Just as is the case today, the educated class held the pronouncements of science quite dearly. The best science of Atticus’s time would have confirmed the belief that whites were superior and interbreeding was bad for mankind. That Atticus would not have said this directly in the 1930s is hardly surprising. It was a belief so widely held that it barely required mentioning. By the 1950s of “Go Set a Watchman,” this was no longer true.

The closest Atticus comes to expressing the notion of equality comes in his closing argument in the case of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. He says:

“You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”

Making the very Christian argument that we are all sinners by no means suggests Atticus Finch would have viewed blacks as equals or supported integration. It seems like a hard circle for us to square. It seems it was a hard circle for Atticus’ daughter, Jean Louise, as well. The realization that Atticus harbored deeply racist views challenges us with the idea of the moral racist. This kind man, this model father, this defender of the underprivileged was a racist. Is that a concept we can still accept?