Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, a human side of the Cunningham family was shown. Scout and Atticus looked beyond their reputation to see the Cunninghams for who they were. Scout and her father had a special understanding about the family. They came to recognize their struggles.
The Cunningham family was large and had a negative reputation in and near Maycomb, Alabama. Members of the family were viewed as being "the wrong crowd." They got drunk on whiskey, went to the gambling hall, and went to the movie theater on Sundays. Scout first mentioned the Cunningham family and their bad reputation in chapter one:
"They did little, but enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and went to the picture show; they attended dances at the county's riverside gambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole whiskey."
Scout introduced young Walter Cunningham in chapter two. He was in her class on the first day of school. Miss Caroline, their teacher, expected Walter Cunningham to live up to her expectations of what a student should be. Walter Cunningham did not fit that expected mold. He wore no shoes and it was evident that he had hookworms. He often had to help his father with farming, so he was unable to attend school all year. Scout described him:
"Walter Cunningham's face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caught hookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows. If Walter had owned any shoes he would have worn them the first day of school and then discarded them until midwinter."
Walter Cunningham did not bring lunch to school with him. Miss Caroline questioned him about it. When he said that he forgot it, the teacher offered to loan him a quarter. Walter refused to take it. After a back and forth conversation, Scout piped up and explained to Miss Caroline that he could not take it. She told her teacher that Cunninghams "'never took anything they [could not] pay back.'"
It was after this that Scout, the narrator, showed how the Cunninghams were determined to pay back any money they owed. Walter's father had sought legal help from Scout's father. Unable to pay with money, the man had given the Finch family firewood, turnip greens, hickory nuts, and more. She recalled it:
"One morning Jem and I found a load of stovewood in the back yard. Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps. With Christmas came a crate of smilax and holly. That spring when we found a crokersack full of turnip greens, Atticus said Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him."
Miss Caroline did not know Walter Cunningham or his family. She expected Walter fit her ideal of what a student should be. She thought that students should be attentive, eager to learn, clean, well fed, and healthy. Walter Cunningham was from an uneducated family, was repeating the first grade, had no shoes, was not completely healthy, and had no lunch to eat. Scout understood Walter because she remembered how determined his father had been to pay his legal fees. She recalled how for months he had paid Atticus back any way he could. Scout had a "special knowledge of the Cunningham tribe."
Later, in chapter fifteen, Atticus sat outside the jailhouse guarding Tom Robinson. Jem and Scout snuck out to the jailhouse. A mob of angry men approached Atticus. Mr. Cunningham, Walter's father, was among them. Scout spotted him in the mob. She persistently engaged him in conversation. She told him to tell Walter she said hello. Finally, he agreed to do so. Then he told the mob to leave.
In chapter sixteen, Atticus spoke to Scout about the incident. He told her that:
"'Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man.'"
He was referring to the fact that despite his anger, Mr. Cunningham was a regular person. Atticus looked beyond the Cunningham reputation and saw the man as he was.
Later, in chapter twenty-three, Scout and Jem had a conversation about family background. They talked about people being more educated as having a better family background. Scout disagreed, using the Cunninghams as an example:
"'Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.'"
Once again, the Cunningham family was shown to be made up of regular people with the additional struggles of poverty and little time for education.
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