Last October, folks voted Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird as America's Best Loved Novel on the final show of PBS' The Great American Read. It is the all-time favorite book of many folks, famous and not so famous.
Demi Moore named her daughter Scout, after one of the main characters. [Hey, at least she wasn't named "Apple" or "Idaho" or "Valdosta." Celebrity child names always amuse me.]
To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel set in the south, and the broad theme is tolerance. This NEA page gives a great summary and analysis of it. The main character, Scout, is 13 years old and living in a small southern town. Her mentally unstable neighbor Boo Radley is a main character, as is her father, a lawyer appointed to defend a black man falsely accused of rape.
I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird when I was in high school, and disliking it immensely. My feelings were not popular. The book was revered by the late 1970's. My teacher was mightily annoyed with me for not worshiping the book.
I should state here for the record that although I love books and I have been an avid reader all my life, I do not think ANY book [not even the bible] should be worshiped. My view is that a book is only as good as the person who wrote it, and we are all flawed human beings. Books are flawed, as is any creative work by a human being.
I recently started reading a book written by an acquaintance and I realized, much to my horror, that the book is riddled with examples of the author's disdain for and intolerance of southerners. That rankles. I could never look at the author the same way again. (Most authors do not realize how much they reveal themselves when they write a novel.)
I think Americans love To Kill A Mockingbird and revere it because it's about a good man, Atticus Finch, trying to correct the terrible racism of his time and place. There's nothing wrong with that. It's noble. It's praiseworthy. [Just FYI, I can never hear the words "Atticus Finch" without seeing the handsome and endearing Gregory Peck, my mother's favorite actor. We watched the movie when I was in high school.]
The book was published in 1960, when America was on the cusp of social upheaval, and attitudes and prejudices were slowly being replaced with tolerance. Harper Lee's father was a small-town lawyer who had defended black clients and Lee had spent her childhood watching him argue cases. All authors tend to write what they know, and Lee knew the world she wrote about.
I think what bothers me about To Kill A Mockingbird is the notion that most people in small southern towns are racist, and therefore the entire south is a racist, nightmarish place. That was probably true long ago. I won't argue differently. The south that I have lived in all of my life is not that nightmarish, racist place, however. [I wrote about it a bit in Memories of Segregation in The Bitter Southerner.]
The south I know and love is filled with good people. I have known far more Atticus Finch type people in my life than the book would indicate exist. A few examples:
My grandfather Thompson ran a small country store in the 1930's and extended credit to black families, same as white families.
My father championed the first black bank manager at his bank in the 1970's. The man told me years later he owed his career to Dad. Dad also hired and promoted a black lady in his department, at a time when the bank where he worked was 99% white.
My parents left the Democratic party in the late 1950's, angering their parents, because they felt only the Republican party was in touch with the future and was tolerant and fair. At that time, most southern Democrats were very racist and definitely not in favor of desegregation.
We had a black maid named Daisy when I was small. Mom made it clear we would call her MISS Daisy and treat her with respect and kindness, and Mom led by example.
When I was growing up, to utter the "N word" in my house was a spanking offense.
My brother had a girl friend in high school who was black. At a family reunion, when an elderly relative (who was quite racist) asked if he had a girlfriend, Brother pulled out the school photo of his friend and showed it to her, just to see the look on her face.
I have dear friends and relative who are black, Hispanic, Asian, gay -- and guess what? I live in a small southern town [Tucker, Georgia] and I am not a racist nor a homophobe. My parents were not racist or homophobic.
I champion diversity. I am happy my children are color-blind.
Prejudices persist, though. Not long ago an attorney I worked with was told before she moved to Atlanta that she could expect racism and possibly violence because her mother was Mexican. The man who told her that had never even been to Georgia -- he was a Californian. He made her fearful of living here. She moved here about 2007 and has never encountered ANY racism towards herself or her family. None.
I am not going to argue that the south is a perfect Utopia of racial harmony. Of course not. It's a very flawed place, just like any other area of America. We are not the hideously racist and intolerant place depicted in To Kill A Mockingbird, however. Much has changed since that book was published.
Did you know much of the movie Black Panther was filmed in Georgia?
Many television shows and movies are filmed in Georgia these days -- see here. There are state of the art film production studios here, and Tyler Perry is a dynamic force in Georgia.
So we are not perfect, but we are not Mockingbird land either. I am proud of my state, and proud to be a southerner. That will never change.
