President Obama said the late Harper Lee “changed America for the better” with her beloved novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
In a statement featuring some of the book’s most poignant quotes, Obama paid tribute to Lee, who died Friday at age 89.
“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,” Obama said.
“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.”
President George W. Bush awarded Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. She won the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960 and has become a staple in American classrooms with its themes about childhood innocence and race in the Deep South.
Though the novel was immensely successful, Lee herself was reclusive, living her entire life in her hometown of Monroeville, Ala. The surprise 2015 publication of what was billed as a sequel to Mockingbird, titled Go Set a Watchman, was first met with shock and elation, and then suspicion in some circles about whether Lee had intended for its release or had been taken advantage of in her older age.
“Ms. Lee changed America for the better,” Obama said. “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.”
