Miscegenation on Trial: To Kill a Mockingbird and the Doctrine of Interracial Intimacy

The landmark Supreme Court cases of the 1950\u27s and 1960\u27s provide a framework for analyzing the rapidly shifting social norms of the Civil Rights Era. Indeed, one can scarcely discuss this period of American history without mentioning the groundbreaking decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Looking solely at the Court\u27s decisions, however, would be a vast oversimplification of the cultural influences that shaped American race relations during this time. In order to enrich an understanding of the development of legal doctrine during the Civil Rights era, I am interested in analyzing a second source of social influence—literature. The story of To Kill a Mockingbird, told in both the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the Academy Award-winning film (1962), is a useful case study for analyzing the interrelated influence of literary and legal texts. My Comps project explores the development of American cultural dialogues around interracial intimacy through an interdisciplinary analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird and Supreme Court doctrine