“To renounce in themselves.”: Horton Foote to Alan Pakula and Robert Mulligan, March 28, 1962, Box 115, folder 791, Alan J. Pakula Papers, Margaret Herrick Library.
Mama hoped they weren’t: Horton Foote, Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood (New York: Scribner, 1999), 28–32.
“Break down their prejudice.”: “To Kill A Mockingbird—Script,” n.d., Box 67, folder 662, Gregory Peck Papers, Margaret Herrick Library.
“Unenlightened dirt farmers”: Horton Foote to Alan Pakula and Robert Mulligan, March 28, 1962, Box 115, folder 791, Alan J. Pakula Papers, Margaret Herrick Library.
Something else altogether: Flynt, Mockingbird Songs, 60.
Erratic in Peck’s performance: A note in the dailies urged Peck to “cut down Southern accent”; a screening note called for Peck to make a loop, or re-record, Atticus’s line “Come in here, Scout, and have your breakfast” to “get rid of southern accent.” “Dailies,” March 16, 1962, and “Screening Notes,” April 12, 1962, both in Box 114, folder 781, Alan J. Pakula Papers, Margaret Herrick Library.
Mid-twentieth-century American liberalism: Quoted in Flynt, Mockingbird Songs, 58.
Birdlike older sister Alice: Alice once wrote to Annie Laurie Williams, “Nelle Harper called on Thursday evening and said that she would be going to the farm with you on Friday and would probably spend the hours there in hard labor in the hope of taking off extra pounds which do have a way of accumulating when she is inactive.” Alice Lee to Annie Laurie Williams, June 25, 1962, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
Cast at every opportunity: Boston Globe, February 11, 1963.
Which was precisely true: New York Herald Tribune, April 15, 1962.
“How good she is.”: Annie Laurie Williams to Alice Lee, February 16, 1963, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
All come to pass: Gerard sent a copy of the photo to Annie Laurie Williams. See Philip Gerard to Annie Laurie Williams, December 1, 1962, Box 86, folder Nelle Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Publicity and Fan Mail, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
Not making speeches: NYT, May 19, 1961.
“Free and democratic country.”: Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 1963.
“Politics in this country.”: Frady, Wallace, 140.
“Tomorrow… segregation forever.”: In his speech Wallace actually said, “Segregation Now,” which ruined Carter’s more poetic today, tomorrow, forever sequence.
“You are Southerners too,”: “Inaugural Address of Governor George Wallace,” January 14, 1963, Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://archives-alabama-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/01ALABAMA:default_scope:01ALABAMA_ALMA215244160002743.
“Citizens of Oxford, Mississippi.”: Ibid.; video of the speech can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RC0EjsUbDU.
“Never were against black people.”: Quoted in Carter, Politics of Rage, 109.
“Warmth of her love.”: New Republic, February 2, 1963; New Yorker, February 23, 1963; Time, February 22, 1963; Newsweek, February 18, 1963.
“Burn within the character.”: Baltimore Sun, February 24, 1963; Boston Globe, February 16, 1963; Film Facts, February 28, 1963.
“Us and our problems.”: Richmond News Leader, March 29, 1963.
“Most bigoted viewers”: Atlanta Constitution, March 21, 1963.
Treatment of controversial issues: Birmingham News, February 10, 1963.
“System for having them?”: Alabama Journal, April 5, 1963.
Spring of 1963: Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 322.
After her father’s death: Christian Science Monitor, April 10, 1963.
Chapter 6
Depiction of southern injustice: Birmingham News, April 4, 1963; McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 325.
Most recalcitrant big city: McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 37–39, 50–51, 63–64, 84–86, 120.
As “monstrous legislation.”: McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 313.
“Lynch you from a low tree.”: NYT, August 19, 2017.
Four African American girls: See Charles Morgan Jr., A Time to Speak (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
Movement’s demands were met: Glenn T. Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 217–223.
After Boutwell’s election: Thornton, Dividing Lines, 297–300.
New administration a chance: McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 323–325.
Motivations of the protestors: Birmingham News, April 15, 1963; and McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 354.
Opinion against Jim Crow: McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 25.
Pipe at the dog: Birmingham News, April 8, 1963.
Dog with a large knife: NYT, April 8, 1963. The classic photograph that has survived in history of a police dog attacking a protestor was taken by the Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson and published in early May. Diane McWhorter reports that the person attacked, Walter Gadsden, a sophomore at Parker High School, was not in fact a demonstrator but had merely come out to see his classmates march (McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 372–375). Mills Thornton points out that only once before May 3 did Bull Connor use police dogs, on April 17, and this sparked the incident reported in the New York Times in which a black onlooker in the crowd, Leroy Allen, had drawn a knife when a dog lunged at him (Thornton, Dividing Lines, 314).
They had come for: Thornton, Dividing Lines, 310–312.
“Those actions may be.”: Birmingham News, April 13, 1963.
“Freedom is equally protected.”: S. Jonathan Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 233–234.
Him and his people: Diane McWhorter describes the use of the term “law and order” in these years as “the old Bourbon warning cry against Populist insurrection now a euphemism for integration” (McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 315). Jonathan Rieder dismisses the ministers’ call for law and order as “morally compromised,” and criticizes them for failing to condemn segregation outright and for failing to call for white Alabamans to “love Negroes because they were their brothers.” Rieder does not comment on the passage in their January letter where they wrote that “every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges, responsibilities which belong to humanity” (Rieder, Gospel of Freedom, 90). S. Jonathan Bass, who has written the most sympathetic account of the eight ministers, characterized their use of the term as “naïve, misguided, and obtuse” (Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, 26).
“Bewildering than outright rejection.”: All quotes from King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” come from the documentary edition in Appendix 3 in Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, 237–256 (white moderate quotation on 246).
“Unconstitutional at an early date.”: Buford Boone to Lyndon Johnson, July 2, 1964, Box 254, folder 1, Buford Boone Papers, Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama.
“In our great southland.”: Martin Luther King Jr. to Buford Boone, May 9, 1957, Box 254, folder 9, Buford Boone Papers, Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama.
“Law is grounded.”: Smith, Killers of the Dream, 199, 231–232. For more on the rift between Smith and McGill, see Anne C. Loveland, Lillian Smith: A Southerner Confronting the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 94, 103–104, 118, 127–128, 135, 142, 145–146, 152, 160.
“Air of ignorance and agreement.”: Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: New American Library, 1964), 28.
“As innocent as doves.”: Rieder, Gospel of
Freedom, 72; Matthew 10:16.
Sermon written to redeem: For more on how the African American oral culture affected King’s writing, see Jonathan Rieder, Gospel of Freedom.
“Spit you out of my mouth.”: Revelation 3:15–16.
“Of freedom, of justice.”: Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, 215–216.
“Laws and social institutions.”: Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, 187–193.
Eventually King himself: David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 299–300; 679n9.
“Retaliation against injustice.”: King, Why We Can’t Wait, 37.
“Not a pack of beasts.”: King, Why We Can’t Wait, 37–38.
“Comparatively bloodless one.”: King, Why We Can’t Wait, 39–40.
“Counsels of patience and delay?”: John F. Kennedy, “Report to the American People on Civil Rights,” June 11, 1963, John F. Kennedy Library.
“Confusion, uncertainty and disunity.”: King, Why We Can’t Wait, 40.
Epilogue
Flow into “Watchman.”: Nelle Harper Lee to Joy and Michael Brown, July 9, 1957, HarperCollins Collection.
After Mockingbird was published: On February 5, 2015, in answer to criticism that Harper Lee had been manipulated into publishing Watchman, Lee’s agent, Andrew Nurnberg, cited as evidence “old letters between Lee and her agent” (which, presumably, is the HarperCollins Collection) to claim that Lee and Crain had agreed that Lee would write a trilogy. He went further, however, saying, “[I]t is clear that Lippincott was planning on publishing Watchman.” But in fact there is no evidence that I have found in the HarperCollins Collection that indicates that Lippincott planned to publish Watchman. See “Harper Lee’s ‘Lost’ Novel Was Intended to Complete a Trilogy, Says Agent,” Guardian, February 5, 2015.
“Hated the K.K.K.”: Nelle Harper Lee to Hal Caufield, November 21, 1961, Kennerson Collection.
“Change it to a fictional form.”: Harold Hayes to Nelle Harper Lee, October 27, 1961, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“South is an axiomatic impossibility.”: Nelle Harper Lee to Hal Caufield, November 21, 1961, Kennerson Collection.
Coverage of the South in Watchman: Lee, GSAW, 24. For the transcript of the March 1963 interview, see Shields, Mockingbird, 192.
On WQXR in New York: Shields, Mockingbird, 210.
“Just from tribal instinct.”: Roy Newquist, “Harper Lee,” in Counterpoint, ed. Roy Newquist (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965), 407.
“Heritage and social structure.”: Lee, GSAW, 190, 194.
“Things of this society.”: Lee, GSAW, 200.
“Jane Austen of south Alabama.”: Newquist, “Harper Lee,” 412.
“Politics in this country.”: Frady, Wallace, 140.
Days and weeks following: Carter, Politics of Rage, 133–155.
“Liberals in Washington.”: Carter, Politics of Rage, 208.
“Back to something like this.”: Carter, Politics of Rage, 206–207.
Sign all the autographs: Carter, Politics of Rage, 207.
“White moderate feels today.”: Atlanta Constitution, May 20, 1963.
“Like this also.”: Jerusalem Post, May 27, 1963.
“International film festival.”: Atlanta Constitution, May 20, 1963, 4A.
“Peoples throughout the world.”: Thomas L. Hughes to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, June 14, 1963, Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Subjects. Civil rights: General, June 1963: 11–14.
Middle Eastern languages: Annie Laurie Williams to Alan J. Pakula, December 18, 1964, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. For more on the civil rights struggle seen through an international lens, see Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
“Another year old[?]”: Maurice Crain to Nelle Harper Lee, July 12, 1961, box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“Death I’d expected.”: Newquist, “Harper Lee,” 405.
Hungary, Romania, and Greece: Annie Laurie Williams to Alan J. Pakula, December 18, 1964, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“Cadillacs I’ve paid for.”: Nelle Harper Lee to Hal Caufield, December 12, 1960, Kennerson Collection.
Before the end of the year: Annie Laurie Williams to Alice Lee, October 21, 1963, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“Had a good time.”: Alice Lee to Annie Laurie Williams, November 14, 1963, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
“No way of stopping them.”: Annie Laurie Williams to Alice Lee, August 3, 1964, Box 149, folder Lee, Nelle Harper—Motion Picture, Annie Laurie Williams Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
Rest of her life: Newquist, “Harper Lee,” 404–412.
Index
Abernathy, Ralph, 163 (photo)
Academy Awards, xix, 154–155
agrarianism, 91–93
Agricultural Adjustment Act, 35–36
Alabama Council on Human Relations, Montgomery chapter, 67
Alabama Journal, 153–154
Alabama Lawyer, 55
Alabama Press Association, 110
Alford, Phillip, 139, 140–141, 57
American Federation of Labor, 44
American Film Institute, 150
American States Rights Association, 79
Anniston Star, 8
“An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense,” 162
Arnall, Ellis, 51, 52, 58, 65
Atlanta Constitution, 26, 153, 167
Atlanta Journal, 12
The Attack on Leviathan (Davidson), 91–93
Badham, Mary, 113 (photo), 140–141, 154, 157
Bailey, Josiah, 40
Baldwin County Times, 107
Baltimore Sun, 153
Barbey, J. E., 37, 38
Barnett, Bugg, and Lee, 5–6
Barnett, Ross, 109
Begley, Ed, 155
Bethlehem Industrial Academy, 46
Big Mules, 43, 141
Biggs, L. S., 10
Birmingham campaign, 159–164
children as marchers in, 161
Connor’s police dog attacks and, 160–161
jailing of protestors and, 161
religious leaders’ open letter critical of, 161–162, 163
Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, 132
Birmingham News, 153, 160
Birth of a Nation (film), 110
Black, Hugo, 36, 42
black activism, 106
black suffrage, 52–56, 65, 79, 83, 89
poll tax and, 46, 52
See also voting rights
Blass, A. B., Jr., 121
boiling frog, 111
Bonner, J. Miller, 55–56
Boone, Buford, 106–107, 166–167, 168, 171
Boston Globe, 153
Boswell, Elmo C. “Bud,” 53
Boswell Amendment, 52–56
Boutwell, Albert, 158–160, 161, 166
Boykin, Frank, 37–38
Brady, Tom, 83
Brando, Marlon, 129
Brown, Joy, xiii–xiv, xx, 74, 75, 81, 150, 175
Brown, Michael, xiii–xiv, xx, 74, 75, 81, 150, 175
Brown, Rev. G. H., 82–83
Brown v. Board of Education, xviii, 85–89, 92, 94, 95, 97, 115, 117–119, 158
resistance to, 75, 79
See also racism
Broz, Josip, 75
Bryan, Hazel, 119
Buckley, William F., 92, 93
Bumstead, Henry, 140, 154
bus boycott, 67–68, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82
Byrd, Harry, 88
Camp, Lawrence, 43
Candler, Warren A., 12
Candler School of Theology at Emory University, 65
Cannes Film Festival, 180–181
Cannidy, Lola, 13
Capote, Truman, 31–32, 60
Clutter family murder and, 119–120
as inspiration for Dill, 31
Cardoza, Benjamin N., 86
Carrick, Lynn, xv, xvi, 101
Carter, Asa, 79–81, 83, 143, 151, 178
as far-right racist radio host, 79–80
as model for O’Hanlon character in Watchman, 80, 84
Carver, George Washington, 47
“The Cat’s Meow” (H. Lee), xv
Caufield, Hal, 112, 183
Champion, Rev. Leo, 179
Chicago District Golf Association, 133
Chicago Tribune, 115
children
as conscience of white South, 117
effects of school segregation on, 115–119
lynch mobs and, 118–119
parenting and moral education of, 113–119
The Christian Year (Keble), 184
Citizens’ Councils. See White Citizens’ Councils
citizenship, 89
civil rights, 39, 45–47, 107, 132, 141–144, 154, 155. See also black suffrage; desegregation; Freedom Riders; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; racial integration; racial segregation; racism
Civil Rights Act of 1957, 158
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 157, 166, 171
Civil Rights bill, 88
Civil Rights Commission, 142–143
civil rights movement, 81, 83
Civil War, 26, 109
Civilian Conservation Corps, 35
Clark, Kenneth B., 115
Clausell, Hattie Belle, 33
Clutter family murder, 119–120
Cold War, 182
Cole, Lois, xiv–xv
Cole, Nat King, 80
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (Spock), 114
Common Sense (Paine), 164
communism, 58–59, 65
Atticus Finch Page 26