Just Mercy

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The word antebellum means “before the war,” most often referring to the American Civil War. To what date range, roughly, does this period refer? What were some of the notable features of American life at this time? To what does the term antebellum slavery refer, in this context?

Teaching Suggestion: Just Mercy traces the racism embedded into the American criminal justice system back to antebellum slavery. Understanding the nature of antebellum slavery will give students a fuller appreciation of how deeply rooted these prejudices and biases are woven into the United States legal system.

• PBS provides an overview of this historical period in “Conditions of Antebellum Slavery.”
• In “The Barbaric History of Sugar in America,” the New York Times explains how the sugar industry and antebellum slavery were intertwined, referencing historian Walter Johnson’s book Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market and other works.

2. When the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published in 1960, it quickly became a literary sensation. The book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1961 and has become a classic work. What do you know about this book, in terms of its plot and characters? Why do you think it’s so beloved? What has changed since 1960, if anything, about the American criminal justice system as depicted in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Teaching Suggestion: To Kill a Mockingbird is featured time and time again throughout Just Mercy. Stevenson uses it as a literary device that points to the hypocrisy and blindness of the white community in America when it comes to matters of racism and prejudice. White Americans praise To Kill a Mockingbird yet often ignore the existence of bigotry in their own backyards. Students should keep the full history and meaning of To Kill a Mockingbird in mind as they read the book.

• PBS’s “Reevaluating To Kill a Mockingbird 60 Years Later” is a 6-minute video analyzing how Lee’s novel is perceived today. The page also features a transcript of the interview.
• The Washington Post’s “The Truths ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Tells About White People” is an opinion piece written on the 60th anniversary of the book’s publication.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the book.

The concept of mercy can have many different meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. Those contexts can be ethical, religious, or legal in nature, but generally, people use the word mercy to describe compassion and forgiveness. What does the word mercy mean to you? Have you ever shown mercy? Have you ever received it?

Teaching Suggestion: The theme of Mercy is a major one throughout the book, and students from various religious and cultural backgrounds may have different understandings of what it means to them. If class discussion is slow to start, you can opt to provide these or other examples of the precise contexts in which mercy is used in religious and legal contexts:

• In the Catholic tradition, Saint Thomas Aquinas described the concept of “divine mercy,” as defined in the article “Divine Mercy 101: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Virtue of Mercy.”
• The Huffington Post article “The Islamic Notion of Mercy” offers an explanation of types of mercy in the Islamic faith.
• Mercy is also known as “clemency” in a legal context. The legal definition of mercy is explored in “Clemency 101: How Sentences Can Be Pardoned or Commuted” by the Center for American Progress.

Differentiation Suggestion: A differentiation strategy for ELL and different learners might include the 7-minute video “What Is Mercy?” by Ascension Presents, in which Father Chris Alar explains the concept of mercy, or a different video or audio recording that offers a description of mercy. The description might be used as a jumping-off point for discussion, regardless of students’ religious beliefs: What do they think of Father Alar’s definition of mercy? Does it resonate with them?