To Kill A Mockingbird Historical Background
Stock Market Crash of 1929/Great Depression
1929-1940
- The most devastating stock market crash ever, which occured on October 24, 1929, was known as the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
- The primary cause of the crash was believed to be the overproduction of agricultural produce, creating widespread finacial despair among American farmers at the time.
- Stock prices collapsed and billions of dollars were lost by thousands of investors, leading to the Great Depression
- The Great Depression casued millions of Americans to lose their jobs.
- TKAM: Maycomb was also in a state of economic decline in the 1930's
d
1960
1963
1861-1863
1965
1865: Abraham Lincoln Dies/End of Civil War
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
1955-1956
Selma Marches/Voting Rights Act
"I Have a Dream" Speech/Birmingham Bombings
To Kill A Mockingbird Publishing
South Carolina Secedes/Emancipation Proclamation
- The bombing occurred at 16th street Baptist Church
- Members of the KKK planted 15 sticks of dynamite
- 4 girls killed 22 injured
- published on July 11, 1960
- Publisher: Warner Bros, inc / Author: Harper Lee
- novel was immediately successful
- Lee spent over 2 1/2 years writing To Kill a Mockingbird
- the background was based on her childhood, but the plot was her imagination
- Thomas Blanton, Robert Chabliss, Bobby Cherry, were all convicted
- The Emancipation Proclamation went into action on January 1st, 1863.
- The proclamation was issued by president Lincoln; freeing all slaves in the United States including the Confederacy.
- The Emancipation Proclamation had in fact changed the focus of the war.
- This is like TKAM because similar to the book its also shows the lengths people will go to, to support racism
- March 4th: Lincoln gave his second inaugural speech
- March 17th: Booth planned to kidnap Lincoln with the help of others, but did not follow through with plan
- April 9th: Civil war ends, General Robert E. Lee surenders
- April 14th: Lincoln gets shot by Wilkes Booth in Fords Theatre and dies, Booth breaks both of his legs and escapes on horseback
- April 15th: Angry mobs form when Lincoln is officially declared dead
- April 16th: Lincolns funeral occurs
Second Voting Rights Act
- Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist born on February 4, 1913
- Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to white pasangers, thus leading to her arrest.
- The day Rosa Parks was convicted, the Bus Boycott started
- The Boycott ended when the supreme court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional on November 13th, 1956
- Before Rosa Parks, a 15 year old girl named Claudette Colvin challenged bus segregation.
- Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent protestors to Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama.
- In February, however, police attacks against nonviolent protestors increased. On February 18th, local police joined in breaking up an evening march in Marion. In the midst a state trooper shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a church deacon.
- There were three total marches. The first one began on March 7, 1965.
- The marches were held because Selma, a town in Dallas County, Alabama, repeatedly resisted allowing African Americans to vote.
- Though the protesters themselves were peaceful, they were met with unrelenting police forces using tear gas and violence in order to break up the crowds.
- The media began calling the march "Bloody Sunday."
- During the final rally, King said, ‘‘The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man."
- South Carolina left the union on December 20th
1862
- South Carolina left the union because they wanted slavery and a new nation
- In To Kill a Mockingbird, there was no slavery however, there was still racism
- Jefferson Davis became president on November 6th, 1861
- The I have a Dreaam Speech was given on August 28 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
- Talked about how he had a dream that in the future that blacks and whites would be equal in society.
- This relates to TKAM because like To kill a Mockingbird These events showed the injustice and inspired the country to stand up for equal rights
- proposed by president Eisenhower
- introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone's attempted to vote
- House of Representatives approved the bill on March 24, 1960
- connections: it was approved the same year to kill a mockingbird was publish and both have to do with racism.
1961
1833: Abolition of Slavery in the British Emipire
1954 - Brown vs. Board of Education and M.L.K installed as minister
1957: Desegragation of Little Rock/First Voting Rights Act
1964
1968- Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Civil Rights Act/End of Jim Crow Laws
-Died April 4th, 1968; 39 years of age when King was assasinated. (1929-1968)
1877 Jim Crow laws
- On September 9, 1957 the First Voting Rights act was signed into law.
- This new bill included a number of provisions that guaranteed blacks protection of voting rights
- This was so important because it was the first time since reconstruction that the goverment took action for civil rights.
- This relates to To Kill a Mockingbird because this gave everyone rights to voting and the ability to prosecute someone who denyed this right thus giving a black man the ability to take a white man too a fair trial unlike in To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Black students were denied the right to attend the same school as white students
- Schools were supposed to be "separate but equal" based on Plessy vs. Ferguson case
- This idea was declared unconstitutional and that ended racial segregation in public education
- Black people were forced to go to school far from there house to be kept seperate, just like how in Maycomb the blacks were very seperate and not seen.
-James Earl Ray, escaped,racist, criminal, killed King by shooting him on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
- Outlawed segregation
- Longest debate in Senate history
- Signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964
- Civil Rights Movement
- Effort to end violence
- Eliminated Jim Crow Laws
- Interracial relations tense (TKAM)
- Left legacy on U.S.
- 3 acts ended legal sanctions
Freedom Riders/To Kill a Mockingbird Pulitzer Prize
- The Freedom Riders fought against racism on trains and buses
- The Freedom riders were ambushed.
- During the 1960's, the Freedom Riders encountered many hard challenges
- The children in To Kill a Mockingbird grew up in the 1930s,
- It relates because Atticus Finch is similar to the Freedom Riders because they both stood up to discrimination
- Tom was guilty due to his way of life.
- Connection: The Novel inspired the freedom riders to do what they did and to help stop racism
- Harper Lee Recieved the Politzer Prize in 1961 from the story To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Connection: The story took place in Maycomb Alabama and thats where Harper Lee was When she recieved the prize
- African Americans were mortified of the death of King because they developed a deep respect and care for him and his attitude.
- The Slavery Abolition Bill was passed by both the House of Commons and by the House of Lords in the fall of the year 1833.
- The Act recieved the Royal Assent by His Majesty King William IV on the 29th of August of the same year, and the act came into force on the first of August of the year 1834. On that very day, slavery was abolished throughout the vast British Empire.
- The Act had three principle purposes: to abolish slavery throughout the British colonies, to promote the industry of the manumitted slaves, and to compensate the persons entitled to the services of the slaves they had formerly owned.
TKAM Relation:
- Simon Finch, the patriarch of the Finches, immigrated to Mobile, Alabama from Cornwall, England. There is no mention of his owning slaves prior to his coming to the American colonies, as the ownership of slaves in England was already strictly prohibited in England prior to the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
- Upon arriving to America, Simon Finch purchased three slaves and thus established his plantation home in Alabama--Finch's Landing.
- The American Civil War and the concept of slavery alike contributed greatly to the general theme of To KIll A Mockingbird, for both topics had a great impact on the attitudes of the people of Maycomb toward bondage.
- In 1957 nine African American students were enrolled in little rock high, in little rock, Arkansas
- Following their enrollment came the Little rock crisis
- The little rock crisis prohibited the nine students from entering the school
- Thurgood Marshall won the case of Brown vs. board of education, which desegregated the school an alld blacks to attend.
- This is important because it shows how each case like this and other incidents if the past led to freedom of African Americans today
- This relates to To Kill A Mockingbird in the fact that cases were held in the south for black people allthough very rarely were in there favor
- MLK became a minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1948 and pastor at Dexter Avenue Babtist church in 1954
- Like Tom Robinson he took control of his own life, was a leader and stood against injustices in court, in the limited way he could
-Relates to TKAM, because people at this time feared change and refused to accept anyone different, just as they did at this time in Maycomb.
- Based off an old song and dance preformed by Thomas Dartmouth Rice which stated "Jump, Jim Crow," in 1830.
- Laws forced a physical separation of blacks from whites.
- The most famous saying back then was "separate but equal" which clearly didn't apply.
- Primarily enforced between the 1870's and the 1960's.
- Created an American caste system, but clearly swayed to the white people.
- Just like the different housing for blacks and whites in TKAM.