How have the people of Maycomb County shaped its community in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird?

Scout discusses the roots of Maycomb county a couple of times in Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. It is interesting to read about Scout's family like Cousin Ike Finch who "was Maycomb County's sole surviving Confederate veteran" (76). Many white people in Alabama during the 1930s could trace their family tree to a Confederate veteran and that is part of the Maycomb's foundation--Southerners. The South fought for States Rights, but also to keep slavery. Because of these two very significant facts, Maycomb rises from the Civil War as a segregated and often racist society just like most other communities in the South. As generations rise and fall, the community changes a little bit, but the founding families seem to uphold many traditions within the community.

First, the Finches were one of the first families to build a homestead in the county at Finches Landing. They didn't have the biggest plantation around, but they did very well for themselves up until the Civil War. After that, they still had a high social status, but not necessarily wealth. Then, the Cunninghams, though poor, have a good work ethic and many extended family still around. They continue to hold to good working values, but aren't so progressive for the time not to consider lynching a black man. Finally, there are the Ewells who are both poor and low class. Bob, the father, feeds his own addictions before his own children. He's also willing to send a black man to his death to protect his racist name.

Maycomb consists of these three types of people plus the black community striving to find work and live decently. Sadly, Aunt Alexandra is a Finch with a snobby, social attitude. As Atticus represents the progressive justice-for-all attitude, his own sister still snubs her nose at people like the Cunninghams. When Scout asks her why she can't invite young Walter Cunningham over to play sometimes, she gets the following answer:

"She took off her glasses and stared at me. 'I'll tell you why,' she said. 'Because--he--is--trash, that's why you can't play with him. I'll not have you around him, picking up his habits and learning Lord-knows-what. You're enough of a problem to your father as it is'" (225).

Luckily, not all of Maycomb is like Aunt Alexandra, the Cunninghams, or the Ewells. Miss Maudie, Link Deas, Heck Tate, and others follow Atticus's line of thinking, and they are the good examples of the community. Maudie explains to Alexandra that people like Atticus are needed to bear the weight of the community's problems on their shoulders sometimes as follows:

"Have you ever thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute to we can pay to a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple. . . The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness am I. . . The handful of people in this town with background, that's who they are" (236).

When Maudie mentions "background," she's speaking Aunt Alexandra's language because that's all the Finches have left from the old pre-Civil War era. Therefore, Maycomb county is made up of many levels of people who struggle to find themselves as a growing and progressive community during the pre-Civil Rights time period.