Atticus Finch Confronted What the South Couldn’t
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Recognized the Way White Southerners Face Harsh Truths. In Go Set a Watchman, She Did Not
While there are many noble characters in the pantheon of Southern fiction, few have the iconic standing of Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch. Since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird more than 50 years ago, this fictional character has become profoundly real to many Southerners, and not just because of the way Gregory Peck brought him to life on film. For former United Nations ambassador and Georgia native Andrew Young, Atticus represented “a generation of intelligent white lawyers who eventually, …