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Lee’s second book to be published, Go Set a Watchman, was written be- fore Mockingbird but not released until just before Lee died in 2016. A principal theme in Casey’s remarks to us at the Spring Meeting was explaining the character differences in Lee’s father figure as he appeared in Watchman and in Mockingbird. A.C. Lee, Harper’s father, was “a tre- mendous feminist at a time when women were not always encouraged to get an education.” A.C. taught himself law and passed the bar, and Harper’s sister, Alice Lee, practiced law until over 100 years of age. Harper Lee herself attended but dropped out of law school at the Uni- versity of Alabama six weeks short of graduation, when she moved to New York City. At age twenty-three, she was mesmerized by Manhat- tan, having come from the segregated world in which she had lived to an integrated one. Harper loved, worshipped and idolized her father, but as she matured, it seemed his politics started to seem small time and inadequate. Cer- tainly, as Casey said, those politics were inadequate for “one of the most profound moral quandaries in this country, which is equality and justice for all.” As Harper Lee struggled to write and publish a novel, she came into con- tact with Tay Hohoff, a literary editor known around Manhattan as the Quaker Hitler. Ms. Hohoff was very interested in the history of race re- lations and the problem of civil rights. Harper then started a shift in the character of Atticus Finch as he appeared in Watchman, and he became the Atticus Finch in Mockingbird that most of us know and love, one who has had a tremendous impact on the legal community of this country. As Casey related, her editor acknowledged the complicated feelings about one’s father, about the passage of time and about the region of the world where you were born and raised, but told her that “the world needs heroes and what fiction can give us, when the world cannot, is heroes.” Casey described the impact when Gregory Peck and the film came along, which included the major innovation of moving beyond the child nar- rators in the novel, Scott and Finch, to the courtroom – which became the arena of action. Casey observed “little speeches in the novel that are interesting and beautiful became profound in the film.” The film stayed – which was one of the first critiques – felt af- firmed when Go Set a Watchman was published.” Watchman, written first but only published just before Lee’s death, is an angry adolescent draft she wrote about her father. But it had a profound effect on the later Atticus Finch who we would meet in more current Broadway productions. Gregory Peck never met the Finch portrayed in Watchman; but Jeff Daniels did, and the Finch he presented was one influenced by Watchman. Atticus Finch is a fascinating character whose afterlife is complex and has traced its way through the culture in Hollywood and Broad- way. Lee’s last word on her father was Mock- ingbird, not Watchman. As Casey said, “it’s not that she settled on a version of her father who was perfect, but the power of the attorney in that novel is not that he is perfect, but that he strives to be better.” That has always been the profundity of the character: “We were wrong to think of him as a marvelous man who never did anything wrong, but we are right to think of him as heroic because of all that he tried to do, even if he failed.” “When we think about Atticus, don’t think ‘I need to be perfect, but rather I am the embod- iment of the highest ideals of this country.’” This is the power of Atticus Finch. “We need more moral leaders not because they do every- thing right, but because they try to do every- thing better.” Sam Franklin Birmingham, AL in the culture far longer, influencing our lives. Atticus Finch is probably the most famous lawyer in this country, and he has had an esteemed afterlife. Casey returned to Tom Radney, the real-life lawyer who defended both Reverend Maxwell and his murderer, Robert Burns. Radney was like a lot of lawyers, and saw himself as a cross between Atticus and Robert Redford. Radney was a Kennedy liberal in the George Wallace South and active in Democratic politics. In fact, his tombstone describes him as “Mr. Alabama Democrat.” Radney was such a good lawyer that he “convinced Harper Lee to try and write a book about him.” Many men and women have pursued interesting legal careers inspired by Atticus Finch, including Barack Obama and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But law professors more than anyone else have been critical of the character of Atticus Finch. “Some of them criticize his legal methods, some of them criticize his moral fiber, and many of them were critical of his genteel racism SUMMER 2023 JOURNAL 54