‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ author Harper Lee passes away at 89
The famous Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee passed away at age 89.
Lee tapped into her Alabama upbringing to deal with the challenges of racial injustice in the American South. Her death was confirmed by Harper Collins, her publisher, and by the mayor of her hometown of Monroeville, AL.
President Obama even took to social media to speak to her legacy.
“When Harper Lee sat down to write To Kill a Mockingbird, she wasn’t seeking awards or fame. She was a country girl who just wanted to tell an honest story about life as she saw it,” President Obama said this afternoon on Facebook.
“But what that one story did, more powerfully than one hundred speeches possibly could, was change the way we saw each other, and then the way we saw ourselves. Through the uncorrupted eyes of a child, she showed us the beautiful complexity of our common humanity, and the importance of striving for justice in our own lives, our communities, and our country.
“Ms. Lee changed America for the better. And there is no higher tribute we can offer her than to keep telling this timeless American story – to our students, to our neighbors, and to our children – and to constantly try, in our own lives, to finally see each other.”
To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and garnered a Pulitzer and the novel’s protagonist, Atticus Finch, is considered one of the most heroic characters in all of American literature.
