dismissed from Monroeville Methodist Episcopal Church for sermons about social justice; joins St. Markâs in Montgomery; serves on civil rights board with Dr. Martin Luther King.
1956: Montgomery bus boycott ends.
1956 November: Nelle Lee brings short stories to the offices of Maurice Crain and Annie Laurie Williams, literary agents.
1956 Christmas: Joy and Michael Brown give Lee a full year of financial support to complete her novel.
1957 JanuaryâFebruary: Lee brings sections of Go Set a Watchman to her agent, Maurice Crain.
1957 May: Go Set a Watchman is submitted to Tay Hohoff at J. B. Lippincott in New York City.
1957: Lee brings 111 pages of âThe Long Goodbyeâ to Crain (no date of return).
1957 September: Federal troops sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine African-American students at Central High School from the white mobs trying to block the schoolâs integration, and to enforce court-ordered desegregation of schools.
1957 October: Go Set a Watchman sold to J. B. Lippincott; no title in contract.
1959 Spring: Lee completes third draft of manuscript; final draft accepted in November.
1959 November: Clutter family members found murdered in Holcomb, Kansas, home.
November 19: Capote and Lee arrive in Garden City, Kansas, to research In Cold Blood .
1959 December: Christmas parade in Monroeville canceled after threats from Ku Klux Klan.
1960 March: Perry Smith and Richard Hickockâs trial begins.
1960 March: To Kill a Mockingbird chosen by the Literary Guild and Readerâs Digest .
1960 July: Civil rights sit-ins at Woolworthâs in Greensboro, North Carolina.
1960 August: To Kill a Mockingbird is 7th on the New York Times bestseller list.
1961 May: Harper Lee awarded Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
1962 January: Gregory Peck visits Monroeville; meets A. C. Lee, the man he will play in the film version.
1962: Monroeville Chamber of Commerce films A. C. Lee holding a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird . âWe are looking for Atticus Finch.â âYes, I am Atticus.â
1962 April: Amasa Coleman Lee dies.
1962 October: James Meredith becomes first African-American student admitted to University of Mississippi. Violence necessitates deployment of federal troops.
1962 December: Premiere of film To Kill a Mockingbird in Hollywood. The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards.
1963 May: Crowds jam Birmingham, Alabama, theater to see To Kill a Mockingbird ; during nearby civil rights protests in the city, Police Commissioner Eugene âBullâ Connor employs dogs, clubs, and cattle prods to disperse four thousand demonstrators.
1963 June: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, voter registration workers, ambushed and killed in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
1963 August: Quarter of a million people join March on Washington; King delivers âI Have a Dreamâ speech.
1964 July: President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs 1964 Civil Rights Act.
1964 December: Combined sales of To Kill a Mockingbird reach eight million.
1965 April: Perry Smith and Richard Hickock hanged for Clutter murders.
1966: To Kill a Mockingbird banned by Richmond, Virginia, school board.
1966: In Cold Blood published. Capote appears on cover of Time magazine.
1969: Christopher Sergel adapts To Kill a Mockingbird into a play.
1970: Maurice Crain, Leeâs agent, dies.
1971: Annie Laurie Williams, Crainâs wife, closes the office.
1974: Tay Hohoff, Leeâs editor on To Kill a Mockingbird, dies.
1984: Truman Capote dies.
1990: Monroeville begins annual performances of To Kill a Mockingbird .
1999: Library Journal votes To Kill a Mockingbird the best novel of the century.
2007: Lee inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May, an honor society of two hundred and fifty architects, composers, artists, and writers; she suffers a stroke in June; Lee receives Presidential Medal of Freedom in November.
2010: Fiftieth anniversary of the
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