civil rights

To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about a young girl growing up in a small town in the South the 1930's.  Jean Louise Finch is the narrator and central character of the story.  Everyone calls her Scout.  The story begins when Scout is 6 years old but she tells us the story as an adult looking back on her childhood.  Because this story is narrated by an adult woman about her life as a young girl, this story is a good way to reflect on childhood as an adult.  Through Scout's eyes, we learn a lot about race, racism and justice in the American South in the early 20th Century.  But we can also appreciate even more universal themes of growing up, education, gender, fear, courage and character. 

Ruby Bridges was the first African American child who attended a white school in the segregated South during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on 14 November, 1960. She is also the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With, by Norman Rockwell. In this video, she talks with President Barack Obama at the Norman Rockwell Museum in front of the iconic picture. Along with the story about the Norman Rockwell Painting, this story can be used to talk about being different, being excluded and belonging, civil rights, history. But you can also use this on a very personal level to talk about the real person in the painting who went to first grade as a little girl.