Monroeville, AL

Alabama's Literacy Capital

Jennings Carter steers his pickup truck through the smattering of Saturday traffic winding around the peaceful and old-fashioned town square of Monroeville, Ala. As he makes his way past the fast-food restaurants and convenience stores lining one of the town’s arteries, he talks about his days as a crop duster, the garden he grows each year, and the merits of his favorite whiskey.

And he talks about his famous cousin, author Truman Capote.

“I think a lot of what he did was just a put-on,” Carter says of Capote’s famous flamboyancy. “Heck, when he’d come back home to visit, he acted just like anybody else down here. He drank buttermilk and ate butter peas and cornbread.”

Having grown up with Capote, as well as Monroeville’s other literary light, To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee, Carter is something of an authority. But then, so are most people in this southwest Alabama town halfway between Montgomery and Mobile.

Since the state Legislature designated Monroeville (pop. 6,862) and Monroe County as the Literary Capital of Alabama in 1997, residents have been committing their stories to more than just memory. And the town lives up to the honor.

The Old Courthouse Museum, situated among big shade trees at the center of town, is a mecca for those who want to absorb all things Lee and Capote. It includes rooms that serve as tributes to the two authors, featuring first-edition books, articles, and movie posters, among other items. A walking tour takes visitors past 33 points of interest, including the elementary school Lee and Capote attended. And the area community college is host to the annual Alabama Writers Symposium.

Capote is widely known for his novels In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but his Monroe County experiences can best be found in such works as A Christmas Memory, The Grass Harp, and Other Voices, Other Rooms. He was instantly recognizable for his eccentric styles in the 1960s and ’70s, and his death in 1984 was the end of an icon.

Lee, known as Nelle to anyone calling Monroeville home, has lived in New York for years and still shuns publicity. “People have just tried their best to put words in her mouth, misquoted her,” says Dickie Williams, Nelle’s second cousin.

Williams has owned and operated Williams Drug Store here since 1961 and has penned a couple of books himself, including The Day the Barn Almost Burned, a memoir of his 1940s childhood.

Though Mockingbird is the only novel Lee wrote, it’s made her—and Monroeville—internationally renowned. The book won a Pulitzer Prize after it was published in 1960, and it’s a rare soul indeed who hasn’t seen the movie version starring Gregory Peck and featuring the memorable characters of Atticus Finch, Scout, Jem, and Boo Radley—each fashioned after folks Nelle knew growing up.

Visitors wanting to soak up the Mockingbird atmosphere head straight to the Old Courthouse Museum, which has been in full operation since hiring a director in 1991 and devoting the whole premises to exhibits centered on the area’s rich literary heritage. The courtroom served as the model for the courtroom scenes in the Mockingbird movie, and it’s also the stage for a play held here each May.

One of the first things Kathy McCoy did after she was hired as museum director was to put out a casting call for Mockingbird. “I decided we needed some type of avenue to get people to come to southwest Alabama, and I thought putting on a production of To Kill a Mockingbird would help,” she says.

The play sells out every performance in May, and one night’s production is set aside for those who attend the Alabama Writers Symposium at Alabama Southern Community College in Monroeville. The three-day conference features a variety of writers and scholars, and it’s just the ticket for those seeking the Southern writing experience.

“I talk to the people who come here for the symposium, and they love the idea that they’re in the town that spawned Harper Lee and Truman Capote,” says Jane Ellen, education curator for Monroe County Heritage Museums, which encompass the River Heritage Museum, Rikard’s Mill Historical Park, and Bethany Baptist Church, in addition to the Old Courthouse Museum.

Indeed, something here has inspired the likes of Nelle and Truman, as well as other Monroeville natives such as Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama and other books, and nationally syndicated columnist Cynthia Tucker.

Maybe it’s the buttermilk.

John McBryde is a Brentwood, Tenn., writer.

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