Living in a town like Monroeville was not a pleasure for me. My relatives and friends from there have always been special, but I couldn't wait to get away. No library, no recreation, no entertainment at all except the local movie and church activities. Believe me, it was a very sterile place to grow up. My friends whose family could afford to take them on trips or to the cities for shows, entertainment, etc., probably have different memories. A number of my classmates were sent to private schools in Atlanta, Birmingham or Mobile. Those of us whose parents struggled to survive, working six days a week, more than eight hours a day, have different memories.
Freda Noble, e-mail to author, 29 April 2003.
The economy in our town was terrible. I say that from the perspective of looking back. At the time, nobody really considered themselves as being poor because, I suppose, everybody was in the same boat. I know that in 1934 my dad, who was the Ford Dealer, only sold five new cars the entire year. It nearly killed him to have to lay off sales personnel and (again looking back) greatly affected his health. Truly, those were the days that tried men's souls.
George Thomas Jones, e-mail to author, 5 August 2004.
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Jones, “Meyer Katz Found His Dream in Monroeville,”Happenings , vol. 1, 135.
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Lee,To Kill a Mockingbird , 101.
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“Old Monroe County Courthouse,” Monroe County Heritage Museum, Monroeville, AL, n.d., n.p.
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George Plimpton,Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (New York: Anchor, 1998), 14.
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Harper Lee's first appearance in print was a poem, “Springtime,” which appeared in theMonroe Journal , 1 April 1937, 3.
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Newquist,Counterpoint , 407.
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Truman Capote papers, box 7, folders 11â14, New York Public Library. Lee introduces her notes on the research forIn Cold Blood , “These Notes Are Dedicated To The Author of The Fire and the Flame.⦔
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United States Federal Census, 1930, National Archives and Records Administration, T626, 2,667 rolls, Washington, D.C.; also, George Thomas Jones, letter to author, 16 March 2004.
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“Judge Mick,” as he was known around town, had hair as white as duck down. He had a hawklike profile accentuated by a habit of studying things and people with an intense, thoughtful stare. As probate judge of Monroe County, he spent most of his days at the courthouse reviewing and ruling on wills, contested estates, property transfers, and so on. On his father's side he was French, descended from one of the largest slaveholding families in North Carolina. His mother was the daughter of another prominent familyâthe McCorveys of Scotland, Alabama. His background was a source of personal pride and he liked to advertise it by the way he dressed. In an era when most businessmen toiled in dark, self-effacing three-piece suits, Judge Fountain was dapper. He sported a white suit in summer, a cambric cotton shirt, and a bow tie that provided a spot of color. In autumn and winter, he selected a white, red, or pink camellia from his lush garden and pinned it to his lapel. His mild manner belied his toughness, though. He had a crease in his forehead from a bullet during a shootout in 1894 when he killed the outlaw Wyatt Tate. “Fountain wore a big coat on that rainy day; Tate's first shot went under Fountain's arm; second shot grazed his forehead; had a scar there until he died. They wanted to give him a shot of whiskey, but being a Methodist, he was dead set against itâsaid he'd rather die than drink whiskey.” Claude Nunnelly, interview with author, 7 December 2003.
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George Thomas Jones, e-mail to author, 5 August 2004.
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Freda Roberson Noble, e-mail to author, 18 September 2002; also, Jones, e-mail to author, 8 October 2002. “My Mother was a friend of Sonny's family when I was very small. She told me that when Sonny was a teenager, he and a couple of friends were caught breaking into a store. His father punished him by tying him to a bed for some time. As a result, Sonny never went outside during daylight again!” (Noble).
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Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.
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The drugstore was the Monala. Alice Lee won $50 in a contest for inventing the name; she combined Monroeville with Alabama.
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George Thomas Jones was the soda jerk; interview with author, August 2004. Jones said Capote had no business being “so uppity. He used to eat butterbeans like the rest of us.”
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“âLuckiest Person in the World,' Says Pulitzer Winner,”Birmingham News , 2 May 1961.
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Joseph Blass, e-mail to author, 10 September 2002. Blass caddied for Lee at the golf course.
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Rudisill, with Simmons,Southern Haunting , 190.
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Blass, 10 September 2002.
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“When our local Kiwanis Club was organized in 1947 both A. C. Lee and I were charter members. I always came to the meetings with at least two quarters in my pocket. One for Mr. Lee and the other for my boss, the Superintendent of Education.” George Thomas Jones, e-mail to author, 28 October 2002.
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Blass, 10 September 2002.
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TheMonroe Journal was located in an antebellum building made of bricks hand-formed by enslaved workers and fired in kilns on the spot. It's the oldest extant structure in Monroeville.
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Ayers, 157. There were more blacks than whites in Monroe County, Alabama. The census of 1890 reports the population as 19,685, of whom 8,327 were white; 398 Indians; and 10,960 black. In the Carolinas before the War Between the States, the law required white men to carry arms to church on Sunday when the likelihood of an uprising seemed greatest. “We're outnumbered, you know,” Atticus reminds Jean Louise inGo Set a Watchman .
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Southern troops during the rebellion called every officer, regardless of rank, Cap'n, including generals. It was all one to them. Bob Ewell inTo Kill a Mockingbird does the same to Atticus when he takes the witness stand. “That's m'name, cap'n'.”
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“Centennial Edition: 1866â1966,”Monroe Journal , December 22, 1966, 22C.
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Harper Lee,Go Set a Watchman: A Novel. HarperCollins (2015). Kindle edition.
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William R. Snell, “Fiery Crosses in the Roaring Twenties: Activities of the Revised Klan in Alabama, 1915â1930,”Alabama Review (October 1970), 256â76.
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George Thomas Jones, letter to author, 16 August 2004.
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Consider the views of the nation's twenty-eighth president, Virginia-born Woodrow Wilson. Using the executive office, he rolled back earlier gains in racial equality by segregating the federal workforce. Wilson's racism extended to his scholarly work too, includingA History of the American People (1902), in which he wrote glowingly of the cause of the Ku Klux Klan. Wilson wrote to a black leader that segregationbenefitted blacks because it didn't put them into direct competition with whites. At the time, many Americans, including Mr. Lee, would have argued that this was a liberal view of the way American society worked. “Honey,” says Atticus inGo Set a Watchman , “you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people. You should know it, you've seen it all your life. They've made terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but they're far from it yet.”
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A. C. Lee, “This Is My Father's World,” 1952. Bounds Law Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL.
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Caitlan Sumner, “The New Woman of the New South: Gender and Class in 20th Century Southern Women's Literature,” master's thesis, University of Alabama, 2013.
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Rudisill, interview with author, 15 December 2005.
3. WITHOUT “FINISHING TOUCHES ”
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Dannye Romaine, “Truman's Aunt: A Bio in Cold Blood,”Chicago Tribune , 5 June 1983, 1â2.
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“Centennial Edition: 1866â1966,”Monroe Journal , 22 December 1966.
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Claude Nunnelly, interview with author, 7 December 2003.
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George Thomas Jones, “Courthouse Lawn Was Once Kids' Playground,” inHappenings in Old Monroeville , vol. 2 (Monroeville, AL: Bolton Newspapers, 2003), 163.
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Susan Philipp, interview with author, 9 March 2004.
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Miss Watson married late in life, and struggled with alcoholismâa consequence perhaps of being marooned in a “tired old town,” as Scout calls Maycomb.
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Freda Roberson Noble, e-mail to author, 25 April 2003.
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Drew Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird,”Dallas Times Herald , n.d. (1984).
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Noble, e-mail to author, 25 April 2003.
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Harper Lee's Maycomb , 41.
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Joseph Deitch, “Harper Lee: Novelist of South,”Christian Science Monitor , 3 October 1961, 6.
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Rev. Thomas Butts, pastor emeritus of First United Methodist Church in Monroeville, introducing attorney Alice Lee for an award given her by the Alabama Bar Association in 2003. The first “Citizen of the Year” award given by the Kiwanis Club of Monroevilleâin 1987, when membership was still closed to womenâwas to Alice Lee.
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Jubera, “To Find a Mockingbird.”
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Dr. Wanda D. Bigham, letter to author, 9 April 2004.
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“Election Results,”Monroe Journal , 12 August 1926, 3.
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Vernon Hendrix, “Firm Gives Books to Monroe County,”Montgomery Advertiser , 23 December 1962, 1D.
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Journal of the House of Representatives of Alabama , 1935, House Bill 191, 418â19.
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Elizabeth Otts, “Lady Lawyers Prepare Homecoming Costumes,”Crimson White , 26 November 1946, 14.
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Catherine Helms, e-mail to author, 14 June 2003.
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Jeanne Foote North, e-mail to author, 17 February 2003.
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Catherine Helms, e-mail to author, 18 June 2003.
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Catherine Helms, interview with author, 29 March 2003.
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Mary Tomlinson, e-mail to author, 2 November 2005.
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Helms, e-mail to author, 20 June 2003.
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Harper Lee, “Nightmare,”Prelude (Huntingdon College literary magazine), Spring 1945, 11.
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Harper Lee, “A Wink at Justice,”Prelude (Huntingdon College literary magazine), Spring 1945, 14â15.
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Ann Richards, interview with author, 14 March 2003.
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Florence Moore Stikes, e-mail to author, 26 April 2003.
4.R AMMER J AMMER
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Mary Anne Berryman, interview with author, 5 February 2003.
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Jane Benton Davis, interview with author, 8 March 2004.
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Berryman, e-mail to author, 3 February 2003.