“Memory vs. Fascism: Remarks at the Monroeville Literary Festival,” Address, Tim Lockette.

Novelist and educator Tim Lockette delivering a presentation at the annual literary festival in Monroeville, Alabama.

I’m delighted to be here, in the heart of Alabama’s literary world, speaking in the very courthouse that inspired To Kill a Mockingbird. As many of you know, my first novel is a loving parody of Mockingbird, and when I started writing that book, my dream was to be here one day, speaking to you. So, I’m very happy.

I’ll tell you who else is happy. My mother taught English in Alabama high schools for her entire career, and you can imagine that she’s very happy that I’m here.

I think my dad, had he lived long enough, would also be glad to see me here, even though he didn’t even read Mockingbird until well in adulthood – in his forties or fifties. I wrote something in which I compared his parenting style to that of Atticus Finch – a valid comparison, though not always a compliment – and he decided he’d better read the book and figure out what was going on. 

So, I’m very happy to be here, and I hope you’re happy to be here. 

And it’s very strange. It’s very strange to be so happy in times like these. I won’t bother to recount what I mean by “in times like these.” You know. Literary people, more than most, understand the dangers of what is happening in this country. 

So, when the world is on fire, how is it that we can come together here and enjoy the pleasures of storytelling? We’ve found a treasure – literature – that most people ignore, and for the next two days we’re just going to wallow in it. We’ll luxuriate in it. But at first glance, there seems to be something discordant about it. How can we celebrate stories, how can we create beautiful things, while fascism is on the rise in our own country? 

This question has bothered me for a while. But, you know, I think the answer is right here in Monroeville. If you think about it, Harper Lee confronted much the same question we confront here today. She lived in a time of fascism. I know there are probably political scientists in the audience, and some may disagree with me, but I see Alabama pre-1965, pre-the Voting Rights Act, as a kind of fascist regime. A fascist regime grafted onto a democratic society. And in Harper Lee’s time, with fascism bringing the country to crisis because individual Black Alabamians had brought the fascist regime to crisis – in this world of crisis upon crisis, Harper Lee sat down to write a tender book drawn from her childhood memories.

And those memories became a weapon in the war against intolerance. 

We’ve told ourselves for a long time that what we do – creating or remembering stories – is the opposite of fascism. That writing a sensitive novel, that reading literature regularly, is an act that staves off authoritarianism. It’s true. We believe it. And yet, there have been times in the past when we’ve invoked this magical formula and perhaps felt that it was far too speculative, far too much a matter of faith and not a matter of proof. 

Exterior of courthouse where To Kill A Mockingbird was filmed.

In 2025, things are different. We have real, unfolding dictatorship right in front of us and we can see clearly that fascism, when it occurs, is always a destruction of story. A destruction of memory. Clearcutting of memory and of story is the one common theme of every move by every would-be dictator. 

An example: let’s say a would-be dictator declares that we will soon own Gaza. We will clean it out. The people who are there will move – we don’t care where – and we will turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East.  This isn’t something the U. S. can do, and much of the world says it is not something the U.S. will even try to do. 

So why does it feel like such an injury? Because it’s a destruction of story. It destroys the story of the people who live there now, and the massive suffering they’ve endured. And in doing so, it erases the story of the horror that brought this about – the outrageous attack by Hamas on Israel. But it erases other things, too. Beautiful lost things. Lebanon was once a kind of Riviera in the Middle East, Beirut unquestionably the Paris of the region, before it succumbed to the same violent political pressures we see in the region today. All forgotten. In the dictator’s world, the world without story, how hard could it be to build a new Riviera?

I can think of another example of the erasure of story, this one also connected to the Middle East. At the opening of Alabama’s legislative session earlier this month, a group of activists urged lawmakers to be kind to immigrants, noting that Jesus was a refugee. This led to backlash the next day in some of the partisan media, with some commenters scoffing at the idea that Jesus was a refugee. “Jesus was not a refugee” was actually a headline on some supposed news websites. 

For those who care about story, I give you Matthew Chapter 2. In my Dad’s old bible, this passage is actually labeled “the flight into Egypt.”

I’m not a Baptist anymore, but I was brought up that way, and when people begin to erase stories I know by heart, I take it personally. 

Here’s another story I take personally. For a year in the 1980s, when my dad was a seminary student, we lived in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville had great schools with lots of resources, at least compared to the Alabama schools I knew. Art classes, music classes. In an effort to increase acceptance of people with disabilities, the teachers regularly brought in grownups with disabilities to teach us about their lives. I remember an older man in a suit -- we were told that he was a prominent businessman -- who walked with crutches, the metal kind that are sort of snapped with a band around your forearm. 

He talked to us about having polio as a child, and he talked about what he could and couldn’t do and how it made him feel. And he talked about the fear that every parent felt during a polio outbreak. He talked about the joy people felt when the vaccine was first introduced. He urged us to get vaccinated. 

It’s a touching story and an important one. And in our age of rising fascism, it’s being erased every day. Actively, be people who gain fame and power from its erasure. And when they erase that story, they also erase our own story – the story of how we, in recent years, came to fear and loathe a germ, and how we rejoiced when the vaccine came to us. I remember that one Juneteenth – Juneteenth, itself a celebration of memory and liberation – I remember that one Juneteeth when we all realized we had a three-day weekend and we could finally come out and party. Remember? Remember that story?

To write well, whether in fiction or non-fiction, we have to connect to these things we remember. And invariably we hit on something that someone doesn’t want us to remember. Something that is too humane or complicated for the powers that be. 

Grave of late Monroeville novelist Harper Lee.

I think that’s what Harper Lee wound up doing: remembering stories that her fascist society didn’t want to recall. Remembering a childhood, remembering a time when Lee couldn’t understand the bizarre racial system of segregationist Alabama. Remembering the 1930s, a period in which Alabama was in some ways more progressive than it would be in later decades, a period when it seemed change was possible. 

This is what you’re doing, here in this room, both writers and readers. Together, we remember and create stories, the stories that fill this curative purpose. I felt as though I needed to say that, as our first speaker today.

To give us all permission to read, to write, to enjoy, even when the world is on fire. 

Tim Lockette grew up in the Angel community, west of Jacksonville, Alabama. He has spent most of his career writing for newspapers and magazines, including The Anniston Star, The Gadsden Times, The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun and Teaching Tolerance. He's the author of the middle-grades novel "Atty at Law" and the YA novel "Tell it True," which won the Whippoorwill Book Award in 2022. He is an Instructor in Jacksonville State University’s department of English.