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Jot down your thoughts and feelings of these photos:

• http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/depression/photoessay.htm

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Watch and listen to these comments on “To Kill A Mockingbird”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N3_wsjW7AY&feature=player_detailpage

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCUiJLV4l3E&feature=player_detailpage

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The writer, Nelle Harper LeeBiographical notes on Alabama Academy of Honor

http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/academy/h_lee.html

• born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama• 1944-45: attended Huntingdon College • 1945-49: studied law at the University of

Alabama• studied for one year at Oxford University• Six months before obtaining a law degree, moved

to New York City, a turning point in her life

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• In the 1950s, she worked as a reservations clerk for Eastern Airlines in New York City

• Wrote during her spare time – 4 hours per day• Her source of story telling - Her childhood

experiences and a background in law• Following an agent’s suggestion to create a novel

based on the stories – stopped work, focused on writing, presented with a gift of financial support from her friends in 1956

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• 1957 - completed the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird

• End of 1960 – listed as a bestseller• Awards: the Pulitzer Prize, four honorary

doctorates, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the National Council of Arts, and one of thirty-one “Most Outstanding Women Graduates of The University of Alabama”

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The background:Geographical and historical

• Southern states in America• Great Depression (1929-1939)• Racial segregation• Anti-Blacks (Jim Crow, 1877- mid 1960’s)• The Scottsboro Trial (1931-1937)

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Alabama

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The Great Depression1929-1939

Farmer and sons, dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. The drought that helped cripple agriculture in the Great Depression was the worst in the climatological history of the country...

Vast dust storms swept the region.

Photographer: Arthur Rothstein.

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An impoverished family in Alabama, 1935 or 1936.

Photographer: Walker Evans.

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Squatter camp

People living in miserable poverty, Oklahoma.

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Racist signs

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Jim Crow

1828: an exaggerated, highly stereotypical Black character

By 1838, the term "Jim Crow" was being used as a collective racial epithet for Blacks, not as offensive as nigger, but as offensive as coon or darkie.

By the end of the 19th Century, the words Jim Crow were less likely to be used to derisively describe Blacks; instead, the phrase Jim Crow was being used to describe laws and customs which oppressed Blacks.

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Jim Crow as a racial caste system

Underpinned by these beliefs:• Whites were superior to Blacks in all

important ways, including but not limited to intelligence, morality, and civilized behaviour

• sexual relations between Blacks and Whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America

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• treating Blacks as equals would encourage interracial sexual unions

• any activity which suggested social equality encouraged interracial sexual relations

• if necessary, violence must be used to keep Blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy

**Jim Crow etiquette norms, Jim Crow Guide, & Jim Crow laws

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Jim Crow Etiquette Norms(Some examples)

• A Black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a White male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a Black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a White woman, because he risked being accused of rape.

• Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, Whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.

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• Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White female -- that gesture implied intimacy.

• Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended Whites.

• Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that Blacks were introduced to Whites, never Whites to Blacks. For example: "Mr. Peters (the White person), this is Charlie (the Black person), that I spoke to you about."

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Jim Crow Guide

• Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying.

• Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class.

• Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.

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Jim Crow Laws

• Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia).

• Buses. All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races (Alabama).

• Education. The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately (Florida).

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Using violence to exert control and upheld the Jim Crow laws

• Lynching served many purposes: it was cheap entertainment; it served as a rallying, uniting point for Whites; it functioned as an ego-massage for low-income, low-status Whites; it was a method of defending White domination and helped stop or retard the fledgling social equality movement.

(refer to page 201-202)

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The Scottsboro Trial 1931-1937

"The Scottsboro Boys" meet with their attorney 

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References

http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/academy/h_lee.html

http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/who.htmhttp://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htmhttp://

law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html

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Setting

• Maycomb County (an imaginary district in southern Alabama)

• 1930’s – during the Great Depression

Characters?? Plot? Create a page of mind map of the elements in TKAM.

Present them in class. In your presentation, discuss the elements with reference to the geographical and

historical backgrounds of the story.