Way back in the day, when a Richmond, VA school board in 1966 tried to ban To Kill a Mockingbird as "immoral literature", Lee showed her feistiness in a letter to the editor of the local paper:
“Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read. Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.
I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice."
Her feisty-ness also manifested itself publicly about a decade back when she got irritated by various ebay/booksellers making a profit from her [freely given] signatures in copies of TKAM. So she had a posting placed on Ebay [right alongside all these profiteering "rare" book sellers' postings] that made known that she was willing to sign, free of cost, any To Kill a Mockingbird purchased from her local bookstore. It was an invitation I didn't need to hear twice. :-)
Btw, how lovely is that candid photo of Harper Lee? A little bit of trivia: Truman Capote is the photographer of that image. He and Nelle (Harper Lee) were childhood friends, and Capote was actually the inspiration for the character of Dill. This image only ran on the first couple print runs of the trade & book club editions of TKAM. My copy is from a book club edition that I found nearly 20 years ago on my mother-in-law's basement shelves, which I promptly begged to take home as my own. Thanks, Pat! - I still love it oodles!!
