Chronology:
The case of Walter Lett influenced Harper Lee in writing To Kill a Mockingbird. Here are the events of the case, and its connection to Harper Lee.
The case began in November 1933. "On Thursday, November 9, 1933, the Monroeville Journal reported that Noami Lowery told authorities that Walter Lett had raped her the previous Thursday.” ("Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016"). Just as in To Kill a Mockingbird, the accusation alone was enough for most citizens to assume guilt. Writing for Time magazine, Daniel Levy asserts, “Such an accusation was a death sentence for an African American man. ‘Rape was the central drama of the white psyche,’ says Diane McWhorter, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”
Lett was captured on Saturday and jailed in another town out of fear he’d be lynched.
The legal system operated quickly. “On March 16, 1934, Lett was arraigned on a grand jury indictment on a capital crime of rape, which carried the death penalty” ("Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016"). Lett pled not guilty but was swiftly convicted. On March 30 “Judge Hare set the date of execution for Friday, May 11, 1934” ("Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016").
Many people did not believe Lett was guilty. Several “leading white townspeople in Monroeville had begun writing letters in his defense” (Earnest). A.C. Lee was among them (Levy).
On May 8, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Governor B.M. Miller granted a stay of execution ("Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016"). Later the Governor commuted Lett’s sentence to life imprisonment. Lett died in a prison hospital in 1937.
While To Kill a Mockingbird is fiction, “In the late 1990s, Lee stated that the Walter Lett trial was the inspiration for Tom Robinson.” (Earnest).
Cause and Effect
In 1933 when Harper Lee was seven years old, her father’s newspaper covered a trial that affected the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird more than twenty years later. A black man named Walter Lett was accused of rape by a white woman named Naomi Lowery.
A black man raping a white woman was a central fear of southern society. “The vigilante punishment for such a sin was lynching” (Levy). Because he feared for Lett’s safety, the sheriff had him moved to another town.
Both Lowery and Lett were poverty-stricken “ luckless types, human flotsam on the surface of economic hard times” ("Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016"). However, she was white, therefore her word meant more. Lett was quickly convicted and sentenced to death.
Many leading citizens in Monroeville, including Asa Lee, believed Lett was not guilty. Therefore they wrote letters to the Governor. Because of the pressure from the citizens on “Governor Benjamin Miller, seeking clemency, Miller commuted Lett’s death sentence to life in prison” commuted Lett’s sentence to life in prison (Levy). Due to his poor physical condition and the terrible conditions in the prison, Lett contracted tuberculosis and died.
Since we know that Harper Lee read the newspaper with her father from a very young age, we can be confident that she knew of the Lett case. And, in fact, in 1990 she told an interviewer “that the Walter Lett trial was the inspiration for Tom Robinson.” (Earnest).
Compare and Contrast
In 1933 when Harper Lee was seven years old, an African-american man named Walter Lett was accused of raping a white woman, Naomi Lowery, “Lee’s father, A.C. Lee was editing The Monroe Journal, and his paper covered Lett’s trial” (Levy). More than twenty years later she reworked the details of the case as the central incident in To Kill a Mockingbird. Both the real-life Walter Lett and the fictional Tom Robinson were African-american men accused of rape by poor, uneducated white women ("1934: Not Walter Lett”). Both were nearly lynched. Both were convicted. Both died in custody.
However, Harper Lee made many changes to add moral clarity to her story. Lett was a “thirty-something ex-convict” ("1934: Not Walter Lett”), while Tom Robinson is a hard-working family man. Lett claimed to be elsewhere at the time of the crime, and to not know Lowery ("Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016), while Tom Robinson was witnessed to be present, confessed to feeling sorry for Mayella, and was shown to be incapable of committing the crime.
Walter Lett was sentenced to be executed, but through a letter writing campaign by leading white citizens, had his sentence commuted to life in prison, life in prison for a crime he apparently did not commit. Tom Robinson, on the other hand, despite a heroic lawyer proving his innocence in court and making some townspeople confront their own racism in the process, is found guilty and dies before any further legal action occurs.
A final similarity may exist. By at least one report Walter Lett was driven insane by his experiences and died in a mental hospital ("1934: Not Walter Lett”). Tom Robinson’s reported final act was not so much a planned escape attempt as a desperate and hopeless (insane) act brought on by stress.
Works Cited
"1934: Not Walter Lett, To Kill a Mockingbird Inspiration." Blog post. ExecutedToday.com. The Headsman, 19 July 2015. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
Earnest, MK. "KERRY MADDEN ON THE TRIALS THAT INFLUENCED HARPER LEE." Blog post. Ol Curiosities Book Shoppe. N.p., 18 Aug. 2015. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
"Lee, Harper: 1926 - 2016." SwissEduc - English. Ed. Hans Fischer. N.p., 31 Jan. 2016. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
Levy, Daniel S. "The Civil Rights Movement and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'" Time. Time, 20 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Nov. 2016. .
Comments