Atticus Finch

by Joseph Crespino

  “Passions of the mobs.”: Mark K. Bauman, Warren Akin Candler: The Conservative as Idealist (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 156–159.

  Stood up to the lynch mob: Whether A. C. Lee himself ever personally stood up to the Klan is doubtful. In her book reporting the childhood memories of Jennings Faulk Carter, a first cousin of Truman Capote’s, Marianne M. Moates recounts a story in which in the early 1930s A. C. Lee, described as “a big strong man” (which he wasn’t), dressed in an undershirt (it’s hard to imagine the formal Lee walking out in public in an undershirt), confronted a group of Klansmen who had come to harass Truman’s Halloween costume party. There’s no indication from the Monroe Journal that the Klan was active in Monroe County in these years. Charles Shields records a similar story in his biography of Harper Lee, citing a letter written to him about the incident from local Monroeville historian George Thomas Jones. When I asked Jones about the incident, he said that Shields had been mistaken, and that the story was likely made up. Marianne M. Moates, Truman Capote’s Southern Years: Stories from a Monroeville Cousin (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014), 61–63; Shields, Mockingbird, 38, 273n82; George Thomas Jones, interview by author, May 2, 2017, Crespino papers.

  Actions “utterly reprehensible,”: Monroe Journal, June 26, 1930.

  Attacking a white woman: Monroe Journal, July 3, 1930.

  Earlier in the day: Crowd estimates vary. A reporter who was present put the number at between one thousand and two thousand. Another reporter in Marianna estimated between three thousand and five thousand. In his report for the NAACP, Howard Kester estimated between three thousand and seven thousand. James R. McGovern, Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 77; Howard Kester, “The Lynching of Claude Neal” (Montgomery, AL: Southern Rural Welfare Association, 1971), originally published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, November 20, 1934. The spelling of Lola Cannidy’s last name varies across secondary accounts. All original newspaper sources from the 1930s that I have consulted spell her name as I do here.

  Courthouse square in Marianna: McGovern, Anatomy of a Lynching, 68–84; Kester, “Lynching of Claude Neal.”

  Details of the lynching: Monroe Journal, November 22, 1934.

  Neal and the other prisoners: Kester, “Lynching of Claude Neal.”

  Arrived from Apalachicola: Kester, “Lynching of Claude Neal.”

  “Not yet even alarmed.”: William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (New York: Random House, 1948), 138.

  Out at Old Sarum: Lee, TKM, 144–146.

  Wrote in an editorial: Monroe Journal, January 20, 1938, and February 24, 1938.

  Complied in both cases: Monroe Journal, November 9, 1933; February 1, 1934; and July 12, 1934. In one of the cases, Leo Fountain had been convicted of killing another black man, Robert Martin, as part of a life insurance scam. The other case was notable because the convicted black man, Walter Lett, had been charged with criminally assaulting a white woman. Letters from Monroe citizens to the governor and the state parole board expressed doubts that Lett was guilty.

  “In the orderly way.”: Monroe Journal, October 5, 1933.

  Get a fair hearing: Monroe Journal, January 28, 1932.

  “Disposition of justice.”: Monroe Journal, February 13, 1936.

  Took much note of it: For more on Judge Horton’s decision, see Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 265–273.

  “Conception of the proprieties.”: Monroe Journal, April 13, 1933. In his history of the Scottsboro trial, James Goodman explains how many white Alabamans came to view the second Scottsboro trial as a fair and legitimate exercise of legal authority, as A. C. Lee clearly did in this editorial. See Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 136–146. Also see Monroe Journal, July 29, 1937.

  Interest in the trial that followed: See, for example, the trial of Tom Perkins, a black man, for the murder of Clifton McNeil. Perkins was convicted and sentenced to death. The Journal reported, “The trial evoked a great deal of interest throughout the county… Despite the bad weather, a capacity crowd filled the court room and the judge ordered those who were unable to find seats to retire from the room.” Monroe Journal, April 9, 1936.

  Dancing and a “Negro quartette.”: See, for example, Monroe Journal, February 4, 1932; December 13, 1934; and February 28, 1935.

  Banner “White Supremacy.”: Monroe Journal, October 30, 1930.

  “Her white people.”: Monroe Journal, July 31, 1930.

  “Fealty and integrity.”: Monroe Journal, March 2, 1933.

  Between corporations and government: Monroe Journal, March 23, 1933, and June 29, 1933.

  Bottom was dictatorship: A long run of editorials through the mid-and late 1930s reflect this general theme. See the following issues of the Monroe Journal by year for examples. 1935: February 21; May 9; June 13; July 25; August 8; October 31. 1936: April 2. 1937: September 2. 1938: May 19; May 26; June 23. 1939: July 13; September 14; September 21. 1940: January 4; August 1.

  Session to discuss it: Monroe Journal, March 26, August 27, and September 3, 1931.

  Legislators, and judges alike: See Monroe Journal, May 19, 1932; August 10, 1933; September 7, 1933; January 18, 1934; August 9, 1934; September 6, 1934; December 20, 1934; and January 24, 1935.

  Power in Europe: For Roosevelt’s views on Long see T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (New York: Knopf, 1969) 640, 794–795; and Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Knopf, 1982), 62–64, 79–81.

  Died two days later: Williams, Huey Long, 859–871; Brinkley, Voices of Protest, 249–251.

  Dangers of “iron handed rule.”: Monroe Journal, September 19, 1935.

  Example of the Louisiana Kingfish: See, for example, Monroe Journal editorials on July 13 and August 3, 10, and 24, 1939; and February 22 and March 14, 1940.

  Eventually probate judge: Monroe Journal Centennial Edition, 1866–1966, 27C.

  Fought to defeat Millsap: Monroe Journal Centennial Edition, 1866–1966, 7B; Monroe County Heritage Museums, Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb, 64–65.

  “Factotum in local affairs.”: V. O. Key Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 1949), 53–54.

  Casually over the arm: Monroe County Heritage Museums, Monroeville: The Search for Harper Lee’s Maycomb, 64–65.

  Paid for such service: Monroe Journal, April 25, 1940.

  Cashed at election time: Monroe Journal, May 2, 1940; Rayburn Williams, interview by author, May 2, 2017, Crespino papers.

  Promised them the world: Monroe Journal, February 15, 1940; February 22, 1940; and March 14, 1940.

  “Make Us Free.”: Monroe Journal, April 4, 1940.

  “Built in the county.”: Monroe Journal, April 11, 1940.

  Subscription be discontinued: Monroe Journal, April 18, 1940. Nelle Dailey census record at Year: 1940; Census Place: Perdue Hill, Monroe, Alabama; Roll: T627_66; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 50-3. Homer Dees census record at Year: 1930; Census Place: Ridge, Monroe, Alabama; Roll: 42; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 0008; Image: 901.0; FHL microfilm: 2339777.

  Boxes with loyal henchmen: Monroe Journal, April 25, 1940; Monroe Journal, May 2, 1940.

  3,900 votes cast: Monroe Journal, May 9, 1940.

  “Upon the proper basis.”: Monroe Journal, May 16, 1940.

  “Properly appraise values.”: Monroe Journal, May 23, 1940.

  “Vote was Willoughby’s.”: Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 106. Hereinafter cited as GSAW.

  Southerners read the news: Thomas D. Clark, The Southern Country Editor (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 332–338.

  “Liberty’s Darkest Hour.”: Monroe Journal, June 20, 1940.

  “These things to be.”: Monroe Journal, June 27, 1940.

  Lee�
�s heartiest endorsement: Monroe Journal, June 13, 1940.

  “Our program of preparedness.”: Monroe Journal, June 27, 1940.

  “Him to come over here.”: Quoted in John Temple Graves, The Fighting South (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1943), 8. Also see John T. Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920–1944 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 175–176.

  Nationalist forces in China: Monroe Journal, June 11, 1931, and May 11, 1933 (Gandhi); Monroe Journal, February 8, 1934 (China).

  Frequently, the rise of Hitler: Monroe Journal, March 23, 1933; September 2, 1937; and February 24, 1938 (Japan). Monroe Journal, September 19, October 3, and October 31, 1935; May 7, 1936; and May 6, 1937 (Italy). Monroe Journal, August 2, 1934; May 9, 1935; August 27, 1936; July 22, 1937; February 10, March 24, July 28, September 1, September 15, September 22, September 29, October 6, October 13, November 24, and December 22, 1938; and March 23, May 4, August 24, and September 7, 1939 (Germany).

  July putsch in Austria: Monroe Journal, August 2, 1934.

  Protestant and Catholic organizations: Monroe Journal, March 28 and August 22, 1935.

  “With their present-day Hitler.”: Monroe Journal, March 24, 1938.

  Fictionalize in Mockingbird: Monroe County Heritage Museums, Monroeville, 60–61.

  Towns across the South: Lee Shai Weissbach records an apocryphal story of small town Jewish life that involved a Jewish merchant who watched a parade of Klansmen with bemusement, identifying each hooded member by name based on the shoes the particular Klansman had bought at his store. See Lee Shai Weissbach, Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 273.

  “Progressive community,” it read: Monroe Journal, September 29, 1938.

  Mid-1930s, disgusted Lee: Monroe Journal, January 23, 1936.

  Join the League of Nations: Monroe Journal, February 18, 1932; May 25, 1933; March 24, 1938; November 17, 1938; April 6, 1939; November 9, 1939; and March 13, 1941.

  “Destruction of England and France.”: Monroe Journal, October 19, 1939.

  “World,” Lee contended: Monroe Journal, July 11, 1940.

  “Purposes of [the] government.”: Monroe Journal, May 8, 1941.

  “Beginning of another world war.”: Monroe Journal, September 2, 1937.

  “That is bound to come.”: Monroe Journal, March 24, 1938.

  “In this country of ours.”: Monroe Journal, February 9, April 20, and September 7, 1939.

  “Messages of his whole administration.”: Monroe Journal, September 28, 1939.

  In favor of revision: David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 433.

  Established by George Washington: Monroe Journal, August 26, 1937; June 13, 1940; August 22, 1940.

  Chapter 2

  “I am Dill.”: Gerald Clarke, ed., Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (New York: Random House, 2004), 290.

  Writing their first stories: George Plimpton, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 11–13; Shields, Mockingbird, 32.

  “she is a freak, too?”: Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (New York: Vintage Books, 1948), 106, 155.

  US Army Air Corps: Shields, Mockingbird, 42–43.

  “School of Ideals.”: Monroe Journal, August 31, 1922; Shields, Mockingbird, 17–18; and Marja Mills, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 104.

  Nelle Harper, for him: Mills, Mockingbird Next Door, 179–183.

  Presence in the house: Mills, Mockingbird Next Door, 179–183; Shields, Mockingbird, 21–24.

  Lawyer in Monroe County: Monroe Journal, October 7, 1943, and June 10, 1954.

  “Satisfied,” the narrator nods: Nelle Harper Lee, “A Wink at Justice,” The Prelude, Spring 1945, 14–15.

  Comments on their work: Nelle Harper Lee, “Nightmare,” The Prelude, Spring 1945, 11.

  “Lee and Daughters, Lawyers.”: Crimson-White, November 26, 1946.

  Despite Lee’s fervent opposition: Monroe Journal, March 23, April 6, and April 27, 1944.

  Effort in regional development: Monroe Journal, January 26, 1933.

  “Conception of public duty.”: Monroe Journal, April 6, 1933.

  Balance to the financial sector: Monroe Journal, June 8, 1933.

  County’s southern edge: Monroe Journal, June 8, 1933.

  Controversial National Recovery Act: Monroe Journal, June 22, 1933; April 19 and October 4, 1934; and June 6, 1935.

  People shouldn’t panic: Monroe Journal, November 17, 1932.

  “Leaders of all times.”: Monroe Journal, August 3, 1933.

  Lifeblood of south Alabama: Monroe Journal, June 29, 1933.

  “Present occupant,” Lee wrote: Monroe Journal, January 16, 1936.

  “Bloodletting at the pigpens.”: Clark, Southern Country Editor, 333.

  Height of irresponsible demagoguery: For Lee’s editorials on Talmadge, see Monroe Journal, August 8, November 7, and December 19, 1935; April 23, May 14, May 21, June 11, and September 17, 1936; October 23, 1941; and August 20, 1942. For more on Talmadge’s fight with Roosevelt, see William Anderson, The Wild Man from Sugar Creek: The Political Career of Eugene Talmadge (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), 105–123.

  Restructure the Supreme Court: Monroe Journal, February 18, 1937. For more editorials on court-packing, see Monroe Journal, February 11, March 25, May 20, July 15, and July 29, 1937.

  “One of its policies.”: Monroe Journal, June 24, 1937.

  Compete under the new rules: Monroe Journal, December 16, 1937.

  Industrialists of a nonunionized workforce: Monroe Journal, June 16 and June 30, 1938.

  “Disguised as a humanitarian reform.”: Quoted in Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 345.

  Short end of the stick: Monroe Journal, May 19, June 2, and June 9, 1938. A. C. Lee would continue to write about the law and what he perceived as its harmful impact on the southern economy. See Monroe Journal, July 21, October 27, and November 3, 1938; and June 29 and October 26, 1939.

  Sparked the Vanity Fair deal: Kathryn Tucker Windham, Alabama, One Big Front Porch (Huntsville, AL: Strode Publishers, 1975), 120.

  Climate of south Alabama: Edward Boykin, Everything’s Made for Love in This Man’s World: Vignettes from the Life of Frank W. Boykin (Mobile, AL: Privately printed, 1973), 82.

  Operate a union shop: Michelle Haberland, “It Takes a Special Kind of Woman to Work up There,” in Work, Family, and Faith: Southern Women in the Twentieth Century, ed. Rebecca Sharpless and Melissa Walker (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 258. For more on the history of Vanity Fair’s relocation to Alabama, see Michelle Haberland, Striking Beauties: Women Apparel Workers in the U.S. South, 1930–2000 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015).

  Day, and for good reason: Monroe Journal, June 16, 1938.

  Would have enjoyed immensely: Haberland, “It Takes a Special Kind of Woman to Work up There”; and George T. Jones, interview by author, May 2, 2017, Crespino papers.

  Return home from New York: Lee, GSAW, 80.

  Countless reactionary attacks: For a firsthand account of these developments by a native, white, southern liberal, see Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985); also see Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

  “Existence before the New Deal.”: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 340. Also see James Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1967).

  Community along class lines: Key, Southern Politics, 41–46. For more on A. C. Lee’s sympathy with the Black Belt, see Monroe Journal, October 12
, 1933. Lee advocated a measure to reduce membership in the House to one member per county. North Alabamans opposed it because it would give more power to the Black Belt, which had a smaller population. Lee said the measure was about cost-saving and efficiency, not exploiting the factional divide, though it’s easy to see how north Alabamans would have viewed it otherwise.

  Votes with extravagant promises: Monroe Journal, June 26, 1930.

  “Appeal of the demagogue.”: Monroe Journal, August 28, 1930.

  Did seem heaven-sent: For a fuller examination of rural southerners’ encounter with the Great Depression, see Alison Collis Greene, No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  He wrote in 1938: Monroe Journal, June 23, 1938.

  “Owes them a living.”: Monroe Journal, July 27, 1939.

  Out of control, he feared: Monroe Journal, March 16 and December 28, 1939.

  “Our Income” once again: Monroe Journal, March 25, 1939.

  Coherent liberal program: Brinkley, End of Reform, 3–4.

  Lobbying on Heflin’s behalf: Monroe Journal, March 20, 1930. For more on race and labor and the 1920s Klan, see Glenn Feldman, Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999).

  Influence on the Democratic Party: Monroe Journal, October 16, 1930.

  Publicized on the Journal’s editorial page: Monroe Journal, September 18, 1930.

  “wages and hours legislation.”: Monroe Journal, December 16, 1937. Also see Monroe Journal, December 30, 1937; January 6 and January 20, 1938.

  “Language,” Roosevelt explained: Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 346–347; Monroe Journal, June 30, 1938.

  “Chore to his enemies.”: Monroe Journal, August 18, 1938.

  “Sink the ship.”: Monroe Journal, September 15, 1938. For other of Lee’s editorials on Roosevelt’s attempted “southern purge,” see Monroe Journal, July 14, September 1, and September 22, 1938. For more on the politics of the purge, see Susan Dunn, Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).