To Kill a Mockingbird - Library Information - Reading - Research Guides at Aquinas College

Introduction

To Kill a Mockingbird, novel by Harper Lee, published in 1960. An enormously popular novel, it was translated into some 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The novel was praised for its sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice in the American South. It takes place in a small Alabama town in the 1930s and is told predominately from the point of view of six-to-nine-year-old Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch. She is the daughter of Atticus Finch, a white lawyer hired to defend Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. A coming-of-age story of an intelligent, unconventional girl, To Kill a Mockingbird portrays Scout’s growing awareness of the hypocrisy and prejudice present in the adult world.

Ferris State University: Jim Crow Museum
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism.
Britannica: Jim Crow Law
Jim Crow law, in U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
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Jim Crow law 2016. Britannica School. Retrieved 2 December 2016, from http://school.eb.com.au/levels/high/article/43641
Digital Public Library of America: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This primary source set includes photographs, documents, and objects that provide context for historical and thematic elements within To Kill a Mockingbird.

Britannica: American Civil Rights Movement
Although American slaves were emancipated as a result of the Civil War and were then granted basic civil rights through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, struggles to secure federal protection of these rights continued during the next century.
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American civil rights movement 2016. Britannica School. Retrieved 2 December 2016, from http://school.eb.com.au/levels/high/article/82763
Scholastic: Civil Rights Movement: An Overview
A look at the largest social movement of the 20th century, including the Brown decision, the challenge to social segregation, voting rights, black power, and the movements legacy

To kill a mockingbird
ISBN: 0099419785
"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird". This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of the story - a black man charged with raping a white girl in the 1930s.
To kill a mockingbird
ISBN: 0099466732
To kill a mockingbird (Graphic novel)
ISBN: 9781785151552
Summary: The explosion of racial hate in an Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.