Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The word antebellum means “before the war,” most often referring to the American Civil War. To what date range, roughly, does this period refer? What were some of the notable features of American life at this time? To what does the term antebellum slavery refer, in this context?

Teaching Suggestion: Just Mercy traces the racism embedded into the American criminal justice system back to antebellum slavery. Understanding the nature of antebellum slavery will give students a fuller appreciation of how deeply rooted these prejudices and biases are woven into the United States legal system.

• PBS provides an overview of this historical period in “Conditions of Antebellum Slavery.”
• In “The Barbaric History of Sugar in America,” the New York Times explains how the sugar industry and antebellum slavery were intertwined, referencing historian Walter Johnson’s book Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market and other works.

2. When the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published in 1960, it quickly became a literary sensation.