During which historical period does To Kill a Mockingbird take place?

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Book cover for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, featuring a silhouette of a child under a tree and a large moon, with the title in script and — To Kill a Mockingbird This book cover is one of many given to Harper Lee's classic work *To Kill a Mockingbird* (1960). The novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and the next year was made into an Academy Award-winning film.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression, which spanned from 1929 to 1939.1

The novel’s setting during this era allowed author Harper Lee to explore the deeply embedded racist systems and Jim Crow laws that characterized the American South at that time.2