In To Kill a Mockingbird, how can the identity of the town of Maycomb best be described, and what does this community fear?

Maycomb is a town in which the old is preserved because it
is revered--rightly or wrongly. Its geographic location is a telling metaphor for this
characteristic: Maycomb is set away from the river, making access difficult. As a
result, Maycomb has

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remained the same size for a hundred years, an
island in a patchwork sea of cotton fields and
timberland.

One harmless
example of this tenacious preserving of what was is that the pillars of the original
courthouse adorn the conflicting style of the Victorian replacement of the
fire-destroyed original. A far less harmless and, indeed, to some, overtly harmful
example is the preeminence given to any one who is of a white ethnicity--even someone
like Bob Ewell, "the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations"--over any one who is
descended of an African ethnicity--even someone as admired and respected as Tom
Robinson.

The basic and essential fear of Maycomb in relation to this
descriptive characteristic is that the foundation of the revered antiquity of the past
may be shattered and the disturbing reality of the present may cause a revolution in the
old way of living, of doing things, and of being as Maycomb is made up of "a people
determined to preserve every physical scrap of the past."