64 pages • 2 hours read
Lynda RutledgeMockingbird Summer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 18-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
As Corky waits at the drugstore for America to arrive, she sees Earl, her father’s employee, taking a gun from his car and going back into the store. Corky also notices a van full of students from the Black Presbyterian college pulling up out front. One by one the students enter the store and move toward the soda fountain. Corky suddenly understands what Noah IV and Dr. DuBose were talking to her father about—she’s witnessing High Cotton’s first sit-in protest. Corky remembers the violence she’s seen on TV during such protests and feels scared. America arrives, looking shocked, and Corky wants to shout that she did not invite her for this. America runs away.
At first, nobody moves. Then, Mack sits down at the soda fountain and waits for the first to student to sit next to him. Cal looks irritated with his son and Noah IV yells at him to stop. Corky realizes how quickly hatred can escalate to violence, and understands why Earl got the gun. Despite Noah IV’s protests, Cal tells Earl to serve the students without further incident.
After the sit-in ends, a reporter comes by the drugstore and interviews Corky about what happened—he tells her reading newspaper articles is one way people can learn. Corky realizes she wants to be a journalist. The man gives her a card for when she goes to journalism school. Inside, Corky hears Mack and Cal arguing. Mack insists he did what was right, but Cal worries it might harm their business.
Chapter 19 Summary
The day of the softball game, the reporter’s article appears in the paper and Cal closes the drugstore for a day to avoid unrest. Corky worries about whether America will come to the game. When Corky and Mack arrive at the field, they see an unusually large crowd gathered to watch. Just before the game begins, America appears running toward the field, and the girls welcome her excitedly. Residents from the Southside join the spectators, and Corky spots Willy among them.
The game starts despite Noah IV’s protests to Pastor Pete. The Baptist girls make a series of mistakes, giving the Methodists the lead, but America makes it on base and Corky reaches home plate. Seeing America’s skill, the girls push themselves harder. The Methodist team continues in the lead, Mack coaches the girls from the sidelines, and America steals the ball. Pastor Doug of the Methodists protests that stealing the ball is not allowed in softball, but Tommy (who’s acting as umpire) reads the rule from his book. Mack sees Bubba eyeing the Black spectators in the stands.
America’s athletic prowess continues to boost the team, and Mack encourages the rest of the girls despite their mistakes. In the end, the Baptist team wins and Pastor Pete treats both teams to ice-cream. Corky realizes America is missing. Roy Rogers runs toward the dark parking lot and Corky follows. She sees two men yelling and pulling America with them. Roy attacks one of the men and Corky calls Mack, who hits the man with the hardball. America kicks him and runs toward the highway. Corky calls after her asking if she’s okay. America yells at her to go home.
Mack sees Bubba in his car trying to escape. He runs and kicks it. Bubba panics, repeating that the does not know the men. Mack forces Bubba to confess he was ranting about America at the bar. Mack sees somebody else in the shadows. Tommy appears at the sound of a gunshot, and he and Corky find Mack on the ground with blood running from his eye. Tommy says he might lose his sight if he moves.
Chapter 20 Summary
After Mack leaves for the hospital, Tommy searches for the perpetrators in vain. He goes to the bar that Bubba frequents but nobody will answer his questions. Mack explains that he saw Bubba talking with two strangers in an old, gray car, but Tommy’s search yields nothing and nobody is held accountable for the attacks against America and Mack. Mack learns that he will lose his sight in his injured eye. Everybody in town learns the news and Pastor Pete resigns, leaving High Cotton forever. In his last sermon, he says that people forget to fight against evil and reminds the congregation of a passage from the scriptures: “[t]he truth will set you free” (262). His departure splits the church.
People in town continue their lives, but for Corky nothing is “normal.” She feels guilty for not speaking up about the truck sooner. Mack returns home to recover but his baseball dreams have collapsed. His parents learn that he was accepted onto the university’s baseball team and Cal must deliver the sad news.
America and Evangeline have disappeared and nobody knows where they are. Corky crosses to the Southside again to find Reverend Washington. He asks about Mack, then says that the world is full of snakes trying to do wrong.
Corky goes to the drugstore and learns that America’s father has repaid Cal for the loan and for America’s sneakers. Corky heads to the library to report that she lost the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but finds that America has returned it. Inside the book, Corky finds a letter from America, who writes that she is okay and that she will never forget her. She hopes that they will meet again someday. Corky cries.
Chapters 18-20 Analysis
The increasingly visible influence of the civil rights movement in High Cotton emphasizes the novel’s thematic interest in Coming of Age in a Transformative Era. The town experiences the first sit-in protest in its history inside the Corcoran drugstore. Black students march into the store and while everybody else remains frozen in place, Mack defies the Jim Crow laws by sitting at the soda fountain and inviting the students to sit next to him. Seeing the anger in Noah IV’s reaction helps Corky realize that white rage instigates racial violence: “Corky gazed at Noah IV’s face, contorted with anger, and realized this might have been the way the Jackson, Mississippi, violence began” (219). The incident proves pivotal in Corky’s arc when a reporter interviews her about the protest, exposing Corky to the power of storytelling as a tool of social justice and fueling her desire to become a journalist.
Rutledge positions the first integrated softball game between the Baptists and the Methodists as a critical step toward dismantling High Cotton’s long legacy of racial discrimination and oppression. Spectators from both sides of town attend and the match takes on historical significance for High Cotton:
It was an amazing sight. For the first time in the history of High Cotton, the citizenry of both sides of the town’s railroad tracks were in the same place, watching the same game, a situation so unheard of that some who saw it called it a bit of a miracle (229).
Rutledge juxtaposes the celebration and excitement of America leading the Baptist team to victory with the vicious verbal abuse and racial slurs hurled at America in the wake of the game, suggesting the ways in which racialized hate attempts to poison social change. Rutledge reinforces the motif of the truck in the novel’s climax as two mysterious figures attempt to assault America after the game and Mack gets shot, losing sight in one of his eyes. The perpetrators remain unpunished, emphasizing the importance of the fight for Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in the 1960s. Rutledge ends the section with Pastor Pete’s final sermon, connecting the racialized violence of the attack with the Christian notion of evil. Pastor Pete notes that racism “is the worst kind of evil” (259). In Corky’s conversation with Reverend Washington, the Christian symbolism of the snake recurs, reinforcing the alignment between racism and moral corruption. The minister explains: “That’s the world we must journey through, one full of snakes willing to do wrong” (265).
Bearing witness to racialized violence firsthand and America’s family leaving town completes the coming-of-age arc Rutledge establishes for Corky. America’s final goodbye to Corky—the letter she leaves inside the library copy of To Kill a Mockingbird—reinforces the central theme of Developing Consciousness Through Friendship and Literature. America’s letter reaffirms their bond and foreshadows their future meeting as adults.
