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Harper Lee Historical Context

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Author Background and Historical Context
Nelle Harper Lee, better known as Harper Lee, was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. She went on to further her education at Huntington College, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and Oxford University. (Harper). She was the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, that was published in 1960 about a family in Maycomb County in southern Alabama. She incorporated her mother and father into major points of the novel. She made the main family have part of her mother’s name, “Finch,” and one of the lesser families have another part of her mother’s name, “Cunningham” (NEA). Her father was a lawyer in southern Alabama, much like the father of the Finch family. Her father once defended two African American men that were accused of murdering a storekeeper and lost the case like Atticus Finch does in the novel. …show more content…

Throughout the novel race and societal standards plays a major role in the conflicts throughout. Lee was very active in the Civil Rights movement that progressed throughout the sixties. During the sixties, African Americans were constantly dealing with racism and poverty because of their skin color they were unable to find work and if they did it had little pay. Furthermore, the Civil Rights Act was being pushed through the government to prohibit discrimination in public places of African Americans (History). Race issues were apart of every day life during the time the book was written and represents one of the major reasons for writing the

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