Monroeville, Alabama

            The town was formed in 1815 on “lands ceded by local Native American tribes”. It was a crossroad town that’s primary industry was agriculture. The town is still a regional center with agriculture, lumber, and health care being the primary industries that keep the town functioning besides tourism. Because of the explosive success of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville Alabama was transformed. With millions of copies sold every year, the popularity of the novel has not faded. The town is now a relic of the past and the richness of the fictional Maycomb Alabama. Smithsonian writer Charles Leerson toured Monroeville and found that:

“Lee has found herself living a short drive from one restaurant called the Mockingbird Grill and another named Radley’s Fountain, after Boo Radley, the character in Mockingbird who might be voted Least Likely to Become a Restaurateur. That would be a mere T-shirt’s toss from a gift shop peddling Mockingbird hats, tote bags, necklaces, Christmas ornaments, refrigerator magnets, wrist bands (inscribed “I see it, Scout, I see it!”) and paper fans. The gift shop is in the venerable courthouse where as a child Lee watched her father practice law, and which she later rendered so vividly in her book. The courthouse has long since been turned into a Mockingbird museum, to the delight of a constant stream of camera-toting tourists, foreign and domestic.”

The main industry of the town was and is “Mockingbird-related tourism”. The director of the Mockingbird Museum Jane Ellen Clark stated that “pilgrims started flocking spontaneously to Monroeville in 1960, as soon as the book was published. ‘All these people who said it was their favorite book would save up for the trip and find the town,’… ‘this was their vacation, and we created the museum because we wanted to give them something to see”’.

            A highlight of the “Mockingbird-related tourism” are the theatrical productions of To Kill a Mockingbird that happen several times a week during April and May each year. This play is cast with local volunteer actors and has performances several times a week. This practice started in 1991.

“Act I takes place on the town square, weather permitting, and Act II inside the courthouse. If the air conditioning isn’t working, it can get steamy in that cavernous chamber, especially up in the ‘colored balcony”’

            In May of 2005, the town received the “Alabama Community of Excellence” award that proclaimed that Monroeville was one of the best places to live in Alabama. The town has also been named the literary capital of Alabama because of both Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and several other famous writers from the town including Truman Capote.