To Kill a Mockingbird at 50

I'm Andrew Smith.

I'm an author and I've just arrived in the Deep South

of the United States.

I'm here for the 50th anniversary of a novel that shone a unique light

on racial prejudice.

It sold over 40 million copies.

It's my favourite book.

It's To Kill A Mockingbird.

This is a book that's part fable,

part catalyst for change, and partly just a brilliant story.

It's sometimes thought of as a children's book,

but it's far more than that.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a story of small-town America in the 1930s,

seen through the eyes of a young tomboy known as Scout.

The novel follows Scout, her brother Jem and friend Dill

as they try to make sense of the adult world.

A world that turns from carefree to ominous when Scout's lawyer-father

Atticus is asked to defend Tom Robinson, a black man

falsely accused of raping a white woman.

Harper Lee uses the naivety of a child to present a fresh vision

of the adult world and the prejudice and intolerance

that they normally accept.

This is a book that changed people, shifted perceptions and quickened

the march to civil rights.

When it was first published, the book was a sensational success,

winning its first-time author a Pulitzer Prize

and being made into a major Hollywood movie,

starring Gregory Peck.

You have to remember, it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

It's a tail of people who live with prejudice, redemption, love,

hatred, cruelty and joy and I want to understand it better.

I want to find out what inspired such an affectionate portrait

of such ugly attitudes.

I'm beginning my journey by climbing into the skin of the author,

Nelle Harper Lee.

Her one and only novel, has its roots here in America's Deep South.

So I'm here.

I'm heading south into Alabama,

never been to the south before, it's incredibly exciting.

Monroeville was Harper Lee's childhood home

and where, I believe, she still lives today.

The clamour and attention that came with the worldwide

success of her first novel resulted in the author withdrawing

from public life completely, never to publish another book.

Harper Lee gave her last interview in 1965.

I've written to her explaining that I'm making this film,

but she hasn't replied.

I've come anyway as the town claims to be the basis for Maycomb,

the fictional town in the novel and they're promising a weekend

of 50th anniversary celebrations.

But a tornado is threatening nearby, and the party on the lawn has been

moved to...

a water tower.

There appears to be a fashion show going on.

Not sure what that has to do with the book.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this.

Harper's real name is Nelle Harper Lee.

They say that while TV crews never catch a sight of her,

to locals she is very well known indeed.

The author of the book was my mother and daddy's neighbour.

And I would read the book and some of it is fictional

and some of it, of course, is not.

But then that was what was so funny about it.

I'd say, "Mother did this..." "U-huh, it happened. This is real."

What do you think the book means to the town itself?

A lot of income.

-OK. OK.

-That's one of the main things.

Right. How do you think Nelle would feel about that?

I think that she's pleased with what it's done for Monroeville.

OK.

Enjoy the party, you did a great job. Bye.

The next morning, celebrations are in full swing.

Helped, no doubt, by the launch of Mockingbird ice cream.

# Who do you think you are? Mr Big Star

# You're never going to get my love... #

-Have you read To Kill A Mockingbird?

-No.

-No. Have you read it?

-No.

-Oh, OK.

-I'm not familiar with it.

-You haven't read the book? OK.

Have you read the book, To kill a Mockingbird?

-No, I haven't.

-You haven't?

-I haven't got around to it yet.

-Oh, OK. All right.

-Thank you though.

OK, yes. No, thank you.

If one or two people are not overly familiar with the book,

everyone seems to know the local celebrity, Nelle Harper Lee.

I've been told that I have probably met Harper Lee

at one time but didn't know it.

The rumour about her is that if you meet her and don't recognise her

she's not happy, but if you meet her and recognise her, she is not happy.

I am so proud that Nelle Harper is from here

and put us on the map.

We consider ourselves to be Maycomb, Monroeville and very proud of

Harper Lee and we're having a great time celebrating our community.

Make it good, all right? 'I grew up reading this novel.'

I've read it more than any other book.

So if this really is the model for the fictional Maycomb,

I'm curious to see how much I recognise.

Local tour guide, Pat Nettles is always happy to show off the town

to Mockingbird fans like me.

Unfortunately, there are not many things standing that were

-here when she was a child.

-Right.

So we have old pictures.

Pat begins my tour of buildings that filled

the world of the young Harper Lee.

This is the old court house here.

This one has no significance.

Or rather a tour of buildings that have replaced

the buildings that filled the world of the young Harper Lee.

There were houses across the street...

Thank goodness for those pictures!

-There's a mockingbird.

-Oh, yes!

-That's a mockingbird.

That is the first mockingbird I've seen.

They're a bit like Nelle Lee, they're everywhere,

-but you don't see her.

-Yes, right!

'I may have seen my first mockingbird,

'but I'm having to stretch my imagination to see the town

'featured in the novel and even Pat seems to be clutching at straws.'

We are walking up the steps to the school that Harper Lee attended.

And I think perhaps these steps were actually here.

A lady describing herself as a relative of Harper Lee

arrives with some more more photos to show me.

Let them guess which one is Harper Lee.

-Right.

-OK. Let me try and guess.

Let me try and guess.

-That one.

-That's she.

-Yay!

It's a widely held view that she was writing

about herself when she created Scout, the narrator.

-Patsy, thank you.

-Thank you.

-That's really interesting.

Pat tells me locals are convinced

that pretty much everything that happened in the novel

is a mirror image of real-life Monroeville

during Harper Lee's childhood.

This is a picture of the, of a house

that people remember as looking very much like

the house that was here that Truman Capote

stayed in with his aunt.

Remarkably, as children,

two greats of American literature lived next door to each other.

Just like Scout, Jem and Dill in the book,

Truman Capote and Nelle Lee used to make up stories together.

That creative collaboration

continued into their professional lives.

Truman himself said the geeky character of Dill was based on him.

...inspiration for Boo Radley. Where that filling station is

was an old house and the family that lived there

had a son and he was a recluse.

Boo Radley is Scout's malevolent phantom.

Scout, Jem and Dill dare each other

to provoke their reclusive neighbour into coming out of the house.

The mysterious Boo leaves gifts for them in a tree

and ultimately saves their lives.

Nelle Lee, Harper Lee has

-not said that this was based on that.

-Oh, no.

But children had all kinds of stories and rumours about him.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I left out one important thing.

-This is Harper Lee's house.

-Wow!

So we're right in the heart of the story.

There's a little shiver going down my spine.

In 1962, Hollywood turned its attention to the novel

that was sweeping the country.

Gregory Peck was perfectly cast as Atticus Finch, Harper Lee's quietly

wise, chivalrous hero.

Atticus is Scout's father, a lawyer appointed to defend

an innocent black man.

Lee adored Peck's portrayal of her hero and they became close friends.

-Hello.

-I'd like some popcorn, please.

-OK.

I've never seen the film as I've always been afraid

it would detract from the beauty of Lee's writing.

But where better place to watch it

then in a drive-in movie theatre in Alabama?

LAUGHTER

We're really not comfortable or anything.

-How are y'all?

-Hi. Are you fans?

-You look like you might be.

-Oh, absolutely.

-We are.

Have you seen the film before?

-Yes.

-Oh, gosh. Probably at least 20 times.

What do you like about it so much?

It's just a really good life movie and it really makes you

think about what you think about other people,

and how you treat other people and things.

-And how different it was back then...

-Yes.

..In some ways, and yet still we're in the south

and there places where it's still the same.

-'I was six years old.

-Morning, Mrs Cunningham!'

You never really understand a person

until you consider things from his point of view.

There are a number of differences to the novel,

but I like the way the film, like the book,

eases me gently into the character of small-town America

before the ugly cracks and harsh realities are exposed.

The only bit in the book that often strikes me as a little bit flat

or weaker than the rest, is the courtroom scene where Atticus

is summing up, but actually Gregory Peck did that brilliantly.

It came alive and it made me hear that speech afresh

and really for it to mean something.

Today, Monroeville's court house is a key stop

on the Mockingbird tourist trail.

To make the film, they copied it down to the last detail

and rebuilt it in Hollywood.

The spirited Scout begins by finding her father,

Atticus Finch to be dull and old.

When she sees him taking on the controversial case of Tom Robinson,

her view changes, and by the end of the book

she sees him for the hero he really is.

Like Scout, Harper Lee's own father was a lawyer.

"It was times like these when I thought my father,

"who hated guns and had never been to any wars,

"was the bravest man who ever lived".

To find out how much like Atticus Harper's father was,

I've asked for an interview with her 98-year-old-sister, Miss Alice Lee.

Amazingly, she still practises law at her father's firm.

As she normally refuses interviews, I am surprised to receive the news

that she will see me.

Her childhood must have been mostly in the Depression?

Well...

As I said, I do not discuss her.

Oh, I'm sorry, yes.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...

OK. I'm really interested to know what kind of a man your father was.

Well, he was a very gentle man.

He was a very family oriented man.

He loved his children.

He was just a very community oriented person.

AC Lee was a successful lawyer who,

according to legend, stood up to racists.

Just as Atticus Finch does in the novel.

There was a story of your father going and stopping the Ku Klux Klan

march through the town?

-Is that true?

-No! There was no march.

The whole thing was a fabrication.

Oh, OK. How aware were you of segregation here

when you were growing up?

It was a way of life. Nobody thought anything about it.

The civil rights. LAUGHS

You know, you knew black people, but you didn't know them socially.

They were a servant class

and you always had a great relationship with your servants.

Right.

Is there anything I should do while I'm here?

Do you like fresh catfish?

Yes, indeed, yeah.

We have Davy's Catfish House

about four miles down the road.

It appears that while Harper Lee isn't in any rush to give

her first interview for 45 years,

she did sanction Miss Alice to speak to me.

Nelle seems to be everywhere and nowhere.

She seems to know what I'm up to at every turn.

It's a peculiar feeling.

However, at least I'm starting to

get some local knowledge - and not just about the book.

Miss Alice was right - this place is great.

To Kill A Mockingbird is written in the style of a Southern Gothic novel

in that it uses extraordinary events to explore the character

of the American South.

Lee uses the story of Tom Robinson's trial to expose the prejudice

of small town America in the '30s.

This trial is said to have been based

on a number of real life cases.

One of those cases is said to have occurred right here in Monroeville.

If that's true, Harper Lee would have had access to the details.

Her father was not only the town lawyer,

but also editor of the local paper.

I'm meeting up with columnist and local historian George Thomas Jones.

Nice to meet you, really nice to meet you.

I was just looking here where the first black man

-was accused of raping a white woman back in November 1933.

-Oh, yeah?

He was a well respected black man.

-So this was actually in Monroeville?

-Oh, yes.

-OK.

It says here that the sheriff was afraid for his safety.

Why would the sheriff have been afraid for his safety?

He was afraid a group would come to the jail and kill him.

-Really?

-Yeah. Lynch him.

Because that happens in To kill A Mockingbird,

where Tom Robinson is in the jail,

a bunch of people come and Atticus stops them.

All white, male juries back then.

So they found him guilty, just like Tom Robinson.

One thing that's interesting, we found in a closet a whole box,

files of criminal cases that went back to this era.

They were all chronologically perfect in order,

except this file was missing.

No! Really?

So there's a mystery attached to that one then.

Is it too fanciful to wonder if the editor borrowed the old files

for his daughter, who was writing a book, and forgot to return them?

Harper Lee's father, AC Lee, wasn't a criminal lawyer.

He was a civil lawyer.

But in 1934, the court appointed him

to defend two black men who were charged with murder.

Oh, OK, again, like the book - Atticus is appointed

to defend Tom Robinson. It's a case that no-one else wants.

That's supposed to be the only criminal case

he ever tried in his life.

Did you know AC Lee?

I was his golf caddy when I was 15 years old.

-Really, were you?

-Oh, he was a great guy, real quiet,

but when he said something, he had something to say.

AC Lee used to write editorials in the paper.

What were his views on the race issue and civil rights?

He never wrote about it, that I know of.

-Never?

-Never.

-You'd have expected him to be addressing that,

wouldn't you? Why not?

There again, he couldn't afford to.

People wouldn't have read his paper.

They'd have blackballed him.

So it was a stranglehold. You're talking about a large

-social pressure here against change?

-Sure, yeah.

AC Lee was a plain speaking man,

so effected by the mores of his time

that he couldn't speak freely in his own paper.

It seems today things are different.

If you write a story of your trip and your findings

and send it to me, I'll get it published.

-Fantastic.

-I'll send you a copy.

That would be brilliant, thank you, George.

There's a story here in yesterday's paper about the guy who assassinated

Malcolm X in 1965 being released from prison after 45 years.

There was another story, the other day,

about a white supremacist being murdered in Jackson, Mississippi.

This morning, on CNN there was a big story

about a memorial for a civil rights activist from the '60s,

Dorothy Height, all of which serves

to show how ever present this issue is.

Hello!

Hi, come in.

'Tour guide Pat has kindly offered me a bed for the night,

'and some renowned Southern hospitality.'

I wonder if this too has the blessing of Harper Lee.

Perhaps I'm getting paranoid.

She can't be in touch with everyone in town.

How many of you know Nelle Harper?

-All of you.

-Backdoor labour for years.

She's not a recluse.

She's just a private person.

She's so private, and we all,

meaning the entire town, protect her privacy.

Like Miss Alice, everyone here is closing ranks on Nelle.

So how do they feel about her novel?

On the whole, it doesn't paint the white people

of this town in a great light.

I've never heard anyone

in this community question the book.

Never.

I think it depicted the fact that there were people

who always stood for justice.

One of the things that I always found most beguiling about the book,

actually, by the end of the first page you feel like

you've descended into this world and you don't want to leave it.

I couldn't put it down and the tears... I was just weeping

because I was so homesick for it.

She'd captured how it really felt.

In the morning, as I begin to write my article for the Monroe Journal,

I can't help reflecting on, like Lee's Maycomb,

this seems to be a genteel little town.

They like things to be nice,

and people know their traditional roles.

In terms of the feeling you get when you're here, again,

and this ties into the book very clearly,

it feels the friendliest,

most welcoming place you could ever walk into.

That Southern hospitality cliche, stereotype,

does really seem to be real, and what you get is this

feeling of comfort being here.

But you do get the odd discordant note that suggests

there's stuff going on underneath that.

"You might hear some ugly talk about it at school,

"but do one thing for me, if you will.

"You just hold your head high and keep those fists down.

"No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let them get your goat."

I'm heading out of Monroeville to keep an appointment

I have very mixed feelings about.

To Kill A Mockingbird initially paints

a nostalgic picture of small town Alabama,

but as Scout loses her innocence,

Harper Lee reveals something much more unsettling.

To Kill A Mockingbird is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Despite the end of slavery 70 years before,

the '30s were a time of deep racial division.

Lee captures the casual racism of the small town, Southern life

of her childhood.

As Lee was growing up, southern states were well acquainted

with members of a notorious hate group, the Ku Klux Klan.

Through the '50s, as Harper Lee wrote her novel,

their numbers swelled.

They're no longer the force they once were,

but the Ku Klux Klan is still very much in business.

I want to interrogate the racist attitudes that surrounded

Harper Lee in her formative years.

Tomorrow I'm meeting a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Ray Larson,

and I want to try to take a leaf out of Atticus's book.

Again, it's all there, isn't it?

His approach to Mrs Dubose, the grumpy old lady in the corner house

who insults his children as they go by and is racist,

and he treats her with the same respect

and courtesy as everybody else. I'm going to try and do that.

This is really strange, this is really strange.

Ray? Hi.

Thanks for coming. Glad you could make it.

He calls himself the Imperial Wizard of the National Knights

of the Ku Klux Klan, a man who has a history of violence

and who joined the Klan the year Mockingbird was published.

They say, "Ray, are you a racist?" Well, damn right I'm a racist,

"but you are too."

A racist is anyone who takes pride in the accomplishments of his race

regardless of what his race is. That's a racist.

Racist isn't usually used to mean

someone who takes pride in their own race's accomplishments.

They don't want it used that way, they sure don't.

What you got here?

Blimey.

That's a Grand Dragon of Alabama on the motorcycle.

OK. The Klan is often called a hate group.

Do you think of it as a hate group?

Myself, no.

Just because I don't get along with niggers don't mean I hate them.

Listen.

But it's really insulting to call them niggers.

You think it is. To me, I don't.

I look at them like a dog.

I don't hate a dog.

Calling a human being a dog is quite insulting.

-Not to me. They're the same.

-How do you justify...

Explain to me where that view comes from though,

I've never heard it before.

There was our Klan motorcycle corps.

Yeah. Very nice.

There's a history of violence, including murder,

in the Klan. Do you still believe in that kind of violence?

-If it calls for it, yes.

-What would call for it?

What would call for someone to be murdered?

If somebody rapes your wife, won't you want to do them in?

There's one of my Christmas cards.

He knows if he's been good or bad, he's got the presents for you.

I'll tell you what, there's not much that fazes me.

Ray, Ray, stay with me just for a sec.

There's not much that fazes me,

but seeing nooses, that really upsets me.

-That's a joke.

-It's not a joke.

It's not funny, Ray. Ray, it's not funny, it's not a joke.

-I send that to kids.

-It's not a joke.

Black people were routinely lynched.

This is talking about white people. I send this to white kids.

-This is a Ku Klux Christmas.

-You send it to kids?

-Sure.

Do you not care anything about what anyone thinks about anything?

-No.

-What about your colleagues?

Do you not have any empathy with other people at all?

Absolutely, of course.

-My family, I love my family.

-Yeah, but, I mean, just your family?

My Klan is my family.

I've been thinking that the Klan was in decline.

You're saying that it's...

Absolutely not. Like it did in the '60s.

In the '60s we were strong as hell,

but when the time come, they backed down.

Now, we've got that nigger president...

It's coming back, roaring back.

This is the book that sent me on this journey in the first place.

-You've never read it?

-No, I've seen the movie, though.

What did you think of it?

I didn't care for it, naturally.

-Yeah, OK.

-There are a lot of other books I could tell you to read,

that would be far better for you.

I can't tempt you with it at all?

No, no, I wouldn't want it seen in my house.

The colloquial term

for what you're describing about yourself,

-is someone who's very close minded.

-I am.

Would you say that's true of most of the people around you in the Klan?

-Pretty much.

-OK, so they're close minded people.

-I'd say, pretty much. You're not going to swing any of us, no.

-OK.

-Can you button that for me there?

-Sure.

-I have no depth perception.

This is never something I thought I'd find myself doing.

Helping out a Klansman.

Are you aware that it looks ridiculous to me?

It just looks like a Halloween costume.

Right, there you have the Imperial Wizard.

Yeah.

I see Ray off in a taxi.

Half an hour later,

I've just spotted the same cab driver in the street.

What did he seem like to you, as a guy?

He was interesting.

His viewpoint was well taken.

He was well versed in politics.

If you'd known, would you still have taken him?

Of course I'd have taken him.

I don't deal with hatred in my heart every day.

I wake up, I pray to Jesus Christ my Lord and saviour

to take care of me and bless me throughout my entire day.

I pray for the evil ones, too.

If God can bless them every day

-with blood in their veins, why should I hate them?

-OK.

This is the book I read every day. That's the New Testament.

I have an extra copy here. Why don't you take that?

OK, so we do a swap, yeah?

-Have you read that?

-No, I haven't. Thank you very much.

-Good talking to you.

-Have a good day.

-Yeah, you, too.

It's quite humbling, in a way.

And um...

seems a real cause for optimism, actually,

that the hate is not on all sides.

Some people have it, some don't.

The novel covers three formative years in the life of Scout.

Part of the book's charm is in seeing

the changing world through her eyes.

It permits Harper Lee to sidestep

the niceties and manners of adult life,

the very things that allow prejudice and injustice to perpetuate.

"Men, stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning,

"ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps,

"and by nightfall were like soft tea cakes

"with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

Harper Lee draws us into Scout's innocent world at the start

of a work that was to become one of the most controversial

and censored books in the history of American literature,

as it deals with rape, racism and poverty.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Alabaman author Rick Bragg

is a lecturer and an admirer of the way Harper Lee managed

to make those difficult subjects palatable.

If it had not been beautifully written,

if it had not been so pleasing to the ear,

then I don't think any of that other great impact would have occurred.

We have this remedy down here for a bad cold,

popular with children,

and we take white whisky, moonshine,

and you take crushed peppermint -

my grandmother used to put it in a sock

and bang it against the wall to break it up.

Then you sprinkle the crushed peppermint in the whisky.

You can't get it down without the peppermint,

and I think that the beautiful writing

in To Kill A Mockingbird helped people get it down.

They might not even have known that they

were being fundamentally changed.

They were reading a great book, they were reading a book that

they couldn't wait to turn the next page.

The thing that struck me,

the time Harper Lee decided she wanted to be a writer,

there were really no very successful female

American novelists to look to.

So, that was quite an ambitious thing that she took on.

The fact that it was written by a woman was history-making,

was profound.

There's a power and a sensitivity in the language

that couldn't have come from a man.

In 1945, Harper Lee came here to the University of Alabama to study law.

It was just after the second world war, and women dominated the campus.

They became pioneers, breaking through the stereotype

of the lash-fluttering Southern belle.

It was in this environment that Nelle's writing career

began to take off.

Librarian Clarke Center showed me

some rare examples of her early work.

-So this is from 1946?

-1946.

Here we have the Rammer Jammer, which was a campus humour magazine.

-This is the staff, and there she is.

-That's hilarious.

Looks like the sort of thing somebody snuck in with a camera.

Yeah, yeah, I think she staged that.

-Oh, I think so.

-With the cigarette in hand.

The harassed editor, juggling a dozen different stories.

And was this a, it was a satirical magazine?

It was a satirical magazine. This particular one

-has an essay by Nelle Lee.

-Oh, wow.

You can see this time she's writing as Nelle Lee.

"Some writers are of our times. A very informal essay, by Nelle Lee".

There's an article in there that she wrote, you know,

writers that I have known

and in it she's analysed somewhat, why writers write.

How you write and the only way to learn to write is to write,

is the way she ended the article.

Camille Elebash was among her Rammer Jammer writing staff.

What did you think of Nelle when you met her?

Well, she was fascinating because she was so very bright.

She was quiet and a little bit reclusive like she is now, I think.

-Was she?

-But she was full of conversation

when we were talking about the magazine

and what we were going to do.

Had a good sense of humour.

And there we were in a humour magazine,

it's a good thing we did have a good sense of humour.

You went to New York after here?

Yes, I went to New York.

Nelle was working for the Eastern Airlines and she stopped

that job and friends gave her some money, about 1,800 to live on

for here so she could finish a book that she was writing.

Little did we know it was To Kill A Mockingbird.

I have followed Nelle's story to New York.

In 1949, Harper Lee joined her fellow aspiring creatives

as they flocked to America's cultural hub.

The world's largest city.

She started out as a clerk in the airline industry,

but she had dreams of pursuing a literary career.

While the ambitious southerner made friends in the big city,

her home state of Alabama became the focus of world attention.

Liberal-minded Americans were demanding change.

They wanted an end to the Jim Crow laws that legally

supported racial segregation.

In 1954, public schools were legally obliged to integrate.

But legislation doesn't convert minds and black people in America

remained second-class citizens.

And then a year later in 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested

for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus.

It sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr,

it was a key moment in the history of the civil rights movement.

Back in New York, two friends gave Harper Lee the present

that would change her life for ever.

Professional ballerina Joy Williams Brown and her husband,

producer and songwriter Michael Brown,

don't usually speak about Harper Lee,

but I gather she has said they can speak to me.

I might be 1,000 miles away, but I'm amused to still find

-the novelist plotting my journey.

-She was a straight arrow.

Yes. She said what she thought.

If she didn't think something was good, she said that.

After being introduced by Truman Capote,

the trio became firm friends and the Browns were well aware

of Nelle's writing talent and ambitions.

Their life-changing Christmas present

was to finance Nelle for a whole year while she wrote her book.

I don't think we deserve any special praise at all.

It's what she would have done for me, anybody would have done it.

Close friends, you know?

The reason the book is by Harper Lee,

she didn't want people calling it Nelly.

She's not a Nelly, I can promise you.

How was Nelle's feeling about the civil rights movement?

I don't think she created the book to help the civil rights movement.

In fact, it was a convergence happens stance.

The only time I ever heard her make any kind of observation

was they said, if they go too quickly, it will not work.

When the book was published, it was an overnight success,

dragging Harper Lee from obscurity and thrusting both author and book

into the glare of international publicity.

In 1961, her novel won the coveted Pulitzer Prize.

I would rather have had her enjoy a moderate success

and then we would have seen another book and maybe another after that,

but this was a show-stopper.

What could she possibly do?

She did all the interviews that she was asked to do.

And then she said, "That's enough. No more."

Many, many, many years ago they put up

the outside of...

"You are now entering Monroeville.

"Home of the author of To Kill A Mockingbird".

And she called up the Mayor and she said,

"You take those signs down. Right now."

She hates all of that.

Maybe the reason she never wrote another book

or publicly comments on the novel is because she doesn't like the fuss.

I've worked out that the apartment block where Harper lived

when she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird

should be at this address.

This is a new building, it's obviously not here.

We've lost it.

Could she have imagined that her book

would become an instant best seller?

Initially, they printed a few thousand copies,

but in the first year it sold half a million.

The book hit the shelves in a pivotal year

for the civil rights movement.

In 1960, protests and riots erupted across its major cities.

I'm back in the South, the crucible of the civil rights movement

to meet Elaine Turner, a prominent civil rights campaigner.

1960 was my awakening into the movement.

And to change. That's when the walls of segregation

began to be challenged.

I remember checking out To Kill A Mockingbird.

-Do you?

-And reading that book.

It was a flashback to me.

Because, I guess a very traumatic time

for me was 1955

when I heard about the murder of Emmett Till.

A 14-year-old-boy who was brutally, brutally murdered

because he whistled at a white woman.

I remember in 1955 I was so frightened, you know?

I could not sleep at night.

The mother of the murdered boy allowed the world's press

into her son's funeral so images of his battered body

lying in an open casket could be shown around the globe.

This story reverberated across America, right at the time

Harper Lee was writing her novel.

Whether or not it was her intention, in 1960 it struck a chord with those

who were challenging the status quo.

Over the next few years,

the civil rights movement gained momentum

and the book sold millions.

In 1968, the conflict came to a head.

Martin Luther King was shot dead.

The civil rights movement lost a great leader,

but in the same year segregation was outlawed.

"You know the truth and the truth is this

"Some negroes lie, some negroes are immoral.

"Some negro men are not to be trusted around women, black or white.

"But this is a truth that applies to the human race

"and to no particular race of man".

I've got to grips with the genesis of the book

and the reasons for its unparalleled success.

And I'm heading back to Monroeville with a deeper insight

into the world of To kill A Mockingbird.

The South is full of seeming contradictions.

The friendliness of people is just staggering when you get here.

But then that contrast and seems to contradict this quite violent,

often fairly nasty history.

The odd thing and interesting thing about that

and the thing I'll take away from that is

that where you get that great negativity,

people rise to meet it and so you see the worst of people

and the best people at the same time.

It's clear to me now that To Kill A Mockingbird

could only have come from here.

Those contradictions and ambiguities are the beating heart

of the book which refuses to sanction stereotypes

or easy judgment.

Quite by chance, I've just seen something incredible

on the side of the road.

The first place races mixed as equals after segregation

was in the music industry.

At the region's recording studios

and radio stations, black and white artists were free to work together.

This crumbling building opened its doors

to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Elvis and the Rolling Stones.

It's legendary.

I can't believe there's no marking on it.

There's no blue plaque or anything.

Not good. I think it really is empty.

Here's a couple of barbecues.

I wonder if it's from the studio days

or whether someone just uses it as a recreation area now?

Well, times move on and no-one really

uses studios like this any more.

-Hello!

-What's up, man?

-Sorry, have I woken you up? I'm really sorry.

-No, come on in.

What I thought was a shack, is a fully working recording studio.

Are these people who have worked here?

-Yes.

-Wow. 'I'm passionate about the music of the South

'and its influence on the world.'

It's such an unexpected treat.

MUSIC PLAYS

It's a reminder that culture is often at the vanguard of change.

# While I'm away from you

# O-oh, baby

# I know it's hard for you... #

40 years after the end of segregation,

and America has seen a lot of change.

It's been a long time coming.

But tonight,

because of what we did on this day, in this election,

at this defining moment, change has come to America.

Today, with a black president in the White House,

I find myself wondering whether To Kill A Mockingbird

is still relevant.

Does it have anything left to say?

I'm back in Monroeville, where Cedric and Leshannon Hollinger

have offered me a bed for the night.

-Hi. You must be Ashley?

-Yes.

-OK, nice to meet you.

Their teenage daughter Ashley is studying

To Kill A Mockingbird at school.

There's a black president now.

And when you read it, did it seem to you like something that was

dealing with important stuff and it was still relevant to now?

In Monroeville it's still relevant.

Because, still back then it wasn't as, it was as open

but now it's not that open.

But you still can sense it, some people still can sense

that there is a little racism still in Monroeville. There is.

-Sure.

-There is.

-Right.

You know, for us today there's racism out there, yes.

Racism, white on black and black on white, you know?

It's still out there, but, you know,

we just have to deal with people the way they treat us.

Black and white kids, they play together all the time.

They don't know one from the other until grown-ups start teaching them.

I'm not surprised to find racism here,

but I am confused and disturbed

by the amount of segregation that stills shapes this society.

The family say that city schools are nearly all black

and the schools in the suburbs are predominantly white.

They live in a black neighbourhood and Leshannon says

that most black families wouldn't dream of having a white man

to stay in their house for the night.

I feel frustrated and uneasy about these divisions, but maybe people

know their place and that's just the way they like it.

In terms of the book, this knowing your place

and not crossing the lines,

plays out quite interestingly because there are a lot of examples

of people getting into trouble when they do cross the line.

Tom Robinson crossing the line on to the Ewell property

to help Mayella gets him into, well, it ultimately costs him his life.

And then, of course, the big one is the Radley property

where there's a very clear line and you cross that,

you get into all kinds of horror

and in fact, that one turns out to be an illusion, doesn't it?

So, they could always have crossed that line.

Harper Lee is, in a subtle way, suggesting that maybe

all these lines which provide the whole structure of this place

are lines that could be crossed and are illusions.

Ashley, you're not a morning person,

are these cameras annoying you?

-LAUGHS

-I thought so! I'm really sorry.

I'm just getting ready to go to church.

It's embarrassing, I haven't brought any correct clothes,

I haven't got a suit so I'm just cobbling together

something that's vaguely respectable.

It's so much like what happened in the book,

when Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem to her church,

which is a black church.

It's nothing like theirs, everything's done differently,

and I'm wondering if it's still like that.

-Hi.

-Time to go?

-We're ready.

-OK, great.

SINGING

# Born of his spirit washed in his blood

# This is my story this is my song... #

And one who feared God

and shunned evil, he stayed away from it.

The Bible tells us to stay away from the very appearance of evil.

I haven't been to a service like this before,

but to my surprise I've enjoyed it.

It's challenged my preconceptions.

It occurs to me that not knowing how other people live their lives

is the beginning of misunderstanding,

which is what Harper Lee is telling us -

to get under other people's skin.

I think my favourite strand in the novel

is the story about the strange and reclusive Boo Radley.

Like Harper Lee herself, he is enigmatic

and the subject of much colourful, but groundless rumour.

To Kill A Mockingbird challenges our habit of prejudging people,

and it lays bare the courage needed

to reject prevailing opinion in favour of real understanding.

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting

"the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.

"It's when you know you're licked before you begin,

"but you begin anyway and you see it through, no matter what."

If this is a book about standing up to intolerance,

then I suspect it may be more relevant today than ever.

One man who knows all about this is lawyer Morris Dees.

Morris specialises in crippling

some of America's most notorious hate groups.

Hi, I've come to see Morris.

For Morris, this is a very current problem indeed.

Could he be a real-life Atticus Finch?

Judging by the security, this man hasn't made a lot of friends.

Because of the people that we file lawsuits against, neo-Nazi groups,

the Klan and others, they don't take that likely, so they burned our

building in 1983 and there are over 30 people that are in prison today

for trying to kill me or harm this building or harm our people here.

What had made you want to become a civil rights lawyer?

I grew up on a small cotton farm, my people were poor.

I had two uncles who were in the Ku Klux Klan,

but my dad wasn't, my dad was very open and fair to black people.

In fact the book, To Kill A Mockingbird,

caused me to go into civil rights work, for sure.

There have been critiques done of To Kill A Mockingbird

by people saying that really it's a racist book, that Atticus Finch

didn't do everything he could have done to defend this guy.

I know it's fiction, but the bottom line is,

for him to take the stand he took at the time,

was extremely important.

Morris Dees' organisation has compiled a hate map

which pinpoints 932 of the worst offenders

right across the United States.

In the last 10 years, we have seen a doubling

in the number of hate groups in the country, and we think

all that's attributable to the Latino migration in America,

it's attributed to to Obama being president, and the economy.

By the year 2040, people like myself,

Anglo-whites in this country are going to be in a minority.

-121 are black hate groups?

-Right.

Well, that's the black separatist groups,

the Nation Of Islam is one, their language is no different than

the language of a Nazi group or hate group or Klan group.

What you're saying is that your work has broadened from

civil rights for African-Americans to a whole range of things.

Well, you know, there's probably a bias everywhere in the world

against people who are different.

We find in America today that the most homophobic people

are African-Americans, it is in their culture.

But it's one thing to fight hate in court.

It makes you feel good, you put the Klan out of business,

You put the neo-Nazis out of business, you take their property.

But it's just as important to teach tolerance

and acceptance in the classroom over a whole range of subjects.

"Atticus was right.

"One time he said you never really know man

"until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.

"Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."

I've stood in the shoes of Harper Lee and To Kill A Mockingbird

and walked around in them.

And this classic novel now appears, to me, as a kind of love letter

to and from the South, a gentle plea for tolerance.

Which seems a simple enough idea, doesn't it?

But perhaps, in truth, it's so radical that,

50 years after it was written,

it has as much to say as it ever did.

I've been writing about my observations of the South

for the Monroe Journal.

As promised, George gets my article published.

I wanted to share those experiences with the people who kick-started

my journey, so I've organised a small party to return

a little of that Southern hospitality.

And I've invited Harper Lee.

Perhaps it's time for her to come out of hiding.

Once again, the weather isn't on my side,

and at the last minute I'm having to move the party

from the court house lawn to a bookshop cafe.

-Hi, how are you?

-Hey, I'm really good thanks, you?

Let me just get the drinks.

Here you go, Miss Alice.

-Caramel cake...

-Gorgeous.

There's no sign of Harper Lee, but a strange thing happens.

Half an hour in, a woman cuts a slice of cake

and disappears up the road with it.

I'm told, it's for Nelle, that she's at home, reading my book.

I still wonder why she removed herself from public life.

Perhaps she finds the trappings of fame intrusive and distracting,

or perhaps it's simply because, as she is quoted as saying herself,

"I said what I had to say, why say more?"

From a distance, it looks as though this

is a book about racism and about segregation and discrimination.

But what I now actually feel having spent time where it was written

is that it's not about those things.

What Harper Lee has actually done,

is use those things to write a treatise on humanity

and the power of tolerance, of generosity of spirit.

Things which arguably are in shorter supply now

than they have ever been before.

Making this more important than it ever was.

The fact that it's so beautifully written and it's so funny

is just a great bonus.

I think this book is timeless.

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing, but make music for us to enjoy.

"They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corn cribs,

"they don't do one thing, but sing their hearts out for us.

"That's why it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird."

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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