There’s lots of talk about the recent film Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols, and
starring Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as the interracial couple who triumphed
in the Supreme Court over Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. It’s a sweet
film, and one that takes an intimate approach to the subject in a way that is
sure to be embraced by teachers. Loving contrasts
the quotidian events of rural life and love with the broader politics of racism
in the United States in a way that mostly charms, even if it is somewhat
frustrating in its deliberate focus away from the Civil Rights Movement.
In an interview with NPR,
Nichols discusses how he first became aware of the story of Richard and Mildred
Loving and their battle with anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia when he was introduced
to the HBO documentary on the Lovings in 2012. Nichols says, “[F]or that to be the first time that I heard about
Richard and Mildred Loving was kind of unacceptable to me. I think this is
something that people more than just law students that have taken
constitutional law classes, you know, should have a familiarity with,
especially now.”
We couldn’t agree more. So many of our nation’s signature
Supreme Court cases are unknown to the people of our nation. And many of the
decisions, like Loving v. Virginia,
are actually relatively accessible and deeply engaging. They certainly are
readable by, as Nichols writes, “more than just law students.”
In fact, we think many Supreme Court cases make terrific,
engaging companion texts to some of our most commonly taught literary texts.
For example, we use an excerpt from Loving v. Virginia in Using Informational Text to Teach To Kill A Mockingbird. The case serves as the
informational text-center of our unit, “What’s Up with Mr. Dolphus Raymond?”
Studying Loving v. Virginia gives
students the legal context with which to understand the fact that the white Dolphus
Raymond could not legally marry the African-American mother of his children. Scout
may or may not be aware of this prohibition, which makes it all the more
inaccessible to students today. Reading Loving
v. Virginia together with Mockingbird
reveals the deeper gravity and historical resonance behind Raymond’s
drunken masquerade. Nichols’s Loving
surely deserves a place in our classrooms as well (even just the 2 1/2 minute trailer for the film does fine work in unpacking for students the taboos against
interracial marriage).
Indeed, reading Mockingbird together with Loving
v. Virginia is one way, we think, in which the Common Core helps us engage
students in “difficult conversations” (Chadwick 91) about race, class, and
social injustice. Jocelyn A. Chadwick
references these “difficult conversations” in her excellent discussion of
teaching Huckleberry Finn in the
November 2016 issue of English Journal.
Her essay forms one of several companion pieces to Peter Smagorinsky’s
provocative essay on whether it is “time to prohibit Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn” (75).
Leaving aside the issue of teaching Huck, one issue that struck us in the
debate in EJ was Smagorinsky’s worry
about the Common Core’s “emphasis on reading within the four corners of the
page while sublimating emotional responses in service of textual analysis”
(80). This worry seems to echo earlier concerns that the Common Core would
force English teachers to put aside literature in favor of instructional
manuals.
The Common Core, however, asks us to broaden, not
narrow, our students’ reading. Students are sometimes asked to read “within the
four corners of the page,” but the Common Core also introduced the informational
text standard and emphasized the important skill of putting different kinds of
texts into critical conversation. Anchor Standard 9, for example, asks students
to “Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to
build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take” (CCSS, 2010).
Explicitly, this standard articulates a reading practice in which students use
multiple texts to build an “informative context” that expands beyond any
singular close examination of a solitary text.
Particularly for texts like Mockingbird and Huckleberry
Finn, that informative context can be just as important as the emotional
context. Emotional responses to literature can and should retain a place in our
classrooms, but we also have a responsibility to help place those responses
within the complex and politically difficult historical context that students often
can’t access from the literary text alone. After all, Scout and Jem think
Dolphus Raymond is a drunk because they have no context within which to
understand his actions and behavior. Informational texts, like Loving v. Virginia and Nichols’s Loving, make sure our students don’t
make those same mistakes. These companion texts to Mockingbird are crucial tools for us to use in meeting the Common
Core Standards, building literacy across a range of text types, and facilitating
difficult but critical classroom conversations.
