Fifty years ago this week, Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird was introduced to the world, and today it is considered one of the most beloved American novels ever written. When I first read the book as a young boy, I remember having an intense emotional reaction--a reaction not unlike Jem's--"his face streaked with angry tears" after his father lost the verdict. I was absolutely staggered that the twelve white members of that Maycomb County jury had convicted Tom Robinson of rape, and I became drawn to stories, as both a reader and a writer, where heroic lawyers put their lives at risk to stand up for what's right. For the past two years, I have been researching and writing a book about Thurgood Marshall--arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century and one who shared much in common with the fictitious Atticus Finch.
In the years before he won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that ended legalized segregation in public schools, Thurgood Marshall often found himself in hostile Southern towns not unlike Lee's Maycomb, Alabama, putting himself in danger by representing powerless men falsely accused of rape or murder. At one point in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus tells Jem that courage is "when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." That pretty much summed up Marshall's predicament when he'd take on such cases in the South.
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