Background Jigsaw Presentation Assignment (Test grade)

1. With your group, read your assigned article (attached). Highlight pertinent facts.
2. Make a top ten list poster in which you list in bullet points the ten MOST important facts from
the article. Be sure to go from beginning, to middle, to end.
3. Put this information on a poster (found in the room)
4. Go over your material and decide who will present what information.
5. Include at least two pictures from the internet or your own artwork to represent your topic. Any
additional pictures or drawings will be extra credit up to ten points. (5 points per picture/image)
Be sure to include any citations for pictures you find from the internet.
6. This will count for a test grade. See rubric below.
7. You will be asked to take notes on ALL posters and presentations for an additional daily grade.

Good presentation of information (thorough, you didnt just read the

list) (20)_________
Specific, relevant pictures/images for topic
_________

(20)

Group gives opinion on this historical information

_________

(15)

Creative poster that is neat, readable, and eye catching (30)

_________
All members of the group participated (15)
_________

Total (100)

_______

DETAILED BACKGROUND
FOR TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Note: In this packet you will find an abundance of information on several topics the author Harper Lee tackles in her novel, To
Kill a Mockingbird. Please go through these and pay attention during the jigsaw activity. Remember: TO BE INFORMED IS
TO BE PREPARED.
#1: The Scottsboro Boys
The devastating day of March 25, 1931, started with hope for the young men on the freight train chugging away
from their home town of Chattanooga, Tenn. For Eugene Williams, 13, the idea of leaving his birthplace and the
grinding poverty there had seemed like a good and responsible one. "If I leave her, " he reportedly said of his
mother, "it will mean one less mouth to feed." By the end of the day, Williams would become one of nine young
black males forcibly taken off the train by a sheriff's gang and charged with raping two white girls.
By the next month, eight of the nine, including Williams, would be convicted and sentenced to death, beginning
a long fight which threatened to rend the very fabric of American society apart.
Throughout the lengthy judicial proceedings, the AFRO-AMERICAN Newspapers kept track of the case -interviewing participants, and even dispatching a series of telegrams during some of the most dramatic
developments in the battle. The case would drag on for years and leave the lives of the nine decimated by the
traumatic events.
The Scottsboro Boys (the young men were named after the Alabama town where they were tried for the first
time) ranged in age from 13 to 21. They were: Roy Wright, 13, Eugene Williams, 13, Andy Wright, 17,
Haywood Patterson, 17, Olin Montgomery, 17, Willie Roberson, 17, Ozzie Powell, 16, Charles Weems, 21 and
Clarence Norris, 21. The nine, who were charged with attacking two white girls, one an admitted town
prostitute, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, immediately pleaded not guilty to the 20 indictments against them.
Their pleas were swiftly rejected. An all-white jury in the court room of Judge E. A. Hawkins convicted eight of
the boys, declaring a mistrial in the case of 13-year-old Roy Wright. This despite the publication of an expose
revealing a frame-up by the communist Daily Worker newspaper just days after the arrest. Tried in three groups,
the eight were sentenced to death on the same day - April 9, 1931.
The verdicts were hardly surprising in the climate of the time, where conviction was guaranteed of any black
accused of such a crime. A local jurisprudence riddled with racism ensured that the defendants were at a
disadvantage; the young men were assigned Milo Moody, a local lawyer, as a defense attorney who had no
preparation in the case. According to a report in the April 18, 1931 edition of the AFRO by Managing Editor
William N. Jones, who covered the story on location, some 10,000 white mountaineers and villagers came to
town the day of the trial. Later that day -- April 6 -- a crowd assembled outside the courthouse and, surrounded

by state troopers, reportedly staged a demonstration of approval, complete with a band playing "There'll be a hot
time in the old town tonight."
The reaction to the convictions was swift and large scale. Just one day after the death sentences were handed
down, the first big demonstration was held at St. Luke's Hall in Harlem. The next week, the International Labor
Defense, a well-known communist group, who had entered the case immediately after the guilty verdict, joined
with the parents of the boys to secure the services of General Geo W. Chamlee to represent them. The ILD
would later clash with the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) over the representation of the
youngsters.
From the very beginning, the boys' parents were passionate in the defense of their offspring. Mrs. Janie
Patterson, mother of Haywood, spoke before a meeting of 1,000 workers the month her son was sentenced to
die, while Ada Wright, mother of Roy and Andy, would be arrested and deported from Belgium after speaking
to workers there about the young men.
The support for the boys overseas was dramatic. Demonstrations were held in Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin,
Germany as soon as the verdicts came in. And, an international collection of intellectuals and scientists,
including Albert Einstein, signed a petition demanding the release of the nine young men. Eventually,
supporters would be joined by one of the alleged victims, Ruby Bates, who visited the Washington, D.C. office
of the AFRO-AMERICAN Newspaper, where she denied that she had been raped by the young men.
Meanwhile, the petitions flied back and forth. Finally, on Nov. 8, 1932, Judge Hawkins set new trials for all nine
boys for the March 1933 term of the Scottsboro court.
The second trial opened in Decatur, Ala. on March 28, 1933, following the filing of two defense motions for a
change of venue and to quash the indictment against the boys on the grounds that there had been no blacks on
the first jury. Despite this, a lily-white jury was picked to try Haywood Patterson, the first of the nine young
men to be brought to trial. The town seethed with racial hatred as the proceedings began, with cries denouncing
Bates and Lester Carter, a white boy who traveled with Bates and Price. Carter also confirmed that the rapes had
never taken place. AFRO reporters on the scene flashed a series of telegrams back to their publisher Carl
Murphy describing the tense scene.
Public appetite for news of the proceedings was insatiable. AFRO reporters covering the trial delayed returning
home to Baltimore, accepting invitations to report to supporters all over the area about what they had seen and
heard about the case.
The trials would last for several years and eventually charges were dropped against five of the nine. The other
four were retried and convicted; three were later paroled, and the fourth, Patterson, escaped.
But none would escape the scars of the experience.
A reporter visiting the young men five years after their original trials wrote of the toll that the horrific events
had taken on them. Confined in the Jefferson County Jail, the reporter described the young men as "showing
various ill effects of their five and one-half years of incarceration. The light in their eyes is no longer bright. The
vim, vigor and vitality that characterized all nine at the time of their arrest have vanished," she wrote.

#2: About the Great Depression

The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the
world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever
experienced by the industrialized Western world.
Though the U.S. economy had gone into depression six months earlier, the Great Depression may be said to
have begun with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October
1929. During the next three years stock prices in the United States continued to fall, until by late 1932 they had
dropped to only about 20 percent of their value in 1929. Besides ruining many thousands of individual
investors, this precipitous decline in the value of assets greatly strained banks and other financial institutions,
particularly those holding stocks in their portfolios. Many banks were consequently forced into insolvency; by
1933, 11,000 of the United States' 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks, combined with a
general and nationwide loss of confidence in the economy, led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand
and hence of production, thus aggravating the downward spiral. The result was drastically falling output and
drastically rising unemployment; by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level,
and unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25-30 percent of the work force.
The Great Depression began in the United States but quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump owing to
the special and intimate relationships that had been forged between the United States and European economies
after World War I. The United States had emerged from the war as the major creditor and financier of postwar
Europe, whose national economies had been greatly weakened by the war itself, by war debts, and, in the case
of Germany and other defeated nations, by the need to pay war reparations. So once the American economy
slumped and the flow of American investment credits to Europe dried up, prosperity tended to collapse there as
well. The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States, i.e.,
Germany and Great Britain. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929, and by early 1932
it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force. Britain was less severely affected, but its
industrial and export sectors remained seriously depressed until World War II. Many other countries had been
affected by the slump by 1931.
Almost all nations sought to protect their domestic production by imposing tariffs, raising existing ones, and
setting quotas on foreign imports. The effect of these restrictive measures was to greatly reduce the volume of
international trade: by 1932 the total value of world trade had fallen by more than half as country after country
took measures against the importation of foreign goods.
The Great Depression had important consequences in the political sphere. In the United States, economic
distress led to the election of the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in late 1932. Roosevelt
introduced a number of major changes in the structure of the American economy, using increased government
regulation and massive public-works projects to promote a recovery. But despite this active intervention, mass
unemployment and economic stagnation continued, though on a somewhat reduced scale, with about 15 percent
of the work force still unemployed in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II. After that, unemployment dropped
rapidly as American factories were flooded with orders from overseas for armaments and munitions. The
depression ended completely soon after the United States' entry into World War II in 1941. In Europe, the Great
Depression strengthened extremist forces and lowered the prestige of liberal democracy. In Germany, economic
distress directly contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The Nazis' public-works projects and their
rapid expansion of munitions production ended the Depression there by 1936.
At least in part, the Great Depression was caused by underlying weaknesses and imbalances within the U.S.
economy that had been obscured by the boom psychology and speculative euphoria of the 1920s. The
Depression exposed those weaknesses, as it did the inability of the nation's political and financial institutions to

cope with the vicious downward economic cycle that had set in by 1930. Prior to the Great Depression,
governments traditionally took little or no action in times of business downturn, relying instead on impersonal
market forces to achieve the necessary economic correction. But market forces alone proved unable to achieve
the desired recovery in the early years of the Great Depression, and this painful discovery eventually inspired
some fundamental changes in the United States' economic structure. After the Great Depression, government
action, whether in the form of taxation, industrial regulation, public works, social insurance, social-welfare
services, or deficit spending, came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability in most industrial
nations with market economies.

#3: About the Author

Writer. Born Nelle Harper Lee on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. Lee Harper
is best known for writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller To Kill a Mockingbird
(1960)her one and only novel. The youngest of four children, she grew up as a tomboy
in a small town. Her father was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama state legislature, and
also owned part of the local newspaper. For most of Lees life, her mother suffered from
mental illness, rarely leaving the house. It is believed that she may have had bipolar
disorder.
One of her closest childhood friends was another writer-to-be, Truman Capote (then
known as Truman Persons). Tougher than many of the boys, Lee often stepped up to serve
as Trumans protector. Truman, who shared few interests with boys his age, was picked on for being a sissy and
for the fancy clothes he wore. While the two friends were very different, they both shared in having difficult
home lives. Truman was living with his mothers relatives in town after largely being abandoned by his own
parents.
In high school, Lee developed an interest in English literature. After graduating in 1944, she went to the allfemale Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Lee stood apart from the other studentsshe could have cared less
about fashion, makeup, or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and on her writing. Lee was a member of
the literary honor society and the glee club.
Transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Lee was known for being a loner and an individualist.
She did make a greater attempt at a social life there, joining a sorority for a while. Pursuing her interest in
writing, Lee contributed to the schools newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. She
eventually became the editor of the Rammer Jammer.
In her junior year, Lee was accepted into the universitys law school, which allowed students to work on law
degrees while still undergraduates. The demands of her law studies forced her to leave her post as editor of the
Rammer Jammer. After her first year in the law program, Lee began expressing to her family that writingnot
the lawwas her true calling. She went to Oxford University in England that summer as an exchange student.
Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester. She soon moved to New York
City to follow her dreams to become a writer.
In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City. She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent
for Eastern Airlines and for the British Overseas Air Corp (BOAC). While in the city, Lee was reunited with old
friend Truman Capote, one of the literary rising stars of the time. She also befriended Broadway composer and
lyricist Michael Martin Brown and his wife Joy.
In 1956, the Browns gave Lee an impressive Christmas presentto support her for a year so that she could
write full time. She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. The Browns also helped her find an agent,
Maurice Crain. He, in turn, was able to get the publishing firm interested in her first novel, which was first titled
Go Set a Watchman, then Atticus, and later To Kill a Mockingbird. Working with editor Tay Hohoff, Lee
finished the manuscript in 1959.
Later that year, Lee joined forces with old friend Truman Capote to assist him with an article he was
writing for The New Yorker. Capote was writing about the impact of the murder of four members of
the Clutter family on their small Kansas farming community. The two traveled to Kansas to interview

townspeople, friends and family of the deceased, and the investigators working to solve the crime.
Serving as his research assistant, Lee helped with the interviews, eventually winning over some of
the locals with her easy-going, unpretentious manner. Truman, with his flamboyant personality and
style, also had a hard time initially getting himself into his subjects good graces.
During their time in Kansas, the Cutterss suspected killers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, were
caught in Las Vegas and brought back for questioning. Lee and Capote got a chance to interview the
suspects not long after their arrangement in January 1960. Soon after, Lee and Capote returned to
New York. She worked on the galleys for her forthcoming first novel while he started working on his
article, which would evolve into the nonfiction masterpiece, In Cold Blood. The pair returned to
Kansas in March for the murder trial. Later that spring, Lee gave Capote all of her notes on the crime,
the victims, the killers, the local communities, and much more.
Soon Lee was engrossed her literary success story. In July 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was published
and picked up by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild. A condensed version of the
story appeared in Readers Digest magazine. The works central character, a young girl nicknamed
Scout, was not unlike Lee in her youth. In one of the books major plotlines, Scout and her brother
Gem and their friend Dill explore their fascination with a mysterious and somewhat infamous
neighborhood character named Boo Radley. But the work was more than a coming-of-age story,
however. Another part of the novel reflected racial prejudices in the South. Their attorney father,
Atticus Finch, tries to help a black man who has been charged with raping a white woman to get a fair
trial and to prevent him from being lynched by angry whites in a small town.
The following year, To Kill a Mockingbird won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and several other literary
awards. Horton Foote wrote a screenplay based on the book and used the same title for the 1962 film
adaptation. Lee visited the set during filming and did a lot of interviews to support the film. Earning
eight Academy Award nominations, the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird won four awards,
including Best Actor for Gregory Pecks portrayal of Atticus Finch. The character of Atticus is said to
have been based on Lees father.
By the mid-1960s, Lee was reportedly working on a second novel, but it was never published.
Continuing to help Capote, Lee worked with him on and off on In Cold Blood. She had been invited by
Smith and Hickock to witness their execution in 1965, but she declined. When Capotes book was
finally published in 1966, a rift developed between the two friends and collaborators. Capote
dedicated to the book to Lee and his longtime lover Jack Dunphy, but he failed to acknowledge her
contributions to the work. While Lee was very angry and hurt by this betrayal, she remained friends
with Truman for the rest of his life.
That same year, Lee had an operation on her hand to repair damage done by a bad burn. She also
accepted a post on the National Council of the Arts at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Lee largely retreated from public life.
She spent some of her time on a nonfiction book project about an Alabama serial killer, which had the
working title The Reverend. But the work was never published.
Lee continues to live a quiet, private life in New York City and Monroeville. Active in her church and
community, she usually avoids anything to do with her still popular novel.
2008 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

HARPER LEE STILL PRIZES PRIVACY OVER PUBLICITY

Leigh Montgomery, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON
Some 37 years after "To Kill a Mockingbird" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, it remains one of the
best-loved novels in the canon of American literature - and the only book Harper Lee has ever written.
In an era when authors write sequels before their original novel has dropped off the bestseller list, Ms.
Lee is an anomaly. The success of her novel, and the Academy Award-winning screenplay based on
it, has enabled her to live a comfortable life out of the public eye.
An intensely private person, Lee does not grant interviews, but her literary agent, McIntosh and Otis,
says she divides her time between her hometown of Monroeville, Ala., and New York. She enjoys
reading, and her favorite authors are Jane Austen, Charles Lamb, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
After studying law, she wrote her novel in 1950s New York while working as an airline reservations
clerk. Although Lee found writing difficult, she did help Truman Capote compile interviews for "In Cold
Blood."
She has said her novel - the tale of a white Southern lawyer defending an innocent black man - is not
autobiographical. But her father was a lawyer and the inspiration for the character Atticus Finch. Lee's
sister, Alice, also became a lawyer and took over their father's practice.

#4: The Laws of Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws were laws that imposed racial segregation. They existed mainly in the
South and originated from the Black Codes that were enforced from 1865 to 1866 and
from prewar segregation on railroad cars in northern cities. The laws sprouted up in the
late nineteenth century after Reconstruction and lasted until the 1960s.
The Emergence of Jim Crow Laws
Prior to the enactment of Jim Crow laws, African Americans enjoyed some of the rights
granted during Reconstruction. Gains included the addition of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth,
and Fifteenth Amendments, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. However, rights dwindled
after Reconstruction ended in 1877. By 1890, whites in the north and south became less
supportive of civil rights and racial tension began to flare.
Additionally, several Supreme Court decisions overturned Reconstruction legislation by
promoting racial segregation. The Supreme Court set the stage for Jim Crow laws by
several of its decisions. The Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was
unconstitutional and ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit individuals
and private organizations from discriminating on the basis of race.
Plessy v. Ferguson Paves the Way for Segregation
However, it was the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that led the
way to racial segregation. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law that required blacks to ride in
separate railroad cars. Blacks protested and challenged the law. Homer Plessy, a
carpenter in Louisiana who was seven-eighths Caucasian, was chosen to test the
constitutionality of the law. On June 7, 1892, Plessy boarded a train and sat in a car
reserved for whites. He refused to move and was arrested. A local judge ruled against
Plessy, and in 1896 the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts ruling. It held that
"separate but equal" accommodations did not violate Plessy's rights and that the law did
not stamp the "colored race with a badge of inferiority." The Court provided further
support for separate accommodations when it ruled in Cumming v. County Board of
Education (1899) that separate schools were valid even if comparable schools for blacks
were not available.
Segregation Laws are Enacted in the South
With the Supreme Court's approval, the Plessy decision paved the way for racial
segregation. Southern states passed laws that restricted African Americans access to
schools, restaurants, hospitals, and public places. Signs that said "Whites Only" or
"Colored" were posted at entrances and exits, water fountains, waiting rooms, and
restrooms. Laws were enacted that restricted all aspects of life and varied from state to
state. Georgia in 1905, passed a law requiring separate public parks, in 1909 Mobile,
Alabama created a 10 p.m. curfew for blacks, and in 1915, South Carolina blacks and
whites were restricted from working together in the same rooms of textile factories.

The Supreme Court Strikes Down Jim Crow Laws

By 1915, the strength of Jim Crow laws were slowly beginning to erode. The Supreme
Court in Guinn v. United States (1915) ruled that an Oklahoma law that denied the right
to vote to some citizens was unconstitutional. In 1917, in Buchanan v. Warley the Court
held that a Louisville, Kentucky law could not require residential segregation.
Additionally, the decisions in Sweatt v. Painter (1949) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma (1950)
helped break down the ruling in Plessy. But it was the Supreme Courts decision in 1954
in Brown v. Board of Education that overturned the Court's decision in Plessy. It held that
separate schools were unequal and its ruling helped dismantle racial segregation. The
Court provided momentum for the growing civil rights movement that eventually led to
the end of racial segregation.
By the 1890s, as the gains of Reconstruction were stripped away, southern states began
enacting Jim Crow laws that enforced separate facilities for blacks and whites. Here are
samples of the laws enacted by various states.
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 ticket windows for the white and
colored races.
The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and required to assign each
passenger to the car or the division of the car, when it is divided by a partition,
designated for the race to which such passenger belongs.
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.
Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males
reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities.

#5: Civil Rights Timeline

Milestones in the modern civil rights movement
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html
by Borgna Brunner and Elissa Haney

1948

1954

1960

1967

1968

1971

1988

1991

2005

2008

July 26
Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there

1948

shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color,
religion, or national origin."

May 17

The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.,

1954

unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale
desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal"
segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP
attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

Top
Aug.

Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot,
and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy
Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in
a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause clbre of the civil rights movement.

Dec. 1

1955

(Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the
front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her
arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses
are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA),
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.

Top

Jan.Feb.

Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights
movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the
civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever
conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.

1957

Sept.
(Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black
students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends
federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock
Nine."

Feb. 1
(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a
segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The
event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are
served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in
integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries, and other public facilities.

1960
April

(Raleigh, N.C.) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing
young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grows into a more radical organization,
especially under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (19661967).

Top
May 4

Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that
prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of

1961

"freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more
than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.

1962

Oct. 1

James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots
surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.

April 16
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal
"Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

May

During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses
and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are
instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

June 12

(Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron
De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for
murdering Evers.

1963

Aug. 28

(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the
Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Sept. 15

(Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins)
attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location
for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths.

Top

1964

Jan. 23
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after
Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.

Summer

The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups that includes CORE and SNCC,
launches a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes known as the Freedom Summer. It also sends
delegates to the Democratic National Convention to protestand attempt to unseatthe official all-white Mississippi
contingent.

July 2
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction,
the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also
provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.

Aug. 4
(Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workerstwo white, one blackare found in an earthen
dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman,
21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone
to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for
several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.

1965

Feb. 21

(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It
is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of
orthodox Islam.

March 7

(Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by
a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The
incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting
rights act five months later.

Aug. 10
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests,
poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.

Aug. 1117, 1965

(Watts, Calif.) Race riots erupt in a black section of Los Angeles.

Sept. 24, 1965

Asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President Johnson issues Executive
Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first time. It requires government contractors to "take affirmative
action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

Top

1966

Oct.

(Oakland, Calif.) The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

April 19
Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase "black
power" in a speech in Seattle. He defines it as an assertion of black pride and "the coming together of black people to
fight for their liberation by any means necessary." The term's radicalism alarms many who believe the civil rights

1967

movement's effectiveness and moral authority crucially depend on nonviolent civil disobedience.

June 12

In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states
that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws.

July
Major race riots take place in Newark (July 1216) and Detroit (July 2330).

April 4

(Memphis, Tenn.) Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped
convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime.

1968

April 11

President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of
housing.

#6 Discrimination and Stereotypes in To Kill a

Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Published October 16, 2005 by:

Cheri Esperon
The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, prejudice is portrayed in many forms in the novel. Characters in the book suffer
discrimination due to race, age, social status, and sex. This racism appears to be as natural to the people of Maycomb as
breathing. Early in the novel, Scout along with her brother Jem and their neighbor Dill decide to peek into the window of
the home of Boo Radley, the neighborhood "boogey-man". Their antics alert Nathan Radley, Boo's older brother, who fires
a rifle to scare off the unknown intruder. When the neighbors gather to find the source of the commotion, they
automatically assume the prowler is black. When asked if the prowler had been shot, Miss Stephanie gives the following
reply. "Shot in the air. Scared him pale, though. Says if anybody sees a white nigger around, that's the one." (Lee 54). The
racial slur is spoken as casually as if she were speaking about the weather. Contemporary readers may be shocked by
this blatant racism, but Lee's use of the language illustrates how socially acceptable this behavior was in the 1930s.
Although Scout does not appear to be racist, she is also guilty of using racial slurs. When Jem attempts to build a
snowman by first making a base of mud she comments "Jem, I ain't ever heard of a nigger snowman" (Lee 66). It is well
documented that children learn racism at home. "Our children learn their attitudes from us -- the adults around them. We
all have ways of thinking and acting that may seem natural to us but aren't necessarily what we want to pass along to our
children. In fact, if we don't examine these attitudes carefully, they can be harmful to our children's understanding of their
world" (http://familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,1-1530,00.html). Scout's casual use of the term is a reminder of how
comments made by adults can poison the minds of children.
The injustice of racism becomes apparent when Tom Robinson is convicted of raping Mayella Ewell. Despite the lack of
evidence, the jury and town is reluctant to take the word of a black man over two white accusers. Atticus passionately
implores the jury to look past race and stereotype and serve true blind justice:
"They were confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption- the evil assumption- that all
Negro's lie, and that all Negros are basically immoral beings. [] I am confident that you gentlemen will review without
passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do
your duty" (Lee 204-205)
Through this speech "Lee urges her audience to examine the past and learn from the mistakes so future generations can
live in a more peaceful world" (Stiltner 62).
Scout not only witnesses prejudice, she becomes the victim of it in several instances in the book. When Scout arrives for
her first day at school, she encounters Miss Caroline, a teacher from the north. Miss Caroline has preconceived notions
as to how the class should be taught and the children should learn. When Scout proudly claims she can read and write

she is scolded and told she should not engage in these activities because a child of her age should not be reading or
writing. Scout's aggravation with Miss Caroline's refusal to accept any other method of teaching but her own provides the
reader with insight as to how it must feel to face ethnocentricity.
When Scout is verbally attacked because her father is defending Tom Robinson, she becomes enraged, resorting to
physical violence. This may be the beginning of her understanding of how frustrating it must be to be judged and hated for
something you can not control. Scout could no more mandate who her father defended than a person could choose their
race. Scout begins to recognize the pain of name calling as she suffers taunts such as "nigger lover."
The most blatant form of prejudice appears when Scout and Jem accompany Calpurnia to church. The children are faced
with reverse discrimination by a member of the congregation who tells Calpurnia "You ain't got no business bringin' white
chillum here- they got their church, we got our'n" (Lee 119). The children are intimidated by this hatred and wish to go
home, but are soon embraced and welcomed by other members of the church who show the children kindness and
respect. The congregation welcomes the children in part because of their father. The Reverend Sykes explains to the
children "This church has no better friend than your father" (Lee 123).
Scout is also faced with sexual discrimination and stereotyping. Her Aunt Alexandra is quick to point out that Scout's
behavior is unladylike. Because Scout chooses to engage in tomboy activities and wear overalls, she could never be a
lady. Alexandra's observations become hurtful and cruel. "I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as
well, but Aunty said [] that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year" (Lee 81). Scout also
experiences discrimination at the hands of her own beloved brother. Jem is pulling away from his younger sister, at 12 he
has decided that he is too old to be bothered by his younger sister. A vicious argument ensues after Jem tells Scout "It's
time you started bein'a girl and acting right!" (Lee 115) This is extremely painful for Scout to hear since she fought hard to
earn her brother's respect by acting less like a girl. "Knowing that being called a girl is an insult and that being female is
valued less than being male in her small Southern town" (Shackelford). This therefore is one of the greatest insults Jem
could inflict.
Scout is confronted with her own prejudices in the novel. As she grows and learns, she begins to regret her actions. When
she accompanies Calpurnia to church, she is surprised to learn that Cal speaks in the vernacular of the blacks when in
their company. "The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her
having command of two languages." (Lee 124). In her book To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries, Claudia Durst
Johnson explains this realization. "And in that moment when Scout senses Calpurnia's Otherness, she is attracted to her
and wants to more about her" (86). When Jem shuns Scout, it is with Calpurnia that Scout seeks condolence. Calpurnia
helps Scout bear the loneliness and Scout begins to regret her intolerance of Calpurnia, "I had felt her tyrannical presence
as long as I could remember" (Lee 6) and begins to understand that Calpurnia's actions were out of love, not tyranny.
Scout's most obvious prejudice is against Boo Radley, her recluse neighbor. Scout calls Boo a "malevolent phantom" and
blames him for several evils. "People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When
people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. [] once the town was terrorized by a
series of morbid nocturnal events: people's chickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was

Crazy Addie [] people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicion" (Lee 9) Boo is even
given the ability to enchant pecans from his tree which would kill a child if touched. "And when Scout thinks she hears
laughter from inside the Radley house, she finds this sinister - but the reader comes to see that this is the innocent
laughter of Boo Radley, who is amused by the children at play" (http://www.universalteacher.org.). Although Lee provides
the reader with insight as to Boo's intelligence; he leaves a spelling bee medal as a gift in the tree for the children. Scout
overlooks this and believes Boo to be a mentally deranged monster. It is not until Boo places a blanket around Scouts
shoulders on the night of Miss Maudie's fire that Scout "begins to know fully who has been communicating with them in
the tree, and who gave her the blanket, and she is enlightened by Jem's changed view of their strange neighbor"
(Johnson 84). Although Scout does not encounter Boo again for several months, he remains on her mind and her curiosity
about him turns from morbid to a genuine desire for neighborly interaction.
"But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we would see him. I imagined how it would be: when it
happened, he'd just be sitting in the swing when I came along. Hidy do, Mr. Arthur,' I would say, as if I had said it every
afternoon of my life. Evening, Jean Louise,' he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my life, right pretty spell
we're having, isn't it?' "Yes sir, I would say and go on. It was only a fantasy [] He would never gaze at us." (Lee 242).
When Scout does encounter Boo after he saves the children from Bob Ewell, she is in awe. As only a child can, she
embraces Boo as if she has known him her whole life. She learns the lesson her father had been trying to teach her
"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them."
(Lee 279). Scout stands on the porch of the Radley house and realizes that it hasn't been a monster watching them grow
up, it has been a kind and gentle man. It is at this time Scout learns that prejudice hurts everyone, it is painful for those
experiencing it, and those that are prejudice are robbing themselves of wonderful experiences.
Harper Lee presents the reader with not only literal examples of discrimination, but uses symbolic examples as well.
Atticus tells the children "Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit em, but remember it is a sin to kill a
mockingbird" (Lee 90). "Blue jays are viewed as the bullies of the bird world. They are very loud, territorial, and
aggressive. The blue jays represent the prejudiced bullies' of Maycomb County" (Symkowski). Miss Maudie explains
to Scout why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. She tells Scout that the birds are innocent, they simply sing. Mitzi-Ann Stiltner
makes the following analysis: "the symbolic representation of the mockingbird as a peaceful and protective creature that
generally gets along with other bird species." The mockingbird is a symbol of the innocent that have done nothing wrong,
such as Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. The innocence can also apply to the innocence of childhood, which can be
destroyed by prejudice.
When Atticus shoots the mad dog, this is symbolic of Atticus's battle against prejudice. Just as rabies is contagious,
racism also taints everything it touches. A mad dog wandering the streets of Maycomb is a symbol if the prejudice that is
poisoning the town. When Atticus tells Jem the dog is "far from dead, he hasn't got started yet." (Lee 95) he is telling Jem
that the damage seen so far from prejudice is just the tip of the iceberg. Mr. Tate insists that Atticus be the one to shoot
the dog, since this is a "one shot job" (Lee 95). Atticus is appointed as the defense attorney for Tom Robinson, because
he is the one man who could fight the injustice of the trial and bring reason back to Maycomb (Jones). The relationship is
further explained in Ethical Reflections on To Kill a Mockingbird:
"The mad dog is a threat to the entire community because the disease he carries can be contracted by anyone who

comes into contact with the animal. In the same way, the disease of prejudice seems to afflict anyone who is exposed to it.
Both are destructive and painful diseases which kill their victims from the inside out. Rabies attacks the central nervous
system, while prejudice attacks one's heart and soul." (Zuercher)
The fact that Atticus shoots the dog, before it can wander into the Radley yard is a symbolic foreshadow of how Atticus will
protect Boo from further bias by agreeing to conceal that it was Boo killed Bob Ewell
The children's snowman is another symbol of prejudice in Maycomb. The mud man created by Jem is covered up in white
snow. "Blacks aren't judged on their own merits, but on their relationships with the white folks in town, just as the mudman
isn't something to be admired until he is a white snowman" (Castleman). Adam Smykiwski argues that the mudman was
essentially the same once he was covered in snow except for color Therefore the snowman is an analogy "showing []
that all human beings are virtually the same." The fire that melts the snowman is representative of the prejudice of the
town. When the white snow of the snowman is removed, all that is left is an ugly clump of mud that is easily removed with
a shovel. This reflects the attitude of the town that Negros are nothing but unsightly and nothing without whites.
Through Scout's encounters, Lee allows the reader to experience the pain and regret of prejudice. The lessons learned
through Scout's experiences and the gentle guidance of Atticus are timeless messages. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said,
"The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you shed upon it, the more it contracts." Just as bright
light may be painful to the eye, confronting your own bias may also be painful. Lee implores the reader to move past this
pain and receives the gifts light and open-mindedness can bring. Almost 50 years after writing To Kill a Mockingbird,
Harper Lee's message is still being heard loud and clear. "The haunting story encourages us to overcome the impulse to
push away those who aren't just like us or those we don't understand, and instead to accept them as fellow human
beings." (http://www.planetout.com/news/feature.html?sernum=585)