Help with a paper on To Kill a Mockingbird?

Question

I'm writing an analytical essay on the movie To Kill a Mockingbird. I need to determine wether or not Atticus was an idealist but I can do that part. The part I need help with is I need to relate Atticus to a specific figure in either women's or African-American's history that had to do an "Unpleasant job" for the betterment of soceity. If you could help me that would be awesome!

oh and please, I like to get creative with my papers so no mainstream people like M.L.K.jr. or Mlcom X or Rosa Parks. Somebody who was extremly important but not as famous.

Answer 1

Being from Connecticut, I like to think of one of our state heroines, Prudence Crandall:

"In 1831, Prudence Crandall, educator, emancipator, and human rights advocate, established a school which in 1833, became the first Black female academy in New England at Canterbury, Connecticut. This later action resulted in her arrest and imprisonment for violating the "Black Law."
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/history/crandall.html

PS And To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my all-time favorite books, and movies.

Answer 2

John F. Kennedy wrote a book Profiles In Courage, and from that book came a 26-episode TV series, featuring historical figures from the book...and then expanding into more. Prudence Crandall was one of those featured in the TV Series, and I also vividly remember how pre-president John Adams as young lawyer in Boston took on the unpopular cause of defending some British soldiers who had the misfortune to shoot on an unarmed mob they felt threatened them (sort of the Kent State misfortune of the day). Check out the names listed on the website below for some fascinating idealists from history, names both familiar and forgotten.

Answer 3

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born July 18, 1918) was the first President of South Africa to be elected in fully-representative democratic elections.

Before his presidency, Mandela was a prominent anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress (ANC), and was sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage after he went underground and began the ANC's armed struggle.

Through his 27 years in prison, much of it spent in a cell on Robben Island, Mandela became the most widely known figure in the struggle against apartheid. Among opponents of apartheid in South Africa and internationally, he became a cultural icon of freedom and equality comparable with Mahatma Gandhi. However, the apartheid government and nations sympathetic to it condemned him and the ANC as communists and terrorists, and he became a figure of hatred among many South African whites, supporters of apartheid, and opponents of the ANC.

Answer 4

What about Rosa Parks. She knew she would be arrested for sitting in the seat of a segregated bus, but she did it anyway because she knew in the long run change must occur to better society.