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In 1962, Gregory Peck won an academy award for his portrayal of the courageous southern attorney Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. Defending Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of rape, Atticus places his own life and the lives of his children at risk as he methodically and with cool reason demonstrates the falsity of the charge. However, the racism and prejudice of the small town proves to be too great, and it becomes apparent that the Black man was going to be convicted no matter what kind of defense was provided for him.
In To Kill A Neighborhood, Peck returns as Atticus Finch in a sequal to the 1962 film. Tired of being threatened and harassed continually by small town bigots who never forgave him for defending Robinson, Atticus moves to what he thought would be a more "progressive" city in the midwest. A year after moving into and restoring a wonderful old Victorian house on Jackson Street in Oshkosh, Finch discovers that the city plans to widen the street into a 4-lane highway.
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As for-sale signs pop up along the street, and as a neighborhood group begins to petition the city for a reconsideration of the project, Finch decides to get involved. He finds, much to his amazement, that the state Department of Transportation and city of Oshkosh municipal administration are as closed-minded and obstinate as those prejudiced Southerners on the Tom Robinson jury. Even though Finch is able to cast legitimate doubt on the validity of the Department of Transportation traffic projections, and even though Finch provides the city administration with mountains of evidence demonstrating the destructive impact on a neighborhood's quality of life when a highway is put though it, it becomes clear that the widening is going to happen no matter what kind of arguments are amassed against it. After the widening is completed, a child trying to cross the highway is killed by a speeding motorist. Atticus Finch then leads a massive citizen's movement against mindless bureaucracy and for common sense. Oshkosh becomes a national symbol of the power of average citizens to fight against a heartless and ignorant bureaucracy.