A City’s Past Immortalized
While To Kill a Mockingbird is a fictional story, the characters and events were inspired by the harsh reality of racism and injustice that plagued the segregated South. Author Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, now known as the “Literary Capital of Alabama,” and the town served as the inspiration for her 1961 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a state legislator and county lawyer and defended two Black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. To Kill a Mockingbird is loosely based on Harper Lee’s adolescent perspective of this incident as well as the hatred and prejudice that perpetually existed within her community and throughout the southeastern United States.
