Harper Lee was born in Alabama in 1926 as the daughter of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch. She studied law before she decided to become a writer and returned from Great Britain to New York. Lee published "To kill a Mockingbird" in 1960 when the Civil Rights Movement became effective. Some aspects in the novel are compatible and transferable to Lee’s private family situation. One autobiographical aspect is that Atticus’ character is largely based on Lee’s father since both were lawyers. As a child, Lee was informed about trials which were induced by racial prejudices.
The story is set in the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, which describes a time of economic crisis in American Society. Job offers were extremely scarce and the unemployment rate was high. Farmers (like the Cunningham family) were hit the hardest. Work life for African Americans was defined by the Jim Crow laws, which prevented African Americans from fully participating in society. For context: the Jim Crow laws emerged in 1890 and were abolished over the course of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
The psychological notion of white superiority was somewhat a norm and the idea of equality was a pipe dream. The storyline is based on the Scottsboro Trials of 1931, in which eight of nine young men were wrongly accused of raping two women. Doctors were not able to find any evidence of rape; nevertheless, the African American defendants were at a disadvantage in the eyes of the law due to the colour of their skin. Only a few of them were judged innocent.