by Wayne Flynt
Then there are the “white trailer trash” Ewells. They are the historic undeserving poor, regarded with disdain and contempt even by Maycomb’s blacks. They are the legendary “po’ white trash” who fill Erskine Caldwell’s novels, not just economically indigent but also morally degenerate. In Act I of the play, Miss Maudie tells the audience: “Everyone in Maycomb knows what kind of people the Ewells are.” That line is always comforting to the audience because now it means they can sit back, relax, and enjoy the play. It is not about them. It is about the Ewells, all those undesirables who joined the KKK and lynch mobs. Trouble is, that is not the way Lee sees the matter. Bob Ewell is no more her chief villain, the moral cripple in the story, than are the twelve men good and true who make up the jury. They could have acquitted Tom Robinson had they chosen to weigh the evidence instead of succumbing to Maycomb’s racial taboos. Though at the end of the play some audiences actually boo Robert E. Lee Ewell when he takes his bow onstage, the novel demands that we look for the villain inside ourselves. Ultimately it is all the good people of Maycomb who are silent in the face of injustice who murder Tom Robinson.
Differences. One of the most important themes of the novel for our time is tolerance of people unlike ourselves. Boo Radley may be a subtheme to some, but not to homosexuals, who often see themselves in the character, locked behind four walls by people who fear anyone who is different. Not to private people who are constantly being psychoanalyzed by Type A personalities: Are they afraid of people? Are they afraid of failure? Are they painfully shy? Are they mentally deficient? Do they have dark secrets? Are they Muslims? Jews? Pentecostals? Evolutionists? In some places, perhaps even fundamentalist Baptists? Of all people who are different for any reason, Atticus reminds his children: “You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Community. At the beginning of the novel, Jem and Scout debate when the story began. Jem insists it began when their new friend Dill came into their lives and excited curiosity about Boo Radley. Scout disagrees, believing the story began when their ancestors chose to settle in Maycomb County, Alabama. Maycomb is a specific name but not a specific place. In fact many readers of the book insist it is a story about their town and the people who live in it. They can and do give the characters the names of local people. Having lived in Sheffield, Gadsden, Anniston, and Dothan while growing up, I can tell you the novel could have been set in any of those places. As in Maycomb, every day lasted twenty-four hours but seemed much longer. But each one of those days was filled with exceptional people and extraordinary events that turn all of us Scouts into Jean Louises when we grow up. The point is that what happened in Maycomb could have happened in Fort Payne, Albertville, Demopolis, Brewton, Fairhope, and all the places in between. What happened in Maycomb did happen everywhere. To Jews in Prague; to homosexuals in Berlin; to Gypsies in Romania, Pentecostals in Russia, Muslims in Serbia. And it happened to Okies and Arkies in California’s Imperial Valley in the 1930s, to Appalachian whites in Detroit in the 1940s, and to people from Birmingham moving to New York City and Los Angeles in the 1960s. It happened to all people everywhere who talk funny, look strange, have a different color skin, worship God differently or not at all, people who stay in houses and refuse to come out and conform to our expectations or allow us to stare at them. It happens to the different, the strange, the other. That is the reason the novel still sells nearly a million copies a year nearly half a century after publication: because it continues to ring true to human experience. That is why it is required reading in so many Irish, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Austrian, Dutch, Czech, and German schools, why it has been translated into some forty languages: because the story is a story of the human experience, not just the story of what happened in Maycomb, Alabama.
The endurance of To Kill a Mockingbird resides also in the intense half-century debate we have had in American education about moral values. Should public schools teach values? If so, what values? Whose values? Actually hundreds of thousands of American teachers resolved that debate long ago. They decided to teach Harper Lee’s values. Or is it Atticus Finch’s values? At any rate, they teach the moral values embedded in To Kill a Mockingbird. And at our best, I like to think they teach our values, core Judeo-Christian, American democratic values: tolerance, kindness, civility, charity, justice, the courage to face down a community or a family when they are wrong and the compassion to love them despite their flaws. Incidentally, I am not telling you anything you don’t know already. How do I know that? Because there was a survey of English teachers in 1989 to determine what fiction they most frequently assigned to their students. In Catholic schools To Kill a Mockingbird was the fourth most frequently assigned book. In public schools the novel ranked fifth, in private schools, seventh. An estimated three out of four American high school students read the novel, ranking Lee behind only William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain. A 1991 Library of Congress survey of 5,000 patrons asked them what book had made the biggest difference in their lives. They listed To Kill a Mockingbird second only to the Bible. In 1991 American librarians voted the book the best novel of the twentieth century. The American Film Institute rated the film version of the novel as the thirty-fourth best film ever made; and in 2003 they chose Atticus Finch as the greatest hero of American cinema. Greater than James Bond. Greater than Indiana Jones. Greater than Moses. Greater even than Superman himself. In 1999 TV Guide rated the movie fifth among its top fifty films. The Library of Congress also claims that the novel is the most popular selection for citywide literature programs that ask residents to read a common novel during a year as the basis for a conversation about community values.
In one of those fine moments of irony for which Alabama is renowned, a novel written by a woman from Monroeville on the edge of the state’s infamous Black Belt has become the primary literary instrument worldwide for teaching values of racial justice and tolerance for people different from ourselves, and the necessity of moral courage in the face of community prejudice and ostracism. Don’t you just love it?
Wayne Flynt, distinguished university professor,
Auburn University
Acknowledgments
This is the story of two extended Alabama families, containing too many names to list. Down in this part of America, family counts for a lot. We often protect each other’s secrets at the expense of the stories we want to tell. And few families had more secrets than the Lee family of Monroe County, Alabama. Therefore, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to three incredible Lee sisters—Alice “Bear” Lee; Louise “Weezie” Lee Conner; and Nelle Harper Lee, who became “Dody” to close family—because they trusted me with their stories, and believed me when I promised never to write about Nelle during her lifetime.
Louise’s two gifted sons—Edwin Conner, retired professor of English at Kentucky State University; and Hershel “Hank” Conner, retired professor of communications at the University of Florida—contributed stories, family insights, and perceptive literary judgments. Sara Ann Curry—widow of Edwin Lee, the Lee sisters’ only male sibling, who died young—enlightened me about the family from the unique perspective of an in-law, though a treasured one.
Whereas I tend to be extroverted and talk more than listen, Dartie, my beloved wife of fifty-five years, is quiet, thoughtful, and, as a high school English teacher, attentive to language, accent, content, and idiom. Therefore she was an excellent source for what really happened during hundreds of conversations with the three sisters over more than three decades. And she was my most severe literary critic, always able and willing to say what she believed. I think Nelle was drawn to her more than to me at first.
As Alice and Nelle came to know our two sons, David and Sean, they liked them as well. The boys were authors in their own right and enjoyed a chance to critique my manuscript, heaping out deserved criticism and revisions. Our sons married Alabama sisters, Shannon and Kelly Rogers
. Kelly earned a master’s in public history at Wake Forest University, offering as her thesis a meticulous annotated transcription of her Civil War–era great-grandfather’s letters to his wife, the perfect preparation for the tedious work of deciphering Alice’s handwriting. Shannon edited as well.
Amid swirling Monroeville controversies concerning the health of Nelle and Alice, the provenance of the newly discovered Go Set a Watchman manuscript, and the role of Alice’s personally selected law partner and successor, Tonja Carter, I tried to remain objective and independent. Although I barely knew Tonja when the controversies began in February 2015, she was from that day forward Nelle’s fiercest protector, the family’s most assiduous representative, and the international press’s preferred villain. Still, it was Tonja who gave me the permission to reproduce these letters, allowing Nelle to speak for herself from beyond the grave. For that, I am very grateful.
Finally, thanks to Andrew Nurnberg, Nelle’s agent and mine, for guiding me splendidly through the minefield of commercial publishing. He and Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president at HarperCollins, were enthusiastic about this project from the beginning. And Sara Nelson, my skillful editor there, though new to the company as I am, was clearly not new to the profession. With deadlines looming when she arrived and a hapless Luddite author who hated technology as much as Nelle did, Sara guided me to a secure landing right on time. It not only takes a village to raise a child, it also takes both personal and corporate families to produce a book. This one is the proof.
Photos Section
Nelle dressed to the nines (a rare occasion for her) at the awards ceremony she attended at Montgomery’s Davis Theater to honor the high school cast of the play. At this performance, attended by many state officials, she actually walked onstage to receive an award and congratulate the euphoric teenagers standing behind her. Photo courtesy of Karen Doerr, Montgomery Advertiser, January 11, 2007
Nelle signing copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for Sean Flynt (wearing NASA cap) at Auburn History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, March, 1983. Photo by Walter O’Neal, Eufaula Tribune, courtesy of Wanda Green, executive director, Monroeville County Museum
Harper Flynt meets Harper Lee (looking a bit uneasy greeting her wiggly namesake) at the Alabama State Archives, August 21, 2006. Not pictured is a “boycott” sign advertising a display on the fiftieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the background for Nelle’s first novel, Go Set a Watchman, finished in 1956. Photo courtesy of James Hansen
Dartie and Wayne Flynt chatting with Nelle at a reception before the Montgomery production of Mockingbird, January 10, 2007. Photo courtesy of Karen Doerr, Montgomery Advertiser, January 11, 2007
Harper, Wayne, and Dartie Flynt chat with Nelle (wearing her “I plead the Fifth” shirt) at the Meadows Assisted Living in Monroeville. Photo courtesy of David Flynt
The cast of the Fairfield and Mountain Brook high school production of To Kill a Mockingbird, dressed as the characters they played, meeting Nelle at the Alys Stephens Center, University of Alabama in Birmingham, September 13, 2006. Photo courtesy of Sandra Jaffee, producer of Our Mockingbird, a documentary about the production
Dartie and Nelle chatting in her apartment at the Meadows. Photo courtesy of Lynn Barrett
Alice as centerpiece on a fake hundred-dollar bill, an unusual pose for the precise and very particular woman. Photo courtesy of Patrick and Tonja Carter and the Lee family
Nelle, sloppily dressed as usual, with Wayne and Dartie Flynt, and Alice, elegantly dressed as usual. Photo courtesy of Patrick and Tonja Carter and the Lee family
Nelle selecting a pen from James E. Rotch (founder of the Birmingham Pledge Foundation) and his wife, Darlene, to use when signing the pledge. Photo courtesy of James E. Rotch
Collage of photos from Alice Lee’s 100th birthday party. Photo courtesy of Patrick and Tonja Carter and the Lee family
Fairfield and Mountain Brook high school cast for their production of To Kill a Mockingbird, dressed as the characters they played, September 13, 2006. Photo courtesy of Sandra Jaffee, producer of Our Mockingbird, a documentary about the production
Wayne Flynt reading from Helen Simonson’s novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, as Nelle listens attentively. The bittersweet love story about a widowed Pakistani female refugee/convenience store owner and a retired British army officer and widower who had served in India, set in a provincial British small town much like Monroeville in its petty but loving ways, often reduced Nelle to either hilarious laughter or tears. Photo courtesy of Dartie Flynt
About the Author
DR. WAYNE FLYNT, professor emeritus in the department of history at Auburn University, is the author of thirteen books, and one of the most recognized and honored scholars of Southern history, politics, and religion. He has won numerous teaching awards and has been a distinguished university professor for many years. He lives in Alabama.
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Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover illustration © Encyclopaedia Britannica / UIG / Getty Images
Copyright
“The Book of Camp Branch,” poem reprinted by permission of Wendell Berry.
Letters used by permission of the Estate of Harper Lee.
MOCKINGBIRD SONGS. Copyright © 2017 by Wayne Flynt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Flynt, Wayne, author. | Lee, Harper, author.
Title: Mockingbird songs : Harper Lee : My Friendship with Harper Lee / Wayne Flynt.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044095| ISBN 9780062660084 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780062660091 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Lee, Harper. | Flynt, Wayne | Lee, Harper—Correspondence. | Flynt, Wayne—Correspondence. | Women Authors—Biography.
Classification: LCC PS3562.E353 Z63 2017 | DDC 813/.54 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044095
EPub Edition May 2017 ISBN 9780062660107
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