In defense of To Kill a Mockingbird: The 1962 film about racism in theaters this week

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/28/mock-m28.html
Date Written:  2019-03-29
Publisher:  World Socialist Web Site
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23594

Attempts to remove To Kill a Mockingbird from curricula are misguided and ignore the artistic and courageous ambitions of the book and film.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The writing of To Kill a Mockingbird was made possible in part by the mass struggles of the Civil Rights movement, and it further encouraged them. Lee, a native Alabaman born in 1926, was influenced by the case of the Scottsboro Boys in 1931 and the 1934 trial in Monroeville, Alabama, (Lee's hometown) of Walter Lett, a black former convict, accused of sexual assault by a poor white woman. Lett was initially sentenced to death, but his sentence was reduced to life and he died in prison. The horrifying murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black youth, in 1955 in Mississippi was still a fresh wound....

The movie takes on a new significance, however, in light of the toxic arguments of contemporary identity politics advocates. First, the latter insist—in the face of social and demographic evidence proving the opposite—that the races can't get along and that the white population is hopelessly racist. Second, these forces attack due process and the presumption of innocence, insisting that in cases of alleged sexual misconduct accusers "must be believed."

To Kill a Mockingbird has faced numerous attempts—in the first place, by explicitly right-wing forces—over the years by school boards to ban it. One of the first was carried out by the Hanover County, Virginia, board in 1966, on the grounds that the novel was "immoral literature." In the face of public outrage, including an open letter from Harper Lee, the board retreated.