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To Kill a Mockingbird Research - 9th Grade: Home

Project Overview

In a group of no more than three people, students will select one of the topics at the bottom of this page (a topic may not be repeated within a block). 

You will research this topic: 

  • Discover what it was.
  • Note who or what was involved in it. 
  • Learn its impact and importance to US History. 
  • Determine how it relates to To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. 

Once you have completed your research, you will draft a script of a news broadcast about the topic, and record a two-three minute video using WeVideo. The video will be graded as your final product. 

In the video, you will 

  • Summarize your research for the class. 
  • Present as a newscaster giving the most important facts succinctly and sufficiently. 

Research Topic Options

  1. Jim Crow Laws: History, Guiding Policies, and Impact on African-Americans
  2. The Ku Klux Klan: History and Methods of Instilling Fear
  3. Plessy v. Ferguson (Supreme Court Case): Its background and its impact on "Separate but Equal"
  4. The Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression: The impact on economic prosperity for African-Americans and white Americans in America
  5. The Dust Bowl: The impact on Economic Prosperity for African-Americans and white Americans
  6. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
  7. The Rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany: Hitler's rise to power, the formation of the Nazi Party, and the treatment of African-Americans in the United States when compared to the Jews in Germany
  8. Brown v. Board of Education (Supreme Court Case): Its background and its impact on education rights
  9. Education of African-Americans in the South after the Civil War and prior to the 1950s (leading up to Brown v. the Board of Education): general history and overview
  10. Major criminal court procedures and the Sixth Amendment: the Right to Counsel (Atticus defending Tom Robinson) and the Right to a Jury Trial (Right to a Jury of Your Peers)
  11. The Fairness of Capital Punishment: The Eighth Amendment, the Death Penalty, and "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"
  12. The Harlem Renaissance: The rebirth of black arts and culture in the North
  13. Harper Lee's Biography: How her life connects to the story she wrote
  14. The Role of Women in the 1930s South
  15. The Pulitzer Prize
  16. Food in To Kill a Mockingbird: scuppernogs, ambrosia salad, Lane cake, collard green, cracklin' bread, etc. 
  17. Black Lives Matter Movement
  18. 2020 Riots and Protests