Richard McAdams: What Did Atticus Finch Think of the Civil Rights Movement?

What Did Atticus Finch Think of the Civil Rights Movement?

That Harper Lee will publish another novel in July, Go Set a Watchman, has spawned a powerful mixture of excitement and concern. Excitement because the new book is a sequel of sorts to her 1960 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most widely read and beloved books ever written and the source for an acclaimed film. Concern because Harper Lee may no longer able to care for her own interests and the new book, written before Mockingbird, when Lee was still learning her craft, might not succeed at the same high level. The result could tarnish the exalted stature of Mockingbird and its author.

Yet there is more at stake in publication than just another pleasant summer read for curious fans. Commentators have mostly ignored the way that the new book will shine a spotlight on America and the civil rights movement of the 1950s. The July publication will inevitably raise questions about whether we should continue to assignMockingbird to schoolchildren and to revere the fictional hero Atticus Finch for having stood up to the racist norms of the Old South.

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