I was ready to punch Cecil Jacobs in the face. He had announced in the schoolyard the day before that Scout Finch’s daddy defended n*****s.
I asked Atticus, “Do you defend n*****s, Atticus?”
Atticus replied, “Of course I do. Don’t say n****r, Scout. That’s common .”
“That's what everybody at school says.”
“From now on it’ll be everybody less one –“
“Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin’ that way, why do you send me to school?”
Atticus looked at me amused . Atticus said that he was defending a Negro by the name of Tom Robinson. He lives in the houses beyond the town dump. He goes to Calpurnia’s church and she knows his family well. She says that they are clean living folk. There are people who say I shouldn’t defend him.
