It was just a coincidence that the actor Gregory Peck died only a few days after the American Film Institute named his most famous character, Atticus Finch, the greatest American film hero ever. But it is a coincidence worth the next 700 or so words. Atticus is the Southern lawyer in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He defends a black man erroneously accused of raping and beating a white woman in Depression era Alabama.
- J. Brady McCollough
It’s hard to deny that Atticus deserves the title that the AFI has bestowed upon him. He is what most Americans fancy themselves as being: the optimistic underdog, doing what is right to fight injustice even at considerable risk. While Atticus knows that the other residents of his town will despise him for even defending a black man, he takes the case because he knows that it is the right thing to do – an aspiration that has become a clich