Alabama Getaway: The Political Imaginary and the Heart of Dixie (review)

In Alabama Getaway, Emory professor Allen Tullos delivers a superbly written takedown of the state's political culture and collective memory explaining why Alabama rates second only to Mississippi in jokes made at its expense. Borrowing his title from the Grateful Dead, Tullos treads the line between historical narrative and political treatise, offering both an explanation for how the state got into such poor shape and suggestions for how it can improve. His tendency for well-crafted satirical phrases gives this pointed narrative of lost opportunities and missteps a comedic tone as he reminds the reader of how far Alabama has come, yet how far it still has to go.

Tullos ties together a disparate group of attitudes and value judgments into what he calls the "Heart of Dixie." This "political imaginary," as he terms it throughout the book, holds a great deal of sway over the state's citizenry and limits the debates and public policy choices of its legislators. Chapter one brilliantly surveys the individual elements of the Heart of Dixie mentality. Using episodes from both Alabama history and the writings of its expatriate authors, Tullos reveals how the state's extreme conservatism chokes its economic and spiritual growth. The homophobia of Judge Roy Moore meshes almost seamlessly with the white flight to the Birmingham suburbs and Alabama Power's omnipresent opposition to climate change legislation. The Heart of Dixie is most openly expressed through the "sez-you" idea, a shorthand term for Alabama's obstinate refusal to take, or even acknowledge, criticism and its unwillingness to address its failing education and taxation systems. The evidence Tullos assembles here gives the reader a clear understanding of how all-encompassing and restrictive this political imaginary is and the role it has played in retarding Alabama's progress.

The middle third of the book is the Heart of Dixie in practice. After an extended treatment of the Alabama prison system, the most prominent embodiment of the state's systemic racism and punitive spirit, Tullos takes the reader on a tour of the last fifty years of Alabama politics. Out of this story, two villains emerge. The first, the 1901 state constitution, codified the power of elite landholders through a regressive tax system that overburdened the middle and lower classes. The second, Governor George Wallace, enshrined the "sez-you" system through his 1963 stand at the schoolhouse door in Tuscaloosa and his penchant for race-baiting throughout his career. Both represent the Heart of Dixie at its worst and Tullos persuasively argues that the state will not address its systemic racism and inequality until it scraps the constitution and moves past the legacy of Wallaceism.

The final third of the book presents alternative visions to the Heart of Dixie, largely through the work of Civil Rights leaders and other African Americans who have continued the fight through the present. Chapters six and eight are groupings of anecdotes that highlight numerous examples of progressive political and judicial action. These serve as a stark contrast to the sketches of chapter one and clearly indicate that progress is possible in Alabama—just at a slower pace than nearly everywhere else. Here again, Tullos does an excellent job of linking history with contemporary events to illuminate a possible path to change.

Despite covering such wide-ranging ground, Tullos's argument holds together fairly well. The one outlier is the chapter on Condoleezza Rice. As a native of Birmingham Rice is certainly fair game, but Tullos focuses almost exclusively on her role in the 2003 Iraq War. Rice's middle-class parents sheltered her from grassroots activism and looked down on the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and his local movement for social justice. Rice transcended her hometown to become the first female African American Secretary of State, and one could make an argument that Rice's upbringing and experiences are proof...