In the Hate of Dixie

Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of the beloved author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee. What Tucker never heard about, growing up, were the 17 lynchings that happened in Monroe County.

By Cynthia Tucker, The Bitter Southerner

MONROEVILLE, Alabama — Growing up here, I was steeped in the stories that ripple through To Kill a Mockingbird. This is Harper Lee’s hometown, and her narrative, though fictionalized, brilliantly portrayed its racial climate in the 1930s. She called on eccentric characters who were well-known in town and put to good use tales with which she was familiar. My late father, who grew up here, identified some of those characters and tales for me.

He and my mother also taught their children to negotiate the landscape of Jim Crow, a welter of oppressive codes and customs designed to legitimize white supremacy. Those codes were still in force in my childhood, so I attended segregated schools through elementary and much of high school. I followed the law that locked me out of “WHITES ONLY” restrooms, waiting rooms, and downstairs seats in the movie theater….