This is an INDEPENDENT learning station. On your own, explore a variety of the sites linked below. They all relate to To Kill a Mockingbird: historical background, setting, Harper Lee, book reviews, poetry, etc.

Growing up Black in the 1930s in Alabama - An interview with Peacolia Barge, born in 1923 and raised in McCulley's Quarter, AL.

Growing up White in the South, 1930s - interviews with several White women about their childhoods in the South, 1930s.

What was Jim Crow? - An article outlining the laws that separated blacks from whites and legally justified the treatment of blacks as second-class citizens.

Harper Lee Biography - from Biography.com

Harper Lee Biography - from the National Endowment for the Arts

Scottsboro Trials - These are the real life trials that inspired Harper Lee to write To Kill a Mockingbird and are considered among the most infamous examples of racial injustice in American legal history.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - This is an overview of FDR's life and career. Most important, read the 3rd and 4th pages of the site, which cover the stock market crash of 1929, his election to the presidency and his social program called The New Deal, intended to help bring the country out of the Great Depression (programs of relief, recovery, and reform ... not unlike the stimulus package currently being debated in Congress).

The New Deal - This site give a good overview of FDR's New Deal, which served to get unemployed Americans back to work during the Great Depression.

One of the most powerful work relief programs created under the New Deal was the WPA or Works Progress Administration.

The best horror films of the 1930s - A little pop culture from the book's setting

B&W photographs of signs enforcing racial discrimintation in the 30s and 40s from the Library of Congress

"Old Black Men" - a poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson, a poet of the Harlem Renaissance, an cultural movement in the 20s and 30s in which black artists and intellectuals explored historical experiences of black Americans.

Leadbelly - This site offers 30-second samples of the music of Leadbelly (born Huddie Leadbetter), a folk/blues/gospel songster of the 1930s. His music is indicative of the black experience in the Jim Crow South. (Turn the volume down a bit on your computer so as not to disturb others!)