Scottsboro Trial

Here's more as some people requested on the Scottsboro trial that I based Tom Robinson off of and had mentioned a while back. -

In 1931, during the Depression, a common pasttime was jumping on trains, and there was an ungodly large number of hoboes travelling the rails, looking for work, adventure, etc.

On March 25, a fight broke out between two groups of youths riding the rails - one group black boys and the other white boys. Back in town, after losing the fight to the black boys, the white young men report the incident as a gang attack (even though one of the white boys technically started it by stepping on a black young man's hand), and the train was wired so the 'gang' could be apprehended. Two white girls in town, upon the groups arrest, also claimed the black youths had gang raped them.

Upon being thrown in prison, the defendants had injustice upon injustice thrown upon them. Violence, lukewarm efforts to even give the boys a fair trial, and definitely a taking of white word over black. It was said that in Alabama, "Communists were treated with slightly more courtesy."

Despite clear evidence for the defense, most of the Scottsboro defendents were held for 6 years in rat-infested, deplorable prisons without trial. When trials came, sentences like 99 and 75 years came out, death row tossed around. Years and years later, their obvious innocence managed to get the Scottsboro boys paroled.

This trial made obvious that in the South of the 1930s, jurors were not willing to think of a black man committing a crime against whites as "innocent until proved guilty", but "guilty until undeniably innocent."

Motion Picture

December 30, 1962

The movie is out! I hope you all come and see it!

To Kill A Mockingbird - Trailer

- Harper

Still Simple

February 30, 1961

I apologize for not updating in so long...

I've just so busy ever since Mockingbird was published. Let me tell you, the hoping worked! People immediately loved the book, and it's now a bestseller! And it gets better: a producer has been talking with me, and he wants to create a motion picture of the book! I can't believe anyone would think so much of a little story written by a simple Southern woman. One day I'm having coffee paid for by the Browns, pounding away at a typewriter, the next I'm picking up a Pulitzer Prize? It's surreal! I was so afraid before of receiving nothing but criticism and insults, but now that Mockingbird is so huge, it's actually almost as scary.

Thank you all so much for your support and well wishes throughout this whole thing.

me and my film producer (wow!)

-Harper

Here's to Hope

November 7, 1959

I'M FINISHED!!!

A 300-plus manuscript submitted to the publishing agent the Browns recommended - Maurice Crain.
Hopefully the publishing company will like it.
Hopefully Mockingbird will be printed.
Hopefully readers will not feel they have to tear into me for daring with such an atrocity. Who knows?

Here's to hoping...

- Harper

Biscuits

August 20, 1958



While revisiting the memories of my childhood and hearing mentioned today what is considered important, I've been recalling the Great Depression. President Roosevelt enacted New Deal when I was about 7, so I remember the lines for food while going into town, the dirty children that had to stop going to school to work in the factories to support their families. Some of my friends were those children. My father was a lawyer, so we were some of the lucky ones.

When I was in grade school, I remember a friend I had whose family wasn't as well off. We invited him over for dinner after school once and his eyes were bigger than the plates the food rested on. I even saw him sneak some biscuits under the table, probably for his starving siblings back home. I think, even though I was just a little kid, that was when I really grasped what hard times we were going through. Since I'm going to be writing Mockingbird from my childhood experiences, and watching the Depression unfold really effected me and the rest of the town, I should include even the bad times in my accounts.

Even in books life isn't perfect.

- Harper

Inspiration

December 1, 1957



Today the papers were covering the anniversary of one woman, Rosa Parks, who started the Civil Rights movement in Alabama. I guess I just respect me a brave Alabama woman. I found out in the article accompaning the Civil Rights movement that Parks was also the secretary of the Montgomery National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which supported the boys in the Scottsboro trial who were thought to have raped some white woman and were unfairly judged. I guess after living with a lawyer father and going to law school at Oxford myself, I can't help but find this interesting. In fact, I'd really like to give To Kill A Mockingbird ( I finally decided on that title! Atticus and Go Set A Watchman just don't have the same ring to them) a black/white trial angle, and talk about rights and segregation. Thank you, Rosa Parks, for the idea!
- Harper

Echo The Real World

February 2, 1957


What is writing but taking from one's own experiences and sculpting their story into a story they can share with others? This is the easiest kind of writing.


I want to base this book a bit on the people I knew when I was a child.



I shall include my father the lawyer, myself as a little tomboy in youth, and my dear old friend, Truman Capote. By the way, I heard Truman has become an author too. We had the most outstanding summers together as children in Alabama. I shall have to include those memories in the story. One instance that stands out is the old man who left things in the tree in his yard that we would collect.





I also kind of like the sound of the name "Atticus"...

- Harper

An Impressive Christmas Present

December 26, 1956

Christmas was a bit of a shock when I went over to spend the holiday with Michael and Joy[Brown]. My present?

One year's wages to support myself while I write.

And why not? I know I no longer want to be a lawyer, and I don't fancy working the ticket counter for the Airline the rest of my life. So I'm taking them up on the offer, quitting my job once we get back from Christmas holiday, and in the meantime I have this new blog to hopefully organize my poor, unorganized brain. Me, an author! Well wish me luck!

- Harper