When Harper Lee published "To Kill a Mockingbird" it was 1960, the beginning of a turbulent period in the history of the United States. Many changes in racial relations were in the making, much attention to injustices handed to people of the African-American race were given public attention.
Certainly, then, Harper Lee's novel of two children's learning from their father about fighting prejudices and affirming human dignity were, indeed, relevant and controversial to the time of the novel's publication. The reports of such as the Scottsboro boys in Northern Alabama are real-life accounts that parallel the treatment of Tom Robinson.
Harper Lee's novel became a model of racial tolerance; because its author herself was from Alabama, a state heatedly involved in the Civil Rights efforts, the book could not but bring attention to many of the current issues of the times, such as "Bloody Sunday," a day that many were killed on the march from Selma (an area of 57% black) to Montgomery, Alabama, as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in order to go to the state's capital of Montgomery and demand voting rights.
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