Harper Lee's Influence On Education

In the year of 1960, Harper Lee published the phenomenal novel To Kill a Mockingbird and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Nelle Harper Lee was born in April 28, 1926 in Monroeville Alabama. Her mother was a homemaker and her father practice the law, in which played a role in the character Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. Before Lee’s father practiced law, he once defended two African American who were accused of murdering a white man. The two black african american, father and a son, was hanged. With that father figure, Lee let that influence her writing. As a child Lee was somewhat of a tomboy, very much like the character Scout. Her teacher in High School named Gladys Watson Burkett, introduced her to literature. From that point Lee fell …show more content…
African Americans were still denied their rights even after the Civil War/ The Civil Rights was essentially African Americans fighting for equality in all aspects. Equality in the courtroom, equality in education, etc. One of the major case that quickly led to desegregation in schools was the Brown vs Board of Education. That one victory on the Brown case opened the door for so many African Americans. Soon the South intergrate, but it took a while for it to fully integrate schools. There was little opportunity for African American to advance in the south, more specifically the kids. There wasn’t any High School in the South so after the fifth grade kids stop getting an education. Discrimination wasn’t just happening in schools, discrimination was happening all over the U.S. African American were segregated water fountains,restaurants, bathrooms, busses, and other public places. The same year Lee won a contract for the unfinished manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird, congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights of 1965. African Americans were demanded by society in various ways especially the justice system. African Americans were excluded from juries and could be arrested, tied down, and convicted with little cause. That specific context ties with the character Tom in the novel. Many laws were passed down to aid the African Americans but some people in the south prevented blacks from taking advantage of these government