By Allison Samuels, Newsweek, February 28, 2009

The day my ninth-grade English teacher, Mr. Buzzell, assigned my class "To Kill a Mockingbird" still sticks in my mind, mainly because I remember being the only one in the room excited to tackle the Harper Lee classic. Unlike most of my classmates, I'd already read the book about a white lawyer representing a black man accused of rape during the Great Depression. I'd also seen the movie twice (my mother loved Gregory Peck). Mr. Buzzell was a British-born white teacher attempting to explain the complexities of racism and injustice at a mixed-race school in Augusta, Ga., so the class discussions were pretty lively.

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