50th Anniversary Celebration of To Kill A Mockingbird - Killing Prejudice

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. - Atticus Finch

Who is the mockingbird?

The mockingbird lives in other birds' nests and copies other birds' songs, never singing one of its own. Harmless, it hurts no one, but it never really lives free. As an icon of American mediocrity in the South of the 1930s-1950s, the mockingbird people do not rock the boat. They stick with the majority report and express no outstandingly unique ideas or ambitions. They are born, live, and die in the same house. But they're nice enough.

Who is the mockingbird?

Anyone who is very different from the middle of the horridly misapplied Bell Curve is a mockingbird: the agoraphobic, the genius, the feminest, the Downs child, the black man in the Depression Era South. None of these people is doing humanity harm and it is too harsh and heartless an action to kill any of them. This includes Arthur (Boo) Radley and Tom Robinson.

Mr. Arthur Radley was a man that spent most of his life indoors with his parents, and later, his adult brother. He harmed no one, but was taunted by some of the town's children from outside his home. Adult gossip spread that he was dead or that his ghost haunted that part of the block of local homes. He was attacked for minding his own business; people didn't like that - thought it was strange and what they did was in justice.

Mr. Robinson was wrongly convicted of rape in the face of a landslide of evidence in his favor. Southern mythology of the time required that a Black man be hanged for a white man's transgression against a white woman. Tom escaped, but was killed. This was injustice that actually occurred rather often in this period of American History.

In her one and only novel, author Harper Lee examined and exposed racisim, sexism, and classism in the South. To the extent that this trio proliferated in the rest of 1960 America, she exposed it by implication.

The book was banned. In reply, Harper Lee stated that the banning authorities could not understand the book, even though there were no large words in it; they should enroll in the 1st Grade at her expense.

In the early 21st Century there has been a small remnant holding to the notion that Southern or any whites are superior to all other people everywhere.

This group does not enjoy having a Black US President. Some hitch a ride on the coat tails of one of the ultraconservative political parties, singing that group's song to agree with ousting the President, but they are mockingbirds in another party's nest.

The difference today is that more individuals recognize these types of mockingbird people more clearly and more quickly than was done in the 1930s before To Kill a Mockingbird. These birds are harm-doing prejudicial birds, hiding in a crowd and parroting the chant.

Perhaps this type of mockingbird does need killing.

♣

In the events leading up to June 2010, American news outlets were calling To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee "the National Novel." Its 50th anniversary of release was to be celebrated in the 6th month of 2010 and readers and critics had decided that the Pulitzer Prize winning novel was representative of America and its history.

To Kill a Mockingbird can be set into a historic trio of American novels that include Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which helped stimulate the start of the American Civil War and Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, the film of which particularly dramatizes the carnage of the war like no other representation. The filming of Rhett Butler proclaiming the word damn also led to the profanification of American film, radio, and television.

All three novels were written by female authors, although Harper Lee never wrote another.

At least 50 celebrations are/were sceduled around the United States in honor of the novel and Harper Lee, although it was not expected that the publicity-avoiding author would appear at any of them. At age 84 in 2010, Ms. Lee had expressed earlier in her career that authors should maintain some sense of anonymity and privacy.

In 2010, authors and actors paid tribute to the classic novel that focused on American racial injustice in the 1930s and the loss of innocence in a small Southern town. All over the country, news personalities, actors, and writers were involved in reading passages from the book in the town square of countless places. many returned to their childhood hometowns in order to read from To Kill a Mockingbird. For instance, Tom Brokaw chose to read form the book in his Montana hometown. One town ensured that the entire novel was read aloud in public. Performances of the play derived from the book were also produced by local theatrical groups.

Harper Lee's novel has been one of the most often required on school reading lists and one of the most widely banned books in the US. At the same time, it was voted the Best Novel of the the 20th Century by America's librarians.

Profanity and Literacy

The profanity in To Kill a Mockingbird is mild, considering the spectrum possible today. I don't like the word n_ _ _ _ r,  even in a historical explanation, but the word is a reality of the period. In middle school when I'd been required to read the book, I'd already heard the few expletives and name-calling.

The book became an immediate best seller after its July 1960 publication, but those that did not want to highlight racial, class, or gender injustice labeled the book "immoral." Ms. Lee suggested that the problem was illiteracy, not immorality, and suggested that school boards that banned her book enroll in the first grade.

My middle school class was required to purchase the paperback edition some years later, when the book was unbanned. I somehow had a copy in which a black crayon had marked out words, phrases, and sentences throughout. I could not make head or tail of the storyline. At school, when I could not read aloud from the book or participate in discussions, I was given a clean copy for use at school. My opinion then and now is that the book should not have been banned.

In Monroeville, Harper Lee's hometown and the place in which she still resides in 2010, the entire court scene is acted for the celebration. One resident wrote on Facebook that local actors were very good in the roles and the all-male jury was selected from audience members.

The play is, in fact, enacted avery May in Monroeville at the Old Couthouse Museum and not only for the 50th year celebration in 2010. The town is home to Harper Lee and was home to her childhood friend, Truman Capote as well. Speculation is that she might have been the model for the character Scout and he for the neighbor boy Dill.