One day in school, Cecil Jacobs presented a current event about Adolf Hitler. He presented the news article to the class. “Adolf Hitler has been after the Jews and he’s puttin’ ‘em in prisons and he’s taking away all their property and he won’t let any of ‘em out of the country…”
A student in the back of the room asked, “How can he do that?”
“Who do what?” asked Miss Gates, our teacher, patiently.
“I mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a prison like that, looks like the government’d stop him,” said the student.
“Hitler is the government,” said Miss Gates. She went to the blackboard and printed the work DEMOCRACY in large letters. “Democracy,” she said. “Does anybody have a definition?”
I raised my hand and said, “Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.”
“Very good, Jean Louise, very good,” Miss Gates smiled. In front of “DEMOCRACY”, she printed “WE ARE A”. “Now class, say it all together, ‘We are a democracy.’”
We said it. Then Miss Gates said, “That’s the difference between America and Germany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship . Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. “There are no better people in the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn’t think so is a mystery to me.”
I went home later that day and asked Atticus if it was okay to hate Hitler.
“It is not,” he said. “it’s not okay to hate anybody.”
