Recently, the 50th anniversary of one of my favorite films quietly passed. If you’ve read as many as two of my columns you’re aware of the fact that I’m a huge movie fan. Perhaps the constant stream of film references tipped you off.

There are literally hundreds of films that I hold in high esteem, but none more so than “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I’m not alone in my admiration for it. The film bubbles to the top tier of virtually every compilation of highly regarded films. Gregory Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch won the Best Actor Oscar and landed the character in the number one spot on the AFI’s list of top 100 film heroes. Numbers 2 and 3 were Indiana Jones and James Bond. The book is one of the most widely read in the English language, and is taught in classrooms all over the world. It has never been out of print since its initial publication in 1960. The movie is also one of the few filmic literary adaptations that is the equal of the book, although comparatively less rich in detail. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure of experiencing both. If you have not already done so, put them on your bucket list. I have a friend whose father saw the film while on a business trip upon its initial release and excitedly called home to urge his family to drop everything and rush out to see it. When they asked him what the title was, he hesitated for a moment and said, “Go Shoot a Bird.”

While both versions follow the unfortunate – but familiar — liberal tendency to examine the African-American experience through Caucasoid eyes, they do so with uncommon sensitivity. Perhaps, given the sincerity of both versions, they can be forgiven this rather glaring defect.

I re-read the book and re-watched the film recently, and concluded that “To Kill a Mockingbird.” is as much a coming-of-age film as it is about the evils of Jim Crow America.

Time has neither diminished the film’s impact nor dimmed its more controversial aspects. While it is now difficult — if not impossible — to imagine anyone but Peck in the role of Atticus, he was not the studio’s first choice. Revered movie icon Jimmy Stewart turned the part down, denouncing it as “too liberal.”

Indeed, both book and film were criticized from both sides when they came out. Social conservatives despised them because they challenged a deeply held — albeit poisonous — belief system. Liberals criticized them for not being angry enough. Most of the people who defied racial social conventions in the Deep South were paying a steep price. Palpable fear of bodily harm was still an everyday reality for African Americans who challenged the status quo in even the smallest ways. Whites who questioned it were socially and economically ostracized.

And in the midst of this hostile environment appeared a quiet, unassuming, Mississippi-born airline reservations clerk named Harper Lee, who took a notion to write a book. Although little was expected of the project — by Ms. Lee or publisher J.J. Lippincott — it took off like a Roman candle upon publication. The film, two years later, broke even more ground.

I don’t want to assign too much credit to “Mockingbird.” By the early sixties, towering figures like Dr. Martin Luther King and the Greensboro Four strode the land and were fighting the good fight — often with fatal results. But the thing is, most Southern whites weren’t paying much attention. A closed mind is more difficult to open than an undercooked pistachio nut. It was upon the appearance of an understated book in their parlors and an equally understated film in their local movie houses that many Southerners awoke to the ugliness around them — often in their own homes. Certainly, neither the book nor the movie changed every mindset – but perhaps just enough.

When full integration finally hit the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank school system in the fall of 1969, the racial holocaust predicted for the class of 1970 by its many militant opponents did not materialize. In fact, the student body got along so well that it baffled —and frankly irritated — the very people who had confidently prophesied it. I know whereof I speak, because I was a member of that class.

We largely coalesced as one behind a championship football team and racial harmony was, however briefly, more than a dream. It was something of a reality. Today, it is a very elusive goal. That’s a damn shame.

Because it’s still a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Bud Wright is a resident of Elizabeth City