Lee’s famous story lives on in her hometown

Harper Lee and the old house where she conceived the 1960 classic are gone now, victims of the vicissitudes of time and nature, but “To Kill a Mockingbird” lives on in Monroeville, Ala.

Each April and May, local players put on a stage adaptation of the masterpiece work, considered by many the country’s most compelling book on the issue of race – one that was banned from many high school classrooms across the South for its touchy subject matter. Lee likely would not be totally pleased with all the attention and endearment, considering she was often at odds with the organization sponsoring the production.

She once even filed suit in federal court against the city’s museum board, claiming her trademark rights had been violated. She and the historical group settled on confidential terms.

Today, the theatrical production goes forward, with its current run ending soon. Alabama officials tout it as one of the state’s premier tourism destinations, and upwards of 50,000 people each year visit Monroeville to get a feel for how Lee lived her life, which often was in isolation, and how such a poignant story could arise from such a place.

Monroeville is in remote southwestern Alabama, a four-hour drive from Albany, due east on a route from Blakely through Dothan, Enterprise, Opp, and Andalusia to the timeless city of 6,500 people where Lee lived most of her life, except for brief interludes in New York City. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961, bringing the world’s attention down on her and her hometown.

Change comes reluctantly to Monroeville. The people want it that way, knowing that if you alter the uniqueness of the village, you destroy the story that made it famous and magical.

In addition to tourism dollars, the settlement is chiefly dependent on myriad timber industries and a nearby community college for its financial well-being. This is tree country in a state whose land is 70 percent forested, fifth nationally (64 percent in Georgia, sixth).

Monroeville likes its fame, but there is no statue of Miss Lee. She was reclusive (except for her regular Methodist Church-going) to the degree that my state of Mississippi’s most famous writer, William Faulkner, was aloof to the people of Oxford, a town much like Monroeville except for its university. The elegant Monroe County courthouse contains a historical marker touting the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It doesn’t mention Harper Lee.

Lee’s longtime residence and the one across South Alabama Street where her childhood friend and writer Truman Capote spent summers as a child have been replaced by commercial establishments. Lee spent her final years in a local nursing home, where she died Feb. 19, 2016, at the age of 89.

Looking around slow-paced Monroeville, I spotted people who in my “Mockingbird” imagination could have been the mysterious Boo Radley, or Tom Robinson, the black man represented in a mythical rape trial by “Atticus Finch,” a lawyer who was the imagined character of Amasa Coleman Lee, father of Harper Lee. Amasa Lee lost two cases defending black men accused of murder. Both later were hanged. Atticus Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson in “Mockingbird” looked solid, yet the all-white jury found him guilty.

A tall gentleman I encountered walking across the beautifully green courthouse lawn carrying a passel of documents in his arms was generous with information about the town and the theatrical interpretation of Lee’s masterpiece. I later wondered if the cordial man practiced law and if so, was he influenced by the refined but determined demeanor of actor Gregory Peck, who played Finch in the “Mockingbird” movie.

This is a place to imagine, but Atticus Finch and those other figures come alive in the spring festival, preserving Monroeville’s momentous story for the ages.

Mac Gordon is a part-time resident of Fort Gaines and McComb, Miss. He is a former reporter for The Albany Herald. He can be reached at [email protected].