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To Kill a Mockingbird
By Harper Lee
SETTING OF THE NOVELBackground Focus:• 1930’s
– Great Depression
– Jim Crow Southern US
– Segregation and Prejudice
1930’s - Great Depression began when the stock market crashed in
October, 1929• Businesses failed,
factories closed– People were out of work– Even people with money
suffered because nothing was being produced for sale.
• Poor people lost their homes, were forced to “live off the land.”
The Great Depression• “The Great Depression (also known as the Great
Slump) was a dramatic, worldwide economic downturn beginning in some countries as early as 1928.”
• “The beginning of the Great Depression in the United States is associated with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday…”
• “…the end is associated with the onset of the war economy of World War II, beginning around 1939.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_great_depression
The Dust Bowl• “The Dust Bowl, or the "dirty thirties", was a period of
horrible dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940)…”
• “…caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation or other techniques to prevent erosion.”
• “It was a mostly man-made disaster caused when virgin top soil of the Great Plains was exposed to deep plowing, killing the natural grasses - the grasses normally kept the soil in place and moisture trapped, even during periods of drought and high winds.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
The Dust Bowl• “However, during the drought of the 1930s, with the
grasses destroyed, the soil dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastwards and southwards in large dark clouds.”
• “At times the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities like New York and Washington D.C., with much of the soil deposited in the Atlantic Ocean.”
• “The Dust Bowl consisted of 100 million acres, centered on the panhandles of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
Dust Storm A farm about to be enveloped by a dust storm during the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Image: © CORBISDate Photographed: ca. 1930s
Image: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Date Photographed: ca
. 1938
Location Information: Dalhart, Texas, USA
Dust Bowl Farm in Texas
Original caption: 1938-Dalhart, TX- Picture shows the dust bowl; an abandoned farm house in Texas.
Dust Storm in Texas Panhandle Image: © CORBIS
Date Photographed: 1935 Location Information: Texas, USA
Farmer in the Dust Bowl A farmer in Kansas during the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s attempts to work formerly fertile land buried in dust.
Image: © CORBISDate Photographed: September 1939
Location Information: Kansas, USA
Family Packed In Car, On Way To The West Original caption: The automobile was often the only hope for the future to many families fleeing from the Dust Bowl in the Southwest during the depression years of the 1930's. Many of these families left their homes in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, etc., for a better life in California. Here migrant cotton field worker and family on the way to the West (OK, AZ, and CA were often their itinerary). Photograph, early 1930's.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Hoovervilles• “A Hooverville was the popular name for a shantytown…”• “These settlements were often formed in unpleasant
neighborhoods or desolate areas and consisted of dozens or hundreds of shacks and tents that were temporary residences of those left unemployed and homeless by the Depression.”
• “People slept in anything from open piano crates to the ground. …Most people, however, resorted to building their residences out of boxwood, cardboard, and any scraps of metal they could find. Some individuals even lived in water mains.”
• “Most of these unemployed residents of the Hoovervilles begged for food from those who had housing during this era.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States
Hooverville in Seattle Original caption: 7/16/1934-Hooverville, a section of Seattle.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: July 16, 1934 Location Information: Seattle, Washington,
USA
Man in Chicago Shantytown A man reads a newspaper in front of his shack at Chicago shantytown during the Great Depression. The shantytown's site became the grounds for the 1933 World's Fair. Illinois, USA.
Image: © CORBISDate Photographed: May 1, 1930
Location Information:
Chicago, Illinois, USA
“White trash” • Poor, uneducated white people who lived
on “relief “ – lowest social class, even below the poor
blacks– prejudiced against black people – felt the need to “put down” blacks in order
to elevate themselves
Depression Homeless Stand in
LineThe homeless and unemployed of the Great Depression
wait in line seeking shelter in New York.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: 1930 Location Information: New York, New York, USA
Sharecropper's Wife and Family Wife and children of a sharecropper. Boone County, Arkansas, 1935.
Image: © CORBISPhotographer: Ben Shahn Date Photographed: 1935 Location Information: Boone County, Arkansas, USA
Family of Coal Miner
Family of an unemployed coal miner. Pursglove,
on Scott's Run, West Virginia,
September 1938.
Image: © CORBISPhotographer: Marion Post Wolcott Date Photographed: September 1938 Location Information: Pursglove, on Scott's run, West Virginia, USA
Boy in Dust Bowl
A young boy covers his nose and mouth against brown sand in the Dust Bowl.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: ca. 1930s
Location Information: USA
Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange
A poverty-stricken migrant mother with three young children gazes off into the distance. This photograph, commissioned by the FSA, came to symbolize the Great Depression for many Americans.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISPhotographer: Dorothea Lange Date Photographed: 1936 Location Information: Nipomo, California, USA
Created by Chadrenne Blouin
The Beginning of the Jim Crow Laws
Beginning of the Jim Crow Laws• In 1877 “…the federal government essentially
abandoned all efforts at protecting the civil rights of southern blacks. It was not long before a stepped-up reign of white terror erupted in the South.
• “The decade of the 1880s was characterized by mob lynchings, a vicious system of convict prison farms and chain gangs, the horribly debilitating debt peonage of sharecropping, the imposition of a legal color line in race relations, and a variety of laws that blatantly discriminated against blacks.”
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
Beginning of the Jim Crow Laws
• “Some southern states…moved to legally impose segregation on public transportation…Blacks were required to sit in a special car reserved for blacks known as "The Jim Crow Car," even if they had bought first-class tickets.”
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
Created by Chadrenne Blouin
The Jim Crow Laws & Segregation
The Jim Crow Laws• “Some states also passed so-called miscegenation laws
banning interracial marriages. These bans were, in the opinion of some historians, the ‘ultimate segregation laws.’ – “They clearly announced that blacks were so inferior to
whites that any mixing of the two threatened the very survival of the superior white race.
• “Almost all southern states passed statutes restricting suffrage in the years from 1871 to 1889, including poll taxes in some cases. And the effects were devastating: over half the blacks voting in Georgia and South Carolina in 1880, for example, had vanished from the polls in 1888. Of those who did vote, many of their ballots were stolen, misdirected to opposing candidates, or simply not counted.”
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
The Jim Crow Laws cont.• “In the 1890s, starting with Mississippi, most southern states
began more systematically to disfranchise black males by imposing voter registration restrictions, such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and the white primary.
• “These new rules of the political game were used by white registrars to deny voting privileges to blacks at the registration place rather than at the ballot box, which had previously been done by means of fraud and force.
• “By 1910, every state of the former Confederacy had adopted laws that segregated all aspects of life (especially schools and public places) wherein blacks and whites might socially mingle or come into contact.”
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm
Court Actions• 1883- the US Supreme Court declared the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional• it “…also ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment
prohibited state governments from discriminating against people because of race but did not restrict private organizations or individuals from doing so.”
• This meant that places like railroads, theaters, hotels, restaurants, etc. could legally institute segregation.
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/jcrow.htm
Court Actions• 1896- Plessy v. Ferguson
– “Separate but Equal”– Ruled that separate accommodations did not
deprive blacks of equal rights if the accommodations were equal
• 1899- Cumming v. Board of Education– Laws establishing separate schools for whites
were valid, even if they provided no comparable schools for blacks
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/jcrow.htm
Jim Crow Laws• “By 1914 every Southern state had passed laws that
created two separate societies; one black, the other white.
• “Blacks and whites could not:– Ride together in the same railroad cars– Sit in the same waiting rooms– Use the same bathrooms– Eat in the same restaurants– Sit in the same theaters
• “Blacks were denied access to:– Parks– Beaches– Picnic areas– Many hospitals”
http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/jcrow.htm
Man Drinking at Segregated Drinking Fountain Original caption: Jim Crowism: Drinking fountain for colored men in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City. Photograph, 1939. Original Caption
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: 1939 Location Information: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
Segregation Original caption: Segregated drinking fountain in use in the American South. Undated photograph. BPA2# 1135.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISThis image is part of these set(s): Retrospective - 100 Top Bettmann Archive...Bettmann ArchiveCelebrating Black History Month
Examples of Jim Crow Laws• Alabama:
– Health Care- no person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed
– Transportation- All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate tickets windows for the white and colored races
– Public Facilities- • It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of
food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.
• It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.
Racial separation (segregation)
Examples of Jim Crow Laws• Maryland
– Marriage- all marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, or between a white person and a member of the Malay race; or between a negro and a member of the Malay race; or between a person of Negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, and a member of the Malay race, are forever prohibited, and shall be void.
– Transportation- All railroad companies and corporations, and all persons running or operating cars or coaches by steam on any railroad line or track in the State of Maryland, for the transportation of passengers, are hereby required to provide separate cars or coaches for the travel and transportation of the white and colored passengers.
Racial prejudice was alive & well in 1930s Alabama (the setting of our novel), despite slavery ending in 1864, old
ideas were slow to change.
Crowded Segregated ClassroomIm
age: © B
ettmann/C
OR
BIS
Date Photographed: ca. 1940s
Legal Issues of the 1930’s which impact the story
• Women given the vote in 1920
• Juries were MALE and WHITE
• “Fair trial” did not include acceptance of a black man’s word against a white man’s
End of Jim Crow
• 1954- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas– Declared segregation of public schools
unconstitutional• The beginning of the Civil Rights
Movement• The beginning of the end of the Jim Crow
laws
Created by Chadrenne Blouin
Segregation & the fight for civil rights
"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue… whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are
going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated."
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy--Referring to race riots in Alabama in a radio
broadcast 11th June 1963.
Prejudice in the novel
RaceGender
HandicapsRich/Poor
AgeReligion
Integrated Class Room
The first integrated class at School 99 in Baltimore.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: September 8, 1954
Location Information: Baltimore, Maryland, USA
AfriMcLaurin, a 54 year old African American, sits in an anteroom, apart from the other students, as he attends class at the University of Oklahoma in 1948. The university insisted that segregation be maintained, but a Supreme Court ruling forced the institution to accept McLaurin as a student.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: October 16, 1948 Location Information: Norman, Oklahoma, USA
Mendez v. Westminster became the first case in U.S. history to rule on desegregation, forcing schools in Orange County to integrate in 1947. The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that later ended legal segregation in all public schools nationwide used some of the arguments used in the Mendez case.
Hispanics were impacted by Jim Crow Laws as well.
Image 1940s South Texas restricting service to Hispanic patrons in public restaurant.
Restaurant Owner Smashes Egg In Protester's Face
Robert Fehsenfeldt, owner of the Dizzyland Restaurant, smashes an egg in a white demonstrator's face here July 8 during an eleven person, fifteen minute "sit in" in front of the restaurant shortly after Maryland National Guardsmen left the town. Fehsenfeldt also kicked several demonstrators and threw a glass of water in one's face.
Demonstrators Protesting Jailing
of 13
Edward Haan of Chicago and Nashville, TN, bearing "No Color Line in Heaven" sign joined 100 Negroes in anti-segregation demonstration. Demonstrators protested jailing of 13 Negro sit-in demonstrators on trespass charges.
Freedom Rider Jim Zwerg in Hospital
Twenty-one year old ministerial student and member of the Freedom Riders, Jim Zwerg, lies in a hospital bed after being beaten by pro-segregationists at a Montgomery, Alabama bus terminal.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: May 21, 1961 Location Information: Montgomery, Alabama, USA
Poster Of Missing Civil Rights Workers
A missing persons poster displays the photographs of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner after they disappeared in Mississippi. It was later discovered that they were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: June 29, 1964 Location Information: Washington, DC, USA
Sit-In Protesters Attacked at Lunch Counter Segregation protesters Professor John R. Salter, Joan Trunpauer, and Annie Moody remain at a sit-in at a lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi even after Professor Salter was sprayed with condiments and beaten on the back and head by spectators in the crowd.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: May 28, 1963 Location Information: Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Children Arrested After Civil Rights Demonstration African American children participating in a Civil Rights protests wait for a police van to take them to jail in Birmingham, Alabama.
Image: © Bettmann/CORBISDate Photographed: May 6, 1963 Location Information: Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Themes and Conflicts
• Racism• Unfair Judgment• Social Structures• Sympathy and
Understanding• Moral Nature of Man• Childhood Innocence
• Human Capacity for Goodness versus Human Capacity for Evil
• Moral Education versus Academic Education
