Classic story sets the stage for student desegregation

Desiree Hunter

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A high school play based on Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” brought together black and white high school students to tell the classic story of racial injustice — and even drew out the novel’s reclusive author.

The invitation-only Jan. 10 performance was organized to celebrate diversity and arts education in Alabama, the home state of the novel’s author, whose book and the movie made from it won immediate acclaim at a time when Alabama was still rigidly segregated.

Joseph Williams, a 16-year-old black student, assumed his peers from nearly all-white Mountain Brook High would immediately see his baggy clothes and make him out for a hoodlum when they begin rehearsing the play.

The sophomore, who attends all-black Fairfield High Preparatory School, was one of about 60 students from the two schools who came together to perform the play from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which looks at racism through the eyes of a tenacious tomboy named Scout. Full story

Exhibit illustrates race as a social construction

Patrick Condon

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Going to the Science Museum of Minnesota was no pleasure trip for Monica Gorde and her four children. The newest attraction, a special exhibit on race, was something she felt they had to see.

Gorde and her adopted children — three from India, one from Guatemala — were transfixed as they passed through the exhibit, which argues that differences in skin color are insignificant.

“My 11-year-old son cannot talk about race,” Gorde said. “I think this visit has been emotionally draining for him. He’s off hiding right now.” Full story

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