Happy Thanksgiving!
Several of you, who will be off influencing young minds this week, requested that I let you know what you'd be missing in the intervening days, so here goes. You will ostensibly have finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and enjoyed it, I hope. In class, we will be discussing some of the major themes of the book, and particularly focusing our conversation toward three potential persuasive essay topics.
Rather than clutter the minds of those of you who will be working with youngsters this week, I'll take the liberty of assigning you an essay topic, with the completed essay to be submitted upon your return to civilization. You won't, unfortunately, benefit from class discussion, but I know in my heart that you're all capable of giving me something grand on your own. So here it is:
Writing Situation: In April of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed for his role in civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. In a thinly-veiled reference to the "outsider" King's activities in the city, eight Christian and Jewish Alabama church leaders published A Call for Unity in a local newspaper, encouraging blacks to allow civil rights matters to be solved in court, rather than on the streets. In reply, King wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, condemning Southern Whites who supported his cause in word, but not in deed. He suggested that such "moderate whites" would rather have peace than justice.
Some people have said that Atticus Finch is the type of person King was condemning. In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is shown to be a reluctant hero whose preference is to avoid conflict if at all possible. Instead of being an active agent working for good in his community, Atticus is a reserved and quiet man who wants peace, not justice.
Writing Directions: Write a multi-paragraph essay in which you disagree or agree with this statement. Use supporting evidence from To Kill a Mockingbird as well as the documents linked above.
