To Kill a Mockingbird Resources

Film buffs and adaptation enthusiasts say that To Kill a Mockingbird's opening credits sequence is one of the greatest of all time. Watch it here.

Charles J. Shields talks about his biography of Harper Lee.

A few scenes from the 1962 film adaptation.

Harper Lee in 2007, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Gregory Peck as Atticus and Brock Peters as Tom in the 1962 movie version.

Take a good look so you don’t accidentally kill one.

One of the very few writings Lee has published since her one and only novel appeared in, of all places, Oprah’s O magazine.

Explanations for references and unusual words in the text.

Famous 1903 essay by W.E.B. DuBois on African-American experience.

The murder of Emmett Till (1955) is one of several injustices that seem to have inspired events in To Kill a Mockingbird (published 1960). Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy brutally murdered by two white men in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store. This PBS article gives some background on Till and his murder.

In January 2009, high school teacher John Foley wrote an opinion piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer arguing that, now that President Obama is President-elect (at the time of Foley's publication), classic texts like To Kill a Mockingbird and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be dropped from the curriculum for using the "N-word." Read Foley's opinion piece here.