Important terms in To Kill a Mockingbird

stereotype-  a way of labeling categories of people in unfavorable ways

prejudice- judging someone or having and idea about them before you know anything about them.

What are some types of prejudice?

• gender prejudice (sexism) – jobs that were solely for men and some solely for women.

• religious prejudice

• age prejudice

• cultural prejudice

 discrimination- to favor or go against someone based on a group or class

segregation- to separate one group from another (ex. race or religion)

integration- to combine racial, religions or ethnic groups

About the author…

Harper Lee

• Born in a small town called Monroeville, Alabama in 1926 (still alive today)
• Published To Kill a Mockingbird in July of 1960
• Won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961
• First and only published novel

What was going on when Lee wrote the novel?

• Civil Rights era and the nation divided

• Martin Luther King, desegregation (schools, buses etc)

• Film based on the novel released in 1962 and wins 3 Oscars

 The Story

• Takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama between 1933 and 1935
• Main character is a tomboy named Scout and she narrates the story from three years of her childhood
• Her family consists of her lawyer father Atticus Finch and her brother Jem

Historical Context in the Novel

What was going on during the time of the novel?

Great Depression

• Stock market crashed in 1929

• Banks stopped giving out loans to businesses
• Factories closed
• Consumption of farm products declined
• 13 million unemployed

• Newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)  1933-1945

• Addressed the nation with “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
• Created the “New Deal”  that created jobs for Americans and credit for farmers

 Racial prejudice

• African Americans had been free for over 60 years, but were still considered 2nd class citizens
• Segregation
• Blacks had low class jobs like field hands, housemaids, or cooks
• A white man’s or woman’s word was rarely questioned; blacks were assumed to be liars.

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