emory University, 13 February   2012,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmsYLmqx3wg

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Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mocking Bird" had Harper Lee recieve many awards including the Presidential Medal of freedom. The book received great reviews, and sold over 30 million copies.  It has become a renown piece for its role in tolerance and justice.

“Harper Lee”, National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, 23 April 2013, www.arts.gov/honors/medals/harper-lee

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Harper Lee is recognized for her contribution to American literature with her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Sharecropping is a way of farming in which a landowner, usually a former slave owner, lets families, usually former slaves, use land, supplies, and any other necessary equipment to raise cash crops in exchange for a part of their crop. The freed people didn't have land so they couldn't farm, causing them to work for former slave owners. This video explains the system of sharecropping and how it came about after The Civil War.

“The System of Sharecropping.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 12 Feb. 2012, https://www.pbs.org/video/slavery-another-name-system-sharecropping/.

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Slavery by Another Name
Clip: Season 1 | 2m 7s

Historian Mary Ellen Curtin breaks down the emergence of sharecropping and how it came to be.

Major funding for Slavery by Another Name is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company and the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund. Additional funding is provided by Georgia-Pacific, KeyBank Foundation and Merck; and by the General Mills Foundation; the Omicron Member Boulé of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Minneapolis; and Frances Wilkinson.

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The System of Sharecropping | Season 1 | Slavery by Another Name

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Slavery by Another Name Clip: Season 1 | 2m 7s Historian Mary Ellen Curtin breaks down the emergence of sharecropping and how it came to be. Major funding for Slavery by Another Name is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company and the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund.

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This is about a ten minute video on the American history of sharecropping. Sharecropping is a system in which mostly black family's would work on a farm in exchange for a portion of the crops.

History.com Editors. “Sharecropping American History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 19 October 2009,

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Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.

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This a ten minute video of an interview Harper Lee did. She is the author of How to Kill a Mockingbird. It is noted to be one of the only ones she did about her novel and her last interview ever. She goes inot detail about her passion for writing, about the novel itsef and the process it took to write it.Cite:

Harper Lee's Only Recorded Interview About 'To Kill A Mockingbird' [AUDIO],

YouTube, uploaded by WQXR, 24 February 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfsFeMRF7CU&t=312s

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Harper Lee's Only Recorded Interview About 'To Kill A Mockingbird' [AUDIO]

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A worlidwide depression had struck countries with market economies at the end of the 1920's. The Great Depression was particularly severe in the United States. The Depression reached its peak in 1933. 37% of all people who didn't work on farms were out of work. Many others lost their farms and homes.

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A worldwide depression struck countries with market economies at the end of the 1920s. Although the Great Depression was relatively mild in some countries, it was severe in others, particularly in the United States, where, at its nadir in 1933, 25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm…

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This video describes what Jim Crow laws were and the affect it had on the African American people at the time.  This video sets the imagery of all the hardships that these people went through and what changes it brought to their live's.  This video is made by David Cunningham, the chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University.

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Understanding Jim Crow (Setting the Setting)

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David Cunningham, chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University, explores systems of racial separation and institutionalized segregation known as Jim Crow.

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When Harper Lee originally submitted her work to a publishing company, the editors found the work too episodic or in parts. The editors saw promise and made Lee rewrite it. In 1960, with help of Lippincott editor Tay Hofoff, To Kill a Mockingbird was born.
“Harper Lee Biography.” Chicago Public Library, https://www.chipublib.org/harper-lee-biography/

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This is a video that shows how sharecropping came about and the human rights violated during it.
"Sharecropping | Aftermath |." pbs,
https://www.pbs.org/video/sharecropping-aftermath-tn-civil-war-150-ncp0kn/

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This is a link is to an episode from NPR's "Fresh Air" radio program.  It is an interview with author Timothy Egan, who wrote *The Worst Hard Time* about the American Dust Bowl.

https://www.pbs.org/show/dust-bowl-stories/

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Stories from the Great American Dust Bowl

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Stories from the Great American Dust Bowl