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Harper Nella Lee's was born
Nelle Harper Lee is born in Monroeville, Alabama, the youngest of four children of lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee and hoousewife Frances Cunningham Finch Lee -
University of Alabama
Lee transfers from Huntingdon College to the University of Alabama, where she plans to pursue a law degree. She dislikes law, but enjoys working for the campus newspaper and humor magazine. -
Capote Bases Character on Lee
Truman Capote publishes the autobiographical novel Other Voices, Other Rooms, which features a tomboyish character named Isabel who is based on Harper Lee -
Career Change
Lee quits law school and moves to New York City to pursue a career as a writer. -
Lee's life in NY
Lee supports herself in New York with jobs at the reservation desks of Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways Corporation. She works for these airlines for several years while writing takes a back seat. -
Emmett Till Murdered
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, is murdered by a gang of white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His mother insists on an open casket at his funeral so mourners can see the brutality of his injuries. -
Rosa Parks Tries to Keep Her Seat
While riding the bus home from work in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old African-American woman named Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger. Though she gets arrested, her act of civil disobedience sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott and becomes one of the defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Lee Returns to Writing
Lee receives a life-changing Christmas gift. Friends pool money and buy her a year off from work so that she can concentrate on writing. She supports herself as a writer from then on. -
Setting of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird
This books takes place during segration between white and black.It was on Alabama where people were not aware of the civil rights movemnts. -
To Kill A Mockingbird
To Kill A Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott Company. The book is an instant critical and commercial success. -
To the Big Screen
The film version of To Kill A Mockingbird is released, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout. Like the book it's based on, the film is also an immediate success. Lee calls Horton Foote's screenplay "one of the best translations of a book to film ever made." -
Best of the Century
Library Journal votes To Kill A Mockingbird the best novel of the twentieth century.
