Monroeville, Alabama, hometown to author Harper Lee, has come to be known as the state’s literary capital.
Monroeville, Alabama, was the hometown of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, and has come to be known as the state’s literary capital, a role the residents of the town have embraced.
Charles Andrews, mayor of Monroeville, the small town in southwest Alabama where Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, was born. Andrews is the town’s first Black mayor and a deacon at Antioch Baptist Church #3. “My father passed when I was five,” he says. “The men in the church mentored me.”
Martens, a Monroeville resident, stands in the town’s famous courtroom, a reproduction of which appears in the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck as lawyer Atticus Finch. When she was 10, she played the role of Scout in the town’s stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird; she now directs that annual production. “I love seeing what my neighbors bring to the roles,” she says. “They really get to know and understand these characters on a deep level.”
Jones, a World War II veteran, is a longtime columnist for The Monroe Journal. The 99-year-old was a contemporary of both Harper Lee and fellow Monroeville resident, Truman Capote. Jones knew both Harper (known locally as Nelle) and her lawyer father (Jones caddied for him as a teen), on whom Lee modeled the character Atticus Finch.
One of the many murals in downtown Monroeville is this one by artist Johnna Bush, who wanted to honor 10 local writers whose work has helped Monroeville earn the distinction as Alabama’s Literary Capital.
Inside Monroeville’s post office is this New Deal-era mural titled, “Harvesting.” Painted in 1939 by Arthur L. Bairnsfather, the oil-on-canvas painting depicts a farmer using a three-mule team to pull a threshing machine across a wheat field. The mural is one of the surviving works of President Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA program. The mural was restored in 1985 by John Bertalan, a native of Birmingham, who specializes in art restoration.
Various editions of Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic are displayed in the courthouse museum. To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.
Branko Medencia’s sculpture on the courthouse lawn, meant to inspire children to become lifelong readers, depicts three children reading. A barefoot girl in pigtails, meant to suggest To Kill a Mockingbird’s Scout, sits on the bench rapt in a book, while two boys peer over her shoulder. Visitors can sit next to the girl and pose for pictures.
The Trail consists of 14 bronze sculptures on permanent exhibit that honor the 10 writers credited with making Monroeville the Literary Capital of Alabama. This piece honors Monroeville-born Cynthia Tucker who received a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
This downtown mural, showing the location of Monroeville, is part of the town’s smART Moves Mural Trail, which features 15 small selfie-style murals designed to motivate people to walk throughout the town, patronizing shops and meeting friends along the way.
The striking dome of the historic Monroeville Courthouse, now a musuem. The courthouse served as inspiration for memorable scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird and inspired the set design of the 1962 film adaptation.
