Cold War 1935

The war of the American North against the South, the abolitionist war against slavery and segregation, did not end with the capitulation of the Confederacy in 1865, or even with the abolition of slavery. A long, cold trench war began, and it was very difficult to shake out of the southerners their unwillingness to consider blacks, that is, African Americans, as equals.

The writer Harper Lee, whose birthday we will celebrate with the American intelligentsia on April 28, was a brave soldier of this long war, which ended in the 20th century with the victory of the Statue of Liberty and the American Constitution, which are incompatible with segregation.

When the daughter of a lawyer, little Harper Lee, was only five years old, nine black guys were tried in her home state of Alabama for allegedly raping two white women. The defendants were almost lynched, and despite the medical conclusion that there was no rape, the white jury sentenced the youths to death. Fortunately, they waited for an appeal and were released six years later. And now, half-educated lawyer and modest airline employee Harper Lee, a friend of Truman Capote, having remembered the “Scotsboro case” for life, creates a poignant and restrained-angry novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” about the everyday life of the quiet, peaceful Alabama town of Maycomb. The novel was published in 1960, immediately became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. Instead of the "quick merciful death" expected by the author at the hands of critics, the novel acquired the title of "novel of the century" and brought Harper Lee an invitation from President Lyndon Johnson to the National Arts Council (1966) and the highest US civilian award - the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2007).

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Nor should we be afraid to be against many. Our problems are the problems of backward, though not southern, states.

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But most importantly, the novel allowed America to look back at themselves and be horrified by what they saw. Civic activists went South; marches against segregation went to the North; Martin Luther King fulfilled his duty to the end; John F. Kennedy sent police and the National Guard to guard children of color in schools that were finally open to all. And here is the triumph and rise of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama.

Everything ended well, but where did it start? 1935 The North won 70 years ago. But in Maycomb, the coloreds pray separately, in their own church, and they have their own black minister, Mr. Sykes. In court, they sit separately from the whites, in the gallery, and the nanny and cook of the lawyer Atticus Finch Calpurnia has to knock on the Radley neighbors from the back door. And work for colored people is only black or in the service sector. There are no colored children in school, they are not supposed to go to school, almost all colored children are illiterate. And no one comes to mind to refute this nightmare.

But then lawyer Finch undertakes to defend Tom Robinson, an honest, kind, decent Negro, who did not rape Mayella Ewell, a poor white girl. Finch is bullied by the plebs, and stupid neighbors from "good families" call him "black-lover". But the whole novel is about the world seen through the eyes of his daughter, a child, Glazastik. And for a child, this is a special shock.

And the stoicism of a lawyer who believes in jury trials and in the equality of all before the law, whose children are attacked by the villain Euel and who, together with his client, is trying to lynch the crowd at night, is slowly changing the city. Neighbors vaguely realize that he is right, they are ready to protect and save him, they bake pies for him. The Cold War of 1935 in Alabama, despite Tom's death, was not lost by the forces of good.

We should not be afraid to be alone against many. Our problems are those of backward, though not southern, states. On our long road to the West, every Atticus Finch counts. After all, the descendants of the Cunninghams and Ewells, the characters in the novel who demanded the execution of Thomas Robinson, voted for Barack Obama.