To Kill a Mockingbird Resources

Some super useful annotations to help you with some tricky words.

The murder of Emmett Till (1955) is one of several injustices that seem to have inspired events in To Kill a Mockingbird (published 1960). Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy brutally murdered by two white men in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store. This PBS article gives some background on Till and his murder.

You can't get more classic than this: the 1962 production with Gregory Peck and Robert Duvall.

It's not an adaptation—it's a documentary about the adaptation. Pretty cool.

If you want something a little harder, check out this 1903 essay by W.E.B. DuBois on African-American experience.

In January 2009, high school teacher John Foley wrote an opinion piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer arguing that, now that President Obama is President-elect (at the time of Foley's publication), classic texts like To Kill a Mockingbird and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be dropped from the curriculum for using the "N-word." Read Foley's opinion piece here.

The man behind all those awesome books about cool stuff (you know the ones) voices his thoughts on "Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism."

Film buffs say that To Kill a Mockingbird's opening credits sequence is one of the greatest of all time. Watch it here.

Charles J. Shields talks about his biography of Harper Lee.

Pressed for time? Check out the trailer for the 1962 movie adaptation.

Gregory Peck delivers Atticus's closing speech. Get ready to be stirred.

Almost eight minutes of mockingbird song! Check out what all the fuss is for.

Can't you just picture her sitting on her porch offering cake to the neighbor kids?

Atticus and his client, looking pretty grim.

Take a good look so you don't kill one.