Shane Sharpe’s voice reflected the Honors College dean’s excitement about the event’s keynote speaker before Tuesday’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” 50th Anniversary Celebration at the UA Law School.

“It brings national attention to have the attorney general to the University of Alabama to talk about and commemorate the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’” Sharpe said before the event. “We’re excited.”

Ken Randall, dean of the UA Law School, began the first event of the celebration by introducing the attorney general to the crowd of students and faculty in the Law School’s McMillan Lecture Hall.

“No work of literature before or since [‘To Kill a Mockingbird’] has had a comparable influence on our profession,” Randall said. “Harper Lee is a pioneer… she helped to redefine the scope of the legal profession.

“She empowered lawyers,” Randall said. “[Lee] published the book in 1960, at the very moment when lawyers would begin to take their stand beside social activists in the fight for integration and equality.”

The themes of integration and equality weighed heavily in Attorney General Eric Holder’s remarks. His wife Sharon Malone attended the event and is the sister of Vivian Malone Jones, one of the first African American students to attend the University of Alabama in 1963.

“It is really an honor to support the work being done on the University of Alabama campus to ensure that this place of learning is also a place of healing,” Holder said. “Because of that work, this University, once a battleground in America’s civil rights struggle, is now a force for tolerance and for inclusion, a forum for the peaceful exchange of ideas.

 “With the new issues and fears that now confront us, it remains our story,” he said. “The message still resonates with us today, 50 years later.”

Holder emphasized throughout his speech the importance of searching for ideal justice at the current time.

“As we have seen in recent decades, and unfortunately, in recent days, the world has not yet run its course of religious intolerance and bigotry. Injustice remains … divisions and disparities remain.”

Holder reminded the audience, though, that change starts with individual people.

“Individual actions count, individual actions matter,” he said. “’To Kill a Mockingbird’ contains a simple but important message—the pursuit of justice can take many forms, but no matter what form, it always begins the same way, with a simple action by a hopeful person.”

After the ceremony in the lecture hall, Holder briefly appeared at a reception held by the Honors College. Honors students and University faculty in attendance had the opportunity to meet the attorney general.

Susan Speaker, one of the event’s organizers and a sophomore in the Honors College, was pleased with how the ceremony played out.

“I felt so honored to have the attorney general of the United States come and speak here, and I was blown away by his speech. It was so inspiring and encouraging—I left inspired to go out and change the world, like he talked about,” she said.

Even more moved by the celebration of the novel’s 50th anniversary was Sharon Malone.

“My family has longstanding ties with the University of Alabama, and over the years, [Vivian] came to love it here and so do we,” she said.

“The historical significance of having an attorney general be responsible for getting my sister into the University of Alabama, and now bringing my husband back here as the attorney general is something that will forever be a warm spot in my heart,” she said.