Alabama in the Twentieth Century

Preface

Preface I suppose anyone who spends half a century pondering a single subject will become obsessed with it and want to write a book. One day as the words poured out of my fountain pen, I realized that I had lived in Alabama during 6 of the 10 decades I was describing. During 5 of them, I was an activist with pronounced opinions about these subjects. I was often deeply ashamed to be an Alabamian and once in graduate school at Florida State University even vowed never to live there again. More than one fellow citizen has expressed regrets that I did not keep my vow. Trouble was, Alabama is like a disease. Once it infects a person, it is hard to cure the ailment. Every time I thought I had obtained a cure, I experienced a relapse. I still remember the ¤rst of many. Klan terrorists had just murdered four little girls at 16th Street Baptist Church. I read the attorney Charles Morgan’s account of the event, detailing his decision to leave Birmingham and its mindless violence for good. He made perfect sense to me. Then I read Harper Lee’s novel T o Kill a Mockingbird and changed my mind. Across the years, I alternated between despair and hope. For every George Wallace, Bull Connor, Jim Clark, and Art Hanes, there seemed to be a George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King Jr. Every time I gave up on Alabama, I encountered a soldier, sailor, or airman, an athlete or teacher, an environmentalist or minister who prevailed against incredible odds and made me proud to be from the same place. Every time I returned home, people who shared few of my opinions welcomed me back into a nurturing circle of kinship and community. And every research trip north or west or to Europe or Asia reminded me that Alabama had no monopoly on racism and injustice. Nor did many other climes match the state’s beauty, kindness, neighborliness, or potential. Cleansed of its racism and fear of change, I often mused, this could be as¤ne a place to live, even with all its ®aws, as any imperfect place on earth. And so I stayed, studied, observed, and wrote. Not everyone who reads this book will be pleased with it. One person’s honest appraisal often strikes another as unnecessary criticism. Some will say I spend too much time on the negative and not enough on the positive, that my historical glass seems perpetually half-empty rather than half-full. To me, the fullness or emptiness is of less interest than the halfness. Why does a state with so much human and natural potential settle so often for mediocrity? Why are Alabamians’ expectations so low when excellence is so often within their grasp? The incidence of world-class performance in so many spheres of life makes more poignant the persistent waste and inef ¤ciency and backwardness of so much of Alabama’s collective life. Alabamians who persist through the ¤rst painful chapters describing the state’s political economy will grow increasingly proud of what they encounter . They will discover enough nobility of spirit, courage under ¤re (literally and ¤guratively), creativity, and accomplishment to make even the most cynical citizen proud. They will also encounter enough corruption, opportunism, cowardice, betrayal of power, and lack of vision to make even the most chest-thumping booster ashamed. That is the way of history. In some respects, Alabama had a worse record in the 20th century than other states. It was de¤nitely no century to relive for blacks and poor whites. In other ways, it was 100 years of uncommon accomplishment. Whether one’s preference is for Bear Bryant or Hugo Black, George Wallace or Hank Williams, Joe Louis or Harper Lee, Booker T. Washington or E. O. Wilson, Helen Keller or Nat King Cole, Jesse Owens or Frank M. Johnson, the human saga occurred on a grand scale. Non-Alabama readers will encounter a list of characters they didn’t even know had Alabama roots. And if I do my job well enough, stereotypes will give way to increasing complexity, irony, and ambiguity. Even the state’s harshest critics will have to concede ground in the face of so much positive exertion against such heavy odds. Irony abounds. White evangelical Christianity played a major role not only in Alabama’s legendary sense of community but also in its racism, sexism , and traditionalism. Black evangelical...