When you were six

1. When you were six • What did you look like? • Who was your favorite person? • What thing did you like to do best? • What did you like to eat best? • Who was your hero? • What was your biggest fear? • What was your hope for the future ?

2. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Information for this Power Point came from www.neabigread.org , www.shmoop.com, and the Town of Knightdale, NC

3. Biography • Born April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama • Mother was Frances Cunningham Finch • Father was Amasa Lee, a lawyer, who hoped she would one day be a lawyer also • Lee grew up as a tomboy who fought a lot; she and Scout could have been good friends • Neighbor was future author Truman Capote • Moved to New York after college and eventually wrote To Kill a Mockingbird which was published in 1960 and was on the best-seller list for 84 weeks

4. Writing the novel • Lee’s father had unsuccessfully defended a black man and his son in a charge of murdering a white shopowner • The trial of the Scottsboro Boys occurred during the 1930s, trial of nine black young men accused of raping two white women • These incidents among others stirred Lee’s social conscience • The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 • TKM was made into a movie in 1962

5. Format of the novel • Story is told as a flashback from an adult Scout and begins by telling readers that when Jem was 13 he broke his arm • The novel has two main plot lines which come together by the end • Seeing “Boo” Radley, which highlights a theme of tolerance • Atticus and the case of Tom Robinson, which highlights the theme of injustice

6. 1930s • Times hard for all during the Great Depression • 25% of population was unemployed at the worst part • Scottsboro Boys Trial 1931-1937 (Lee was four when this began) • Jim Crow Laws: • Black curfew • Segregated public areas • Mixed relationships/marriages illegal • Juries of all white men • Laws inconsistently enforced • Black man accused of assaulting white woman would be presumed guilty, not innocent

7. Truman Capote- “Dill” • Lee and Capote became friends in kindergarten and were next door neighbors • Her father gave them an old typewriter which they used to write their own stories • In third grade he moved to New York City to live with his mother and stepfather but returned to Alabama in the summer

8. Mockingbirds • “but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” Atticus • Mockingbirds mimic other birds and insects usually at a fast rate, they can remember up to 200 songs • Main purpose is to make music • Associated with what is innocent and harmless • In the novel, killing a mockingbird is “associated with the sinful, pointless and cruel”

9. Small town life • The story is set in a small, Southern town in the years following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. While most Southern, small towns were peaceful during this time, the people who lived there were often very poor and had little in the way of luxuries. Also, that peace was often kept at the expense of certain groups of people in the communities: the very poor and African-Americans • Jim Crow laws were segregating white and black, sometimes violently. Racial prejudice and sometimes hatred were a part of everyone’s lives.

10. Knightdale • Our town was a very small town in the Depression, populated mostly by farmers with most of the town centered in what are now Main St. and First Avenue.

11. Other views of Knightdale from the early 20th century Downtown fire First fire truck Picking beans outside of town

12. Train depot The original Knightdale High School First town well

13. Creating six-year-old you • Color your hair and clothes to look like you would have looked at 6. • Create a t-shirt that will explain who your hero/favorite person was: add a slogan, name, design • Cut out your “body” and recycle the extra paper • Use the magazines to find your favorite food. Cut it out and glue it in your right hand • Draw or cut out a representation of your biggest fear and glue that in your left hand • Glue the body to a piece of paper which was your favorite color at 6 • On an index card write “I hope…” filling in your hope for the future. • Glue the index card to your paper • Put your name at the bottom