Masters of What Would Not Be Discussed

This essay depicts evolving cultural norms in Alabama’s Black Belt. A Sunday morning walk through Uniontown, Alabama, begins in one church where tensions, raised by a recent indictment for a civil rights era death, become the subject of a surprising hallway conversation. The 2007 arrest of a former state trooper for the 1965 murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, Alabama—a death which inspired the first Selma-Montgomery voting rights march—makes the region’s past resonate. The author passes through streets visibly changed by the end of segregation. A former Klan hangout photographed by William Christenberry is now an empty pool hall painted pink. An Episcopal church has a stained glass Confederate flag in its window. Standing near it, a city employee ends the story by offering a lesson in local politics.