On July 11, 1960, Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel became an instant classic, won the Pulitzer Prize, and has sold more than 40 million copies. It is still widely taught in schools… and regularly challenged or banned.
Set in the Jim Crow South, the book follows a white child’s moral awakening as her father defends a Black man falsely accused of rape. For many white readers, it was the first time they were asked to confront the reality of racism. But while the story had a cultural impact, it also had a serious flaw: it told the story of racial injustice through a white lens. Which makes sense, because it’s based on the lived experience of the author.
But the Black characters, Tom Robinson, Calpurnia, only exist in the background. They are essential to the plot but are not allowed to speak for themselves. Tom is (spoiler!) wrongly convicted and killed, but his death serves more as a lesson for the white characters than a moment of collective grief or outrage for the Black community. Calpurnia remains silent. Her inner life is never explored.
The novel centers whiteness.
In 2015, one year before her death, Harper Lee’s earlier draft, Go Set a Watchman, was released. It caused immediate controversy. In this version, the little girl from To Kill a Mockingbird is an adult who returns home and discovers that her father, Atticus, holds racist views and is aligned with segregationists. Many readers were shocked. Some rejected the book entirely.
But Go Set a Watchman told a more honest story. One where heroes fall, family loyalty is tested, and confronting racism means confronting those we once admired. The title, drawn from Isaiah 21:6, calls on us to stay awake, to speak up, and to name what we see, even when it means questioning our own communities.
That is not an easy thing to do. And neither is writing it.
Harper Lee did not do it alone. Her editor, Tay Hohoff, helped shape To Kill a Mockingbird into what it became. Together, over two years, they revised, restructured, and challenged their own assumptions. That kind of editorial labor is often invisible, but essential.
Women did that work. Women are the watchmen.
But reading these books is not enough.
Many white readers treat To Kill a Mockingbird as a moral badge. They read it, feel sad, maybe assign it to their children, and move on.
But that is not the work. That is the beginning.
If we truly want to engage with the legacy of racial injustice, we need to hear from the people who lived it, not just from those who observed it.
Two works in particular offer exactly what Mockingbird does not:
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines centers a young Black man, Jefferson, who is wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. The story follows his journey toward dignity and humanity, guided by a Black teacher who is also navigating his own disillusionment. It is not about a white savior. It is about survival, resistance, and the emotional toll of injustice on Black lives.
Calpurnia by Audrey Dwyer is a modern Canadian play that directly confronts To Kill a Mockingbird’s silences. It imagines what the story would look like through the eyes of Calpurnia, the Finch family’s Black housekeeper. The play challenges the idea of who gets to tell the story, who is centered, and what happens when people of color claim narrative control.
These are the voices that were missing from Mockingbird. These are the stories that go beyond sympathy and invite us into truth.
If you are ready to go further, you are invited to read books that teach what Mockingbird only hints at:
- Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
To Kill a Mockingbird started a conversation. It is our job to continue it, with honesty, with accountability, and with a willingness to listen to those whose voices were left out.
Reading a novel about racism is not enough.
Letting it change what you tolerate, what you question, and what you teach your children, that’s where the work begins.
