I watched a wonderful documentary on Netflix, "Hey Boo: The Story of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and Harper Lee". Like many others (I grew up in CA), I read the book in high school, about twelve years after its release. It was already in widespread use by then, if not the all-time literary classic that it is today.

What I did not appreciate at the time I read it, but learned from the documentary, was that its 1960 release date helped create support for the nascent Civil Rights movement, both outside of the South (where non-Southerners learned first-hand what it was like to walk in a black person's skin), and even among some white Southerners.

For those of you old enough to have been in junior or senior high school during the 1960s in the Morridor, do you recall how this book was received? I can imagine that the books messages may not have resonated with the prevailing Mo-Think of that era. Do you recall having been assigned to read it? Any off the wall remarks during class discussions? Did any of you attempt to read it as a book report and were rebuffed by a teacher? Just asking....

It is a very popular book in schools over here and is generally, as far as I know, well received.

However, we are far far away from the morridor.

Very profound book indeed.

Briggy

It's probably the most widely read novel in US middle and secondary schools. I'm hoping that someone on this board was around in Utah when the book was released in 1960 and can tell us what the Utah reaction was. Also, I wonder if anyone who read it later on (70s, 80s) heard off-the-wall remarks from teachers or classmates trying to suppress some of the book's core messages.

Brigantia, I think the reason I "missed" the book's impact on the Civil Rights Movement was twofold:

1. I read it on my own during the summer of 1970. It was never assigned reading in any of my English classes, though I remember many of my classmates (with different English teachers) reading it. That's why I read it, I realized it was an important book and I wanted to see what had resonated so deeply with some of my friends (I remember a friend reading it in tears as she came to the end of the trial). The result was that I was never involved in classroom discussion where the teacher might have mentioned that the book's release was in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.

2. The book so thoroughly immerses the reader in 1930s Alabama that one forgets that the book was published as late as 1960. It's easy to think that it was published in the 40s or 50s.

When I read it, "Mockingbird" was widely studied, but not yet the universal classic of literature that nearly everyone reads today at age 14 or 15.

I see it being more of a problem with getting banned in the south. Down in some of my past haunts, the locals were famous for grasping at any straw, in order to get certain things banned.

Trivia question for movie buffs. Which now well known actor played the small role of Boo in the movie version of the book?

Who played Dill's Aunt Stephanie. Hint: she later found fame as a recurring character on a long-running (eight years) ABC sitcom.

PS answer to previous question = Robert Duvall.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2012 08:47PM by PtLoma.

Answer: Alice Ghostley, who later played inept witch-housekeeper on "Bewitched". She was not a relative of Samantha, more like a friend of the family.

I had to look that up. I was amazed that I didn't know that.

so please pardon if off-topic... but in the late '60s a very young Janis Ian wrote and sang "Society's Child." I was early into my teen years at that time, (so a few years too late for "Mockingbird") and I remember the public outcries of the time from that.

"I can't see you anymore, baby."

In the 60's Leonard Bernstein hosted a music program on Sunday Mornings. Janis Ian was one of his guests. I'll never forget after she sang the song, Society's Child, Bernstein went to her with outstretched arms and said something like, "What an amazing creature you are to have written such a wonderful piece." It was clearly an emotionally moment for him.

I was born in 1961 and lived in small town Utah - very Mormon, this book was required reading and was very well received. I read it in the early 70's No off-the-wall comments or any kind of suppression that I can recall.

It is taught in evey junior high in my district. No problems. When I was a kid, we read it in 6th grade.I don't recall any problems. Evryone I knwe read it when it came out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2012 04:55PM by bona dea.

I should have clarified my remarks earlier. Most of the teachers selected "Mockingbird" as required reading in 8th or 9th grade (I attended a junior high school that had 7th-8th-9th grades). I don't know of too many 7th graders who read the book in their classes, perhaps the subject matter was considered more appropriate for kids a few years older in those days.

My 8th grade teacher bored me out of my skull with books like "Johnny Tremaine" and "Across Five Aprils". My 9th grade English teacher was more stimulating, choosing classics like "White Fang", "Ivanhoe", "Great Expectations", and "A Tale of Two Cities", but for whatever reason did not include "Mockingbird" (this was an honors/accelerate class). Seeing that many of my 9th grade friends with different English teachers were assigned "Mockingbird" during ninth grade, I opted to read it on my own during the summer between 9th and 10th grade.

I read it because of school in the '60s.
No fuss, no muss, no big deal in class.
Why do you ask? Should there have been some sort of problem?

Unlike most of the books I had to read for school assignments, it remains one of my most favorites in the entire literary world.

Given that the dominant religion in Utah at the time (1960) taught that blacks were less valiant in the pre-existence and bore the mark of Cain as a result, I wondered if any of this institutional racism filtered into English classes and schools, in terms of the book not being used, or used reluctantly.

The civil rights movement did not enjoy broad support in Utah: the state was a hotbed of Barry Goldwater support in 1964 (LBJ very narrowly carried in the state in a national landslide election).

LDS public officials who supported civil rights were sometimes officially reprimanded by church leadership, the prime example being George Romney's rebuke by Delbert Stapley.

http://mormonmatters.org/2008/01/11/the-delbert-stapley-george-romney-negro-letter-and-modern-applications/

I realize that high school English teachers are not members of the Q of 12, but many of Utah's teachers were active LDS members who were taught this hogwash every week at church or at PH/RS classes.

I was in high school in the 60s and I don't remember much racism at all. There simply weren't any Blacks in our lives in SLC. They were very rare, so there wasn't much opportunity for anyone to teach us to hate them.

The trickle down effect from the doctrine was pretty minor in real life. We had other ways of categorizing ourselves - Mormon or not, city vs rural, money (kids from the Avenues).