In chapter 1, Scout describes Maycomb as,
"an old tired town when I first knew it", summer heat and slow pace of life. She notes, "There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County".
The Great Depression was, in large part, a product of the stock market crash of 1929. To kill a Mockingbird reflected the Great Depression era of the 1930's. Country people like the Cunninghams could not afford to grow their crops. Draught also ruined much of what they had to grow so they could not even feed their families.
The book describes maycomb as a town full of segregation and black suffering.