Charles Haugland (dramaturg): What sparked your own interest in law?
Traci Griffith (Racial Justice Director, ACLU Massachusetts): I'm an only child of a lawyer, and I will say that my dad never pressured me about attending law school. He never pushed but it was always there; even as a young person, I saw inequity and injustice and always wondered why. Law seemed a good fit for that.
How did you first encounter To Kill a Mockingbird?
TG: I read it in high school like most people, but I really met it in law school. I went to Notre Dame, and my dean David Link taught legal ethics using the book as the central text. We watched the film, read the novel, and argued through the ethical questions it raises.
What sticks with you from those law school discussions?
TG: We studied it 30 years ago, and looking back, I don't think we examined race deeply enough. The book had long been held up as the story of a brilliant lawyer stepping in to right a wrong. There's so much more behind that than I understood at the time. Today, the conversations around race and the injustices that exist inside the criminal legal system run deeper.
The ACLU was a young organization in 1934, when To Kill a Mockingbird is set. How has the work changed?
TG: So, the ACLU has been around for 106 years now, and when we launched, there wasn't much case law protecting civil liberties at all. Slowly but surely, we have helped build that framework. We didn't win every case. We lost plenty, including some high-profile ones, but even the losses moved the needle, thanks to justices like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis who gave us a framework to build on.
What's different now is that we don't just work in courtrooms. We're in legislatures, city halls, Congress, and the streets, organizing alongside the people affected. Court victories don't stay won on their own; freedom takes people working in tandem to defend it.
The cover of the ACLU fall magazine features a protest sign that reads "Protect the Vote! No Jim Crow 2.0!" which is in conversation with Mockingbird’s setting in the Jim-Crow-era South. How does the current moment echo that era?
TG: From this country's founding, Black Americans have been denied, discouraged, threatened, and blocked from voting. The system was built to take that power away. Through tremendous commitment, organizing, and power-building, Black communities were able to make some gains over the decades, but we are now in a painful moment of overt suppression and silencing.
Take the recent ruling in Callais v. Louisiana: in April, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's congressional map and gutted key protections of the Voting Rights Act. Some have called it the most shameful ruling since Plessy v. Ferguson. And it immediately kicked off waves of redistricting, with state legislatures moving rapidly to gerrymander majority Black districts out of existence.
That has been infuriating to watch. But that cover illustration reflects the backlash to this rising tide of white supremacy. Black communities and our allies did not sit quietly. We organized and marched, and we fought for our rights. We have never stopped fighting. And we’ve won some victories. In South Carolina, the mobilization was so powerful that the legislature dropped plans to redistrict a majority-Black House seat out of existence — at least for now.
Both the voter suppression and the popular uprising echo what's happening nationally across a wide range of issues. When one community's voice is targeted, every community's freedom is tested.
What can someone watching this play do to get involved?
TG: Get involved locally. A wave of public pressure from ordinary people forced Georgia and South Carolina to abandon plans to delete Black voting districts from their maps; that doesn't happen without mass mobilization.
Start simple: check your registration and make sure every 18-year-old you know is registered. Make a plan and vote — early, if you can.
Here in Massachusetts, we run nonpartisan election protection, sending volunteers to work every cycle. In the upcoming midterms, well-trained, nonpartisan poll monitors have an especially important role. We are making sure that folks can go to the polls, do it without fear, and do it equitably without having to worry about whether their votes are going to count. Particularly if you speak languages in addition to English, there are places in the Commonwealth where that can be put to good use. You can sign up for poll monitor training on our website: www.aclum.org.
You can also learn how to advocate for criminal legal reforms and other policies that advance equity, opportunity, and justice. For instance, the ACLU of Mass. runs an Advocates Academy that will train you on how to lobby your elected officials and testify about policy proposals. It may sound intimidating, but it’s really not! And it can make a difference.
The bottom line is, no one can do everything... but everyone can do something. And all those actions really do make a difference. Find a cause you’re passionate about and show up when and where you can. That’s the best way to have an impact.
For more information or to get involved, visit aclum.org/get-involved/