Search results for ""newsouth, incorporated""

They are as diverse as America. Young and old. Of color and white. Urban and rural. Immigrants and native born. They are students and teachers. Athletes and artists. Lawyers, doctors, politicians, farmers, architects, novelists, and more. Names familiar and unfamiliar. Superheroes, figuratively...and in one case real! They have founded major corporations and grassroots organizations or struck out on their own. They are institutionalizes and agitators. And in some cases both!But as diverse a lot as they may be, the people who tell their stories on these pages share one thing in common. Each is committed to fighting inequality and injustice. Each, too, can pinpoint a moment when they were moved to action, when it became impossible to sit on the sidelines and just watch: when the teacher uttered racial slurs, when no one in the college club looked like they did, when the city was on the brink of disaster, when the authorities came for their undocumented mother, when they discovered their ancestors had owned slaves, when the cop stopped them in their own driveway, when there was no fresh food in their community, when their right to vote was threatened. In The Moment, New York Times bestselling author Steve Fiffer presents an oral history from today's social justice activists—many of them still under 30—that is pitch perfect for these dissonant times. First person accounts that will inspire us to act, offer a blueprint for making change, and perhaps, most importantly, give us hope for the future.

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Pulitzer Prize-winner Cynthia Tucker and award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflect in a powerful series of essays on the role of the South in America’s long descent into Trumpism. In 1974 the great Southern author John Egerton published his seminal work, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America, reflecting on the double-edged reality of the South becoming more like the rest of the country and vice versa. Tucker and Gaillard dive even deeper into that reality from the time that Egerton published his book until the present. They see the dark side—the morphing of the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan into the Republican Party of today with its thinly disguised (if indeed it is disguised all all) embrace of white supremacy and the subversion of democratic ideals. They explore the "birtherism" of Donald Trump and the roots of the racial backlash against President Obama; the specter of family separation on our southern border, with its echoes of similar separations in the era of slavery; as well as the rise of the Christian right, the demonstrations in Charlottesville, the death of George Floyd, and the attack on our nation’s capital—all of which, they argue, have roots that trace their way to the South. But Tucker and Gaillard see another side too, a legacy rooted in the civil rights years that has given us political leaders like John Lewis, Jimmy Carter, Raphael Warnock, and Stacy Abrams. The authors raise the ironic possibility that the South, regarded by some as the heart of the country’s systemic racism, might lead the way on the path to redemption. Tucker and Gaillard, colleagues and frequent collaborators at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, bring a multi-racial perspective and years of political reporting to bear on a critical moment in American history, a time of racial reckoning and of democracy under siege.

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Named 2021 Superpower Book for Identity and Culture by Every Child a ReaderLet's Eat Snails takes young readers on an ethnic culinary adventure. In a Sicilian-American household, cooked snails are the ultimate treat, as one young visitor comes to delight in understanding. This captivating story serves up a lesson in the value of being open-minded and not being afraid of what you don't know.Let’s Eat Snails celebrates Italian-American culture through a story that introduces kids to its familial and culinary traditions. When Margie visits the Barcellona family home, she isn’t ready for what the Sicilian family is bringing to the table: snails! Margie embarks on a culinary adventure in harvesting, purifying, and cooking snails to find that they are, in fact, delizioso! Savor this heartwarming tale from author Barbara Barcellona-Smith’s childhood, delightfully illustrated by the prolific Karen Lewis. Let’s Eat Snails recognizes our differences and shows that what sets us apart also brings us together.

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During his Roaring Twenties heyday, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote three stories about the belles of Tarleton, Georgia, a setting readers recognized as a thinly veiled version of his wife Zelda Sayre's hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. In different ways, the heroines of these tales—Sally Carol Happer in "The Ice Palace," Nancy Lamar in "The Jelly-Bean," and Allie Calhoun in "The Last of the Belles"—rebel against Southern expectations of women, revel in the newfound freedoms young people enjoyed at the outset of the modern age, and ultimately discover that home is far harder to run away from than they ever expected.Remarkably, although these minor masterpieces have long been regarded as among the very best of the 160-plus short stories Fitzgerald published during his short life, the stories have never (until now) been published as a trio. Gathered here to commemorate the centennial of both Scott and Zelda's 1920 marriage and the beginning of the Jazz Age they symbolize, All of the Belles captures all the winsome qualities readers love about F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing: the keen observation of manners, the comic insights, the lyricism, and the poignant, powerful sense of loss.

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Many documentaries, articles, museum exhibits, books, and movies have now treated the subject of the Tuskegee Airmen, the only black American military pilots in World War II. Most of these works have focused on their training and their subsequent accomplishments during combat. This publication goes further, using captioned photographs to trace the Airmen through the various stages of training, deployment, and combat in North Africa, Italy, and over occupied Europe. Included for the first time are depictions of the critical support roles of non-flyers: doctors, nurses, mechanics, navigators, weathermen, parachute riggers, and others, all of whom contributed to the Airmen’s success. In words and pictures, this volume makes vivid the story of the Tuskegee Airmen and the environments in which they lived, worked, played, fought, and sometimes died.

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Civil rights lawyer Solomon S. Seay, Jr. chronicles both heartening and heartbreaking episodes of his first-hand struggle to achieve the actualization of civil rights. Tempered with wit and told with endearing humility, Seay’s memoir Jim Crow and Me: Stories from My Life as a Civil Rights Lawyer gives one pause for both cultural and personal reflection. With an eloquence befitting one of Alabama’s most celebrated attorneys, Seay manages to not only relay his personal struggles with much fervor and introspection, but to acknowledge, in each brief piece, the greater societal struggle in which his story is necessarily framed. Jim Crow and Me is more than just a memoir of one man’s battle against injustice—it is an accessible testament to the precarious battle against civil injustice that continues even today.

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Finalist for the SIBA Book AwardA loamy volume of verse thematically inspired, Working the Dirt celebrates Southerners' connections to the land. The selected poems share themes of gardening, farming, and the rich Southern soil. The approximately one hundred poets, known and lesser-known, living and dead, include: Fred Chappell, Walter McDonald, A. R. Ammons, Robert Morgan, Wendell Berry, Henry Taylor, Tom Dent, Jesse Stuart, Jim Wayne Miller, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Marion Montgomery, James Whitehead, C. D. Wright, George Scarbrough, Ahmos Zu-Bolton II, Thad Stem, Jr., William Sprunt, Donald Justice, Thomas Rabbitt, James Dickey, Rick Lott, John Allison, Edwin Godsey, Richard Jackson, Nikki Giovanni, Alvin Aubert, Margaret Walker, Emily Hiestand, Robert Gibbons, John Stone, Coppie Green, Bonnie Roberts, Coleman Barks, Anne George, Edward Eaton, Margaret Gibson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jack Butler, R. H. W. Dillard, Jane Gentry, Rodney Jones, Dannye Romine, Miller Williams, George Garrett, Sandra Agricola, Patricia Hooper, Gerald Berrax, Gibbons Ruark, Catherine Savage Brosman, Loretta Cobb, and Pattiann Rogers.

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Born in 1945, Clifton L. Taulbert attended school in the Mississippi Delta during the era of legal segregation. Rising above the limitations imposed on him by a segregated South, Taulbert attended college, became a professional success, and wrote more than a dozen books that confront the racial climate of mid-century America.

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Once an obscure piece of World War II history, the Tuskegee Airmen are now among the most celebrated and documented aviators in military history. With this growth in popularity, however, have come a number of inaccurate stories and assumptions. Misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen refutes fifty-five of these myths, correcting the historical record while preserving the Airmen’s rightful reputation as excellent servicemen. The myths examined include: the Tuskegee Airmen never losing a bomber to an enemy aircraft; that Lee Archer was an ace; that Roscoe Brown was the first American pilot to shoot down a German jet; that Charles McGee has the highest total combat missions flown; and that Daniel “Chappie” James was the leader of the “Freeman Field Mutiny.” Historian Daniel Haulman, an expert on the Airmen with many published books on the subject, conclusively disproves these misconceptions through primary documents like monthly histories, daily narrative mission reports, honor-awarding orders, and reports on missing crews, thereby proving that the Airmen were without equal, even without embellishments to their story.

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My Little Town turns the Yankee-comes-to-Dixie literary genre outside in, examining Marion, Alabama, through the eyes of someone who should never have been living there and yet found himself there for more than a decade. With a keen appreciation of its peculiarly Southern tableau, the book lovingly scrutinizes an Alabama village short chapter by short chapter, accompanied by photographer Jerry Siegel's captivating work from the Black Belt. Funeral visitations, poisoned soup luncheons, Pilgrimage hosting, supper clubs, family feuds, Obama Day parades, politics, Jews, and chicken salad recipes are all treated with a voice of singular precision and affection. Simultaneously author David Tipmore couples this fresh view of Southern small-town life with his own narrative of a worldly urban nomad who hopes to find a home in one of the most isolated areas of the United States, peculiarly defined by its racial history and regional mores. By conflating the two stories, My Little Town challenges the reader as much as the author, raising serious questions about our ability as Americans to transcend our regional identities and cultural complexities.

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Amazing Alabama: A Coloring Book Journey Through Alabama’s 67 Counties is a delightful, one-of-a-kind coloring book whose publication coincides with two significant bicentennial celebrations: the 2017 anniversary of Alabama becoming a territory and the 2019 anniversary of Alabama becoming a state. It is designed to engage youngsters and adult coloring book enthusiasts in learning about the unique character of our nation’s 22nd state.Every county in Alabama is featured in Amazing Alabama with an appealing line drawing of its iconic and lesser-known sites—historical, geographical, topographical, industrial and commercial, and more. Companion text identifies and provides context for the pictured elements. The book provides a comprehensive educational snapshot of all that is special about the state.Author/illustrator Laura Murray was inspired to create Amazing Alabama, her first coloring book, after moving to Alabama with her husband from Georgia. Together, they made many road trips, which introduced her to the state’s history, its scenic highways and byways, its commercial centers and rustic small towns. Her coloring book showcases some of her favorite discoveries—the historic U.S. Post Office in Etowah County, Hatchet Creek in Coosa County, the pitcher plant bog in Chilton County, and much more.

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In 1871 when the University of Alabama reopened after its destruction by federal troops, Eugene Allen Smith returned to his alma mater as professor of geology and mineralogy. After persuading the legislature to appoint him state geologist in 1873, he spent his summers enduring chills, fevers, and verbal abuse as he searched for industrial raw materials that could bring about better lives for destitute Alabamians. What he accomplished became the catalyst that transformed Alabama from an aimless and poverty-stricken agricultural state to an industrial giant to be reckoned with. The story of ""Little Doc,"" as told in Eugene Allen Smith’s Alabama, is drawn from many sources: Smith’s transcribed field notes, countless numbers of letters he received and the carbon copies of his replies, his published reports over a period of fifty years, wills, genealogical records, histories of the state and of the University of Alabama, and contemporary newspapers.

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Although he was a native of Bullock County, Alabama, Wade Hall—teacher, writer, poet, critic, interviewer, folklorist, and documentarian—spent most of his fifty-year career in Kentucky. But he was never emotionally far from his home as evidenced by his passion for collecting vintage Alabama postcards. In his lifetime he amassed 10,000, which he then graciously gave to the University of Alabama Libraries and Troy University in a large joint bequest that also included rare books, quilts, folk art, letters, and more.These postcards date from the late 1800s to the mid-20th century and offer a fascinating and diverse picture of the state. The meaning of postcards that could be purchased as a travel souvenir is largely forgotten today when cameras are commonplace. But the value of Hall's stunning collection cannot be missed. The some 400 cards featured in Greetings from Alabama are revealing of scenes familiar and rare. From Birmingham's Vulcan to Mobile's Bellingrath Gardens, from Enterprise's boll weevil monument to Huntsville's rockets, from Helen Keller's home to William Rufus King's resting place, the scenes offer captivating glimpses of Alabama history.

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In 1961, 16-year-old Brenda Travis was a youth leader of the NAACP branch in her hometown of McComb, Mississippi. She joined in the early stages of voter registration, and when the Freedom Rides and direct action reached McComb, she and two SNCC workers sat-in at the local bus station. That led to her first arrest and jailing, which resulted in her being expelled and leading a protest walkout from her high school. Thrown in jail for a second time, she was eventually released on the condition that she leave the state. Her poignant memoir describes what gave her the courage at such a young age to fight segregation, how the movement unfolded in Mississippi, and what happened after she was forced to leave her family, friends, and fellow activists.One of the civil rights workers who befriended her in McComb was the legendary activist Bob Moses, who contributed the Foreword to her book. A white educator and Vietnam war hero, J. Randall O’Brien, was deeply inspired by learning about her courage, and he contributed the Afterword.

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Winner of the Southeastern Society of Architectural Historians Award of ExcellenceRobert R. Taylor and Tuskegee interweaves the life of the first academically trained African American architect with his life’s work—the campus of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. In this richly illustrated architectural history, the author delves into such questions of how a black boy born in North Carolina shortly after the Civil War could earn a professional architecture degree at MIT, and how he then used his design and administrative skills to further Booker T. Washington’s agenda of community solidarity and, in defiance of strengthening Jim Crow, the public expression of racial pride and progress. The book also considers such issues as architectural education for African Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, the white donors who funded Tuskegee’s buildings, other Tuskegee architects, and Taylor’s buildings elsewhere. Individual narratives of Taylor’s Tuskegee buildings conclude the volume.

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Deep Family chronicles several generations of the famous Read, Baldwin, and Craik families of Montgomery, Alabama. Dubbed the ""deep family"" by a black servant—who himself became part of the family, long before blacks and whites had equal rights—the dynamic personalities in this volume stretch from the American Revolution to World War II and beyond. Many Montgomerians will still remember the legendary Hazel Hedge, the gorgeous family estate and site of famous Montgomery parties, or will have heard tales of this family that included revolutionaries, Confederates, communists, diplomats, journalists, artists, grande dames, and eccentrics. Readers not from Montgomery will wish that they were. Brimming with colorful cameos—from George Washington to William Lowndes Yancey to Greta Garbo to Rosa Parks—Deep Family combines history, gossip, name-dropping, and personal lore in a scandalous, ripping good read.

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The assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby robbed the nation of the closure it so desperately needed following the death of John F. Kennedy. The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald asks what might have happened if the assassin had lived to stand trial for his murder of America’s beloved president. This meticulously researched and riveting courtroom drama follows prosecutors Abe Summer and Elaine Navarro as they work to bring Oswald to justice despite the legend in Oswald’s corner: famed attorney Percy Foreman. With mysteries and coincidences swirling around the case, Oswald’s conviction doesn’t seem set in stone. After Ruby fails to assassinate the assassin, can Summer and Navaro bring peace of mind back to the American people by sending a murderer to prison?Author William Alsup’s fair and thrilling novel is all the more compelling thanks in no small part to his experiences and expertise as a federal judge. With his background in research and jurisprudence, Alsup has become an expert on the Oswald case. From newspaper clippings to the Warren Report, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald is based on real and complicated history. Readers with a passion for the procedural will relish the details Alsup provides behind the scenes of a prosecution, demonstrating just how much time and effort goes into even cases that seem cut and dry. America never recovered from the killing of its king of Camelot, but The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald provides a window into what might have been.

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In 1763, Great Britain organized the colony of East Florida—which formed the entirety of what is now the state of Florida east of the Apalachicola River. East Florida is the Revolutionary Era's fifteenth colony. Today, East Florida is forgotten and cast aside, relegated to the outskirts of Colonial and Revolutionary Era literature, if the colony is mentioned at all. Such relegation leads many to assume that nothing significant must have happened there. Nothing is further from the truth. In 1775, a violent border war erupted between East Florida and the state of Georgia; two noteworthy Revolutionary War battles were fought on East Florida soil; and three American invasions failed to bring East Florida into the rebellion. In East Florida in the Revolutionary Era, 1763-1785, historian George Kotlik provides the first comprehensive and detailed history of British East Florida, drawing attention to the colony's early development and connection to the American Revolution.

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Unmasking the Klansman may read like a work of fiction but is actually a biography of Asa Carter, one of the South's most notorious white supremacists (and secret Klansman). During the 1950s, the North Alabama political firebrand became known across the region for his right-wing radio broadcasts and leadership in the white Citizens’ Council movement. Combining racism and thinly-concealed anti-Semitism, he created a secret Klan strike force that engaged in a series of brutal assaults, including an attack on jazz singer Nat King Cole as well as militant civil rights activists. Exploring his life during these years offers new insights into the legal maneuvers as well as the violence used by white Southern segregationists to derail the civil rights movement in the region. In the early 1960s Carter became a secret adviser to George Wallace and wrote the Alabama governor’s infamous 1963 inauguration speech vowing "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." When Carter disappeared from Alabama in 1972, few knew that he had assumed a new identity in Abilene, Texas, masquerading as a Cherokee American novelist. Using the name "Forrest" Carter, he published three successful Western novels, including The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales that Clint Eastwood made into a widely acclaimed 1976 movie. His last book, The Education of Little Tree (a fake biography of his supposed Indian childhood) posthumously became a number one best-seller in 1991. Author Dan T. Carter uncovered "Forrest" Carter’s true identity while researching his biography of Georgia Wallace and in a New York Times’ op-ed he exposed Carter’s deception. Although the difficulties of uncovering the full story of the secretive Carter initially led him to abandon the project, in 2018 he gained access to more than two hundred interviews by the late Anniston newsman, Fred Burger. These recordings and his two decades of exhaustive research finally brought Asa Carter’s story into focus. Unmasking the Klansman is the result.

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Most Civil War histories focus on the performance of top-level generals. However, it was the individual officers below them who actually led the troops to enact the orders. Some of these were remarkably effective. One such officer was Edmund Winchester Rucker. He was a force to be reckoned with, both during the Civil War and in his post-war business ventures. He was courageous, tough and resourceful, and achieved significant results in every assignment. During the campaign by the United States Army to capture the upper Mississippi River, Rucker and his faithful Confederate artillerists, with only three operable cannons, held off the entire Federal fleet which possessed 105 heavy guns. Later, in East Tennessee, Rucker’s duties included punishing saboteurs and conscripting unwilling local citizens into the Confederate Army. He described these assignments as: "The meanest and damnest [sic] duty a soldier had to perform." Following the battles for Chattanooga, he served with General Nathan Bedford Forrest as a cavalry brigade commander, earning high merits for his performance. Rucker’s leadership was a major factor in the Confederate victory in the Battle of Brices Cross Roads, which has been called "History’s Greatest Cavalry Battle." Subsequent to the Battle of Nashville, Rucker was wounded and captured; although his left arm was amputated, this did not impede his future achievements. After the war, Colonel Rucker and General Forrest became business partners in a railroad-building project. Rucker did well from this venture and became one of the wealthiest early entrepreneurs in Birmingham. In recognition of his many accomplishments, Fort Rucker Alabama was named in his honor. This first biography on his life examines, at a fast-moving pace, the military and business accomplishments of this outstanding leader who left his mark on both the Civil War and Southern industry of the time.

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A unique catalog of historic civil rights events, This Day in Civil Rights History details the struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs on the road to equal rights for all U.S. citizens. From the Quakers’ 17th-century antislavery resolution to slave uprisings during the Civil War, to the infamous Orangeburg Massacre in 1968, and beyond, authors Horace Randall Williams and Ben Beard present a vivid collection of 366 events—one for every day of the year plus Leap Day—chronicling African Americans’ battle for human dignity and self-determination.Every day of the year has witnessed significant events in the struggle for civil rights. This Day in Civil Rights History is an illuminating collection of these cultural turning points.

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Twenty-one women artists and writers write about the experience of aging. They are not squeamish about the challenges of growing older, including ageism, health concerns, and loss. And they are frank about how received notions of female aging can be restrictive and diminishing.

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Imagine sitting with an esteemed writer on his or her front porch somewhere in the world and swapping life stories. Dr. Wayne Flynt got the opportunity to do just this with Nelle Harper Lee. In a friendship that blossomed over a dozen years starting when Lee relocated back to Alabama after having had a stroke, Flynt and his wife Dartie became regular visitors at the assisted living facility that was Lee’s new home. And there the conversation began. It began where it always begins with Southern storytellers, with an invitation to "Come in, sit down, and stay a while."The stories exchanged ranged widely over the topics of Alabama history, Alabama folklore, family genealogy, and American literature, of course. On the way from beginning to end there were many detours: talks about Huntingdon College; The University of Alabama; New York City; the United Kingdom; Garden City, Kansas; and Mobile, Alabama, to name just a few. Wayne and his wife were often joined by Alice Lee, the oldest Lee sister, a living encyclopedia on the subject of family genealogy, and middle sister Louise Lee Conner. The hours spent visiting, in intimate closeness, are still cherished by Wayne Flynt. They yielded revelations large and small, which have been shaped into Afternoons with Harper Lee. Part memoir, part biography, this book offers a unique window into the life and mind and preoccupations of one of America’s best-loved writers. Flynt and Harper Lee and her sisters learned a great deal from each other, and though this is not a history book, their shared interest in Alabama and its history made this extraordinary work possible.

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Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days is a remarkable look at a historic city enmeshed in racial tensions, revealing untold or forgotten stories of secret deals, law enforcement intrigue, and courage alongside pivotal events that would sweep change across the nation.Birmingham, Alabama gave birth to momentous events that spawned the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and affected world history. But that is not why it is known as The Magic City. It earned that nickname with its meteoric rise from a cornfield valley to an industrial boomtown in the late 1800s. Images of snarling dogs and fire hoses of the 1960s define popular perception of the city, obscuring the complexity of race relations in a tumultuous time and the contributions of white citizens who quietly or boldly influenced social change. Behind the Magic Curtain peels back history’s veil to reveal little-known or never-told stories of an intriguing cast of characters that include not only progressive members of the Jewish, Christian, and educational communities, but also a racist businessman and a Ku Klux Klan member, who, in an ironic twist, helped bring about justice and forward racial equality and civil rights. Woven throughout the book are the firsthand recollections of a reporter with the state’s major newspaper of the time. Embedded with law enforcement, he reveals the fascinating details of their secret wiretapping and intelligence operations. With a deft hand, Thorne offers the insight that can be gained from understanding little-known but important perspectives, painting a multihued portrait of a city that has figured so prominently in history, but which so few really know.

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Changing Moods, John Alexander Dersham’s second collection, showcases powerful, haunting black-and-white art photography from six decades of work. Inspired by his teen experience with a simple box camera, and the encouragement of several significant mentors, he has dedicated his life to capturing the physical world through the lens. Changing Moods chronicles Dersham’s personal growth as a photographer and artist, tracing his work from the darkroom to the gallery. To achieve exquisite image quality, he relies on elbow grease and old-fashioned methods. Throughout his shooting career, Dersham has awakened before dawn to get into position to catch the perfect light, lugging his bulky and complex large-format cameras to locations across the United States. The breathtaking results range from austere and dramatic landscapes to the poignancy of the everyday, revealing a master photographer at work.

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The killing of Emmett Till is widely remembered today as one of the most famous examples of lynchings in America. African American children in 1955 personally felt the terror of his murder. These children, however, would rise up against the culture that made Till’s death possible. From the violent Woolworth’s lunch-counter sit-ins in Jackson to the school walkouts of McComb, the young people of Mississippi picketed, boycotted, organized, spoke out, and marched, working to reveal the vulnerability of black bodies and the ugly nature of the world they lived in. These children changed that world.In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Tore Down Yesterday and Showed Us Tomorrow weaves together the riveting tales of those young women and men of Mississippi, figures like Brenda Travis, the Ladner sisters, and Sam Block who risked their lives to face down vicious Jim Crow segregation. Readers also discover the adults who guided the young people, elders including Medgar Evers, Robert Moses, and Fannie Lou Hamer.This inspiring new book of history for young adults from award-winning author Robert H. Mayer is an unflinching portrayal of life in the segregated South and the bravery of young people who fought that system. As the United States still reckons with racism and inequality, the activists working In the Name of Emmett Till can serve as models of activism for young people today.

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An NPR Best Book of 2018A 2021 Alabama Library Association Author Award WinnerFrye Gaillard has given us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller’s eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times — civil rights, black power, women’s liberation, the War in Vietnam, and the protests against it. But he also examines the cultural manifestations of change — music, literature, art, religion, and science — and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Harper Lee, Mister Rogers, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Billy Graham, Thomas Merton, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Barry Goldwater, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Berrigan Brothers.""There are many different ways to remember the sixties,"" Gaillard writes, ""and this is mine. There was in these years the sense of a steady unfolding of time, as if history were on a forced march, and the changes spread to every corner of our lives. As future generations debate the meaning of the decade, I hope to offer a sense of how it felt to have lived it. A Hard Rain is one writer’s reconstruction and remembrance of a transcendent era — one that, for better or worse, lives with us still.

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Alabama State University is well known as a historically black university and for the involvement of its faculty and students in the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the school's remarkable origins, having begun as the Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama, founded by nine former slaves. These men are rightly considered the progenitors of Alabama State University, as they had the drive and perseverance to face the challenges posed by a racial and political culture bent on preventing the establishment of black schools and universities. It is thanks to the actions of the Marion Nine that Alabama's rural Black Belt produces a disproportionate number of African American Ph.D. recipients, a testament to the vision of the Lincoln Normal School's founders. From Marion to Montgomery is the story of the Lincoln Normal School's transformation into the legendary Alabama State University, including the school's move to Montgomery in 1887 and evolution from Normal School to junior college to full-fledged four-year university. It's a story of visionary leadership, endless tenacity, and a true belief in the value of education.

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In a radical departure from standard editions, Twain's most famous novels are published here as the continuous narrative that the author originally envisioned. More controversial will be the decision by the editor, noted Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben, to eliminate the pejorative racial labels that Twain employed in his effort to write realistically about social attitudes of the 1840s.Gribben points out that dozens of other editions currently make available the inflammatory words, but their presence has gradually diminished the potential audience for two of Twain's masterpieces. "Both novels can be enjoyed deeply and authentically without those continual encounters with the hundreds of now-indefensible racial slurs," Gribben explains.

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SIBA Okra PickNationally syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson, winner of the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest reporting, turns her sharp eye on herself in this frank, exhilarating, wise, poignant, and brave memoir. Her territory ranges from childhood memories of ritual pre-interstate trips in the family station wagon to visit foot-washing Baptist relatives to young-girl fixations on the Barbie dolls of the title, from the simultaneous exuberance and proto-feminist doubts of young marriage to the aches of loves lost through divorce and death. Her memorable journalism career, which began on her college newspaper and rural weeklies and moved on to prestigious big-city dailies, was punctuated by her distinctive writing voice and an unerring knack for revealing her much-loved South through uncommon stories about its common people. This is a big-hearted book that will leave no reader unaffected.

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Finalist for the 2016 Foreword Indies Best Book Award — Juvenile FictionWinner of the Jefferson Cup Honor Book AwardFinalist for the Housatonic Book AwardMore than twenty years ago, Robert Croshon, an elderly friend of Frye Gaillard's, told him the story of Croshon's ancestor, Gilbert Fields, an African-born slave in Georgia who led his family on a daring flight to freedom. Fields and his family ran away intending to travel north, but clouds obscured the stars and when morning came Fields discovered they had been running south instead. They had no choice but to seek sanctuary with the Seminole Indians of Florida and later a community of free blacks in Mobile.With Croshon's blessing, Gaillard has expanded this oral history into a novel for young readers, weaving the story of Gilbert Fields through the nearly forgotten history of the Seminoles and their alliance with runaway slaves. As Gaillard's narrative makes clear, the Seminole Wars of the 1830s, in which Indians fought side by side with former slaves, represents the largest slave uprising in American history. Gaillard also puts a human face on the story of free blacks before the Civil War and the lives they painfully built for themselves in Mobile. Hauntingly illustrated by artist Anne Kent Rush, Go South to Freedom is a gripping story for readers of any age.

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Tinsley Harrison—doctor, teacher, researcher, medical school leader—is one of the most important medical figures of the 20th century. He edited the first five editions of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, regarded as a quintessential medical text and perhaps the best-selling medical textbook of all time. He traveled the world in his capacity as a teaching doctor, made significant contributions to scholarship, and served as the dean/medical chairman at four medical schools. He is a titan of the field, an enormous presence central to the narrative of American medicine.Author Dr. James Pittman knew Harrison well, studying and teaching with him from the 1950s until Harrison’s death. Pittman spent six years interviewing Harrison near the end of Harrison’s life, and these lengthy interviews, as well as interviews with his colleagues, family, and friends, form the bulk of the scholarship of this compulsively readable book. Pittman brings his own medical knowledge to the fore, as well as his personal friendship with the subject, in this beautifully written character study of one of science’s great but not well-known men. Harrison lived a long, exciting life, and in these pages, readers will get a glimpse of the historical forces that shaped and in turn were shaped by this legendary doctor.

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In this first authorized biography of former Alabama Governor John Patterson, historian Warren Trest offers new insights and rich details into the life of a significant Southern politician whose career touched some of the key struggles of the twentieth-century civil rights movement. Patterson later recanted his segregationist views and went on to become a widely respected judge, but as governor from 1958–62, he led Alabama into full white-supremacist rebellion against the national effort to integrate schools and public accommodations. He was a rare Southern supporter of JFK in 1960, but the two broke bitterly over the 1961 Freedom Rides and Kennedy had to send federal marshals into Montgomery to quell KKK-led mobs. Not merely a civil rights account, Nobody But the People also details Patterson's World War II heroism, his role as attorney general in cleaning up vice and corruption, and his efforts to improve education and the economy. Patterson is revealed as a complex and likable politician and jurist whose career was unfortunately blighted by decisions he later regretted on racial issues.

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Neither Carpetbaggers Nor Scalawags recounts events in post-Civil War Alabama, including political affairs and the attempts by the black population to carve out a social, educational, and economic existence during turbulent times after the end of slavery. It was a time of restrained joy, a time of jubilee, a time for building, especially a better way of living for the ex-slaves and their families. Many participated fully in the political process during the Reconstruction period. The stories of a number of black officeholders are told in this revised and reedited edition that includes an expanded index.

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From his childhood in New Orleans to Howard University as a boy of fifteen, from his work as a young pastor in Alabama to his leadership role in the SCLC, from serving as the first Black congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction to serving as the Ambassador to the United Nations, from two transformational terms as mayor of Atlanta to co-chairmanship of the 1996 Summer Olympics Games, from co-founding Good Works International to promoting human rights across the globe with the Andrew Young Foundation, The Many Lives of Andrew Young tells the inspiring, dramatic story of civil rights hero, congressman, ambassador, mayor, and American icon Andrew Young. Featuring hundreds of full-color photographs that capture the extraordinary life and times of Andrew Young and a captivating narrative by acclaimed Atlanta Journal-Constitution race reporter Ernie Suggs, filled with personal accounts from Andrew Young himself, The Many Lives of Andrew Young is both a tribute to and an essential chronicle of the life of a man whose activism and service changed the face of America and whose work continues to reverberate around the world today.

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American Founders reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom throughout the hemisphere from the sixteenth thorough the twentieth centuries. While conventional history tends to reduce the roles of African Americans to antebellum slavery and the civil rights movement, in reality African residents preceded the English by a century and arrived in the Americas in numbers that far exceeded European migrants up until 1820. Afro-Americans were omnipresent in the founding and advancement of the Americas, and recurrently outnumbered Europeans at many times and places, from colonial Peru to antebellum Virginia. African-descended people contributed to every facet of American history as explorers, conquistadores, settlers, soldiers, sailors, servants, slaves, rebels, leaders, lawyers, litigants, laborers, artisans, artists, activists, translators, teachers, doctors, nurses, inventors, investors, merchants, mathematicians, scientists, scholars, engineers, entrepreneurs, generals, cowboys, pirates, professors, politicians, priests, poets, and presidents. The multitude of events and mixed-race individuals included in the book underscores that black and white Americans share the same history, and in many cases, the same ancestry. American Founders is meant to celebrate this shared heritage and strengthen these bonds.

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Share the amazing American story with your children with Our Patriots, a one-of-a-kind coloring book sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Bring the varied quilt of colonial America to life with these tales of American heroes—Black and white, male and female. Our Patriots shows that wars are won and nations built through the collaboration of soldiers, politicians, merchants, nurses, and more.America earned her independence through the efforts of countless Revolutionaries who made possible the formation of one of the world’s greatest nations with their dedication and fearlessness. Our Patriots brings the stories of these Americans to life with vivid and engaging coloring pages. From iconic leaders like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton to lesser-known heroes like Simeon Ashbow Jr. and James Dew, this coloring book features both male and female Revolutionaries while also highlighting the accomplishments of patriots of African and indigenous descent. Children throughout our country should know the stories of those who made America possible, and in Our Patriots illustrator Laura Murray and the Daughters of the American Revolution present tales from all thirteen colonies, stretching from New Hampshire to Georgia.

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How to Survive the Apocalypse, the second collection from poet Jacqueline Allen Trimble, examines the many apocalypses that African Americans have weathered, advising that those who wish to avoid annihilation should “live by rage and joy and turpentine.” Trimble reimagines the sonnet and the parable, producing poems of ironic indictment and joyous celebration. The book explores aspects of the Black experience in America, from Black woman pride, Nat Turner, kneeling, and the burning down of fast-food restaurants. Sometimes funny, sometimes biting, How to Survive the Apocalypse connects history to the contemporary and in the writing proves that the only balm for rage is creativity.

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Since The Birth of a Nation became the first Hollywood blockbuster in 1915, movies have struggled to reckon with the American South—as both a place and an idea, a reality and a romance, a lived experience and a bitter legacy. Nearly every major American filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter has worked on a film about the South, from Gone with the Wind to 12 Years a Slave, from Deliverance to Forrest Gump. In The South Never Plays Itself, author and film critic B. W. Beard explores the history of the Deep South on screen, beginning with silent cinema and ending in the streaming era, from President Wilson to President Trump, from musical to comedy to horror to crime to melodrama. Beard’s idiosyncratic narrative—part cultural history, part film criticism, part memoir—journeys through genres and eras, issues and regions, smash blockbusters and microbudget indies to explore America’s past and troubled present, seen through Hollywood’s distorting lens. Opinionated, obsessive, sweeping, often combative, sometimes funny—a wild narrative tumble into culture both high and low—Beard attempts to answer the haunting question: what do movies know about the South that we don’t?

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Aspiring business owners and executives seeking to climb to the next rung, young to mid-career professionals seeking tools for life achievement, and general readers interested in biographies of successful people will like Larry Thornton’s "Why Not Win?". The book is a front-row seat to how one man altered his thinking to transform his life. The book begins with his growing up with brown skin in the 1960s in segregated Montgomery, Alabama. A desegregation school pioneer, Thornton was a classroom failure until a perceptive English teacher showed him he had value and encouraged him to go to college. Like the educator who changed his life, Thornton became a classroom teacher. But budget cuts took his job, and he decided to rewrite his story using his artistic talent. Thornton’s artistry and work ethic got him attention at Coca-Cola, both for the good and the bad. He had to figure out a way to navigate this new world, where higher-ups praised him but co-workers reminded him of his "blackness" by drawing a noose in his workstation. He persevered by learning to appreciate and embrace diversity, people resources, and conflicting opinions. While his success grew at Coca-Cola, Thornton did the unthinkable: set out to be the first African American to own a McDonald’s franchise in Birmingham. This thorny journey was peppered with threats, attempts to thwart his mission and a marriage he could not keep from falling apart. He absorbed the "try, try and try again" motto, and came to see that failure was a prelude to feasting upon the sweet fruit of success. Thornton’s own mother never had a checking account, but years after her passing he found himself on the board of directors for a major financial institution. He slowly became a part of a small fraternity of captains of industry and fought past guilt and insecurity to pave the way for others who look like him to join him at the table. Trying to fit into this new world, he learned that "Thank you," "Please," and "Excuse me" are perhaps three of the most powerful phrases in communication. Thornton made up his mind that he would spend each day on a mission to show his unbending gratitude for his life and its benefits by fostering a supreme attitude and maintaining consistency in vision, purpose, and an unwavering commitment to principles. Thornton’s journey from Madison Park, Montgomery, has been a long one. "Why Not Win?" reflects on his most useful lessons and the anecdotes associated with them. If he were a Zen monk, his koan might well be: "Plan your past." By that he means, think ahead one day, one week, one year, even twenty years out, and decide today your desired outcome, and work for it. "Thank God for memories," he says; "Let’s plan to make them pleasant ones.

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Auburn is well known as a college town and as a historic Southern village in central Alabama. The architecture that presently constitutes Auburn's built environment deserves the same level of recognition. From structures on the campus of Auburn University to historic churches and other buildings across the town, Auburn's architectural record is worth celebrating and protecting. In No Place Like Home: An Architectural Study of Auburn, Alabama—a companion volume to Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs—co-authors Delos Hughes, Ralph Draughon Jr., Emily Sparrow, and Ann Pearson highlight the buildings of Auburn that are distinguished by age, celebrated residents, distinctive design, and historical importance. The architectural character of Old Auburn lives on in the enduring structures found throughout the city. Anchored by a strong sense of place, No Place Like Home will inspire readers to a greater appreciation of the shared past that connects us all through historic homes and meeting places.

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Prince Edward County, Virginia closed its public school system in 1959 in "massive resistance" to the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board decision of 1954. The editorial pages of the local family-owned newspaper, The Farmville Herald, led the fight to lock classrooms rather than integrate them. The school system remained closed until the fall of 1964, when the County was forced by federal courts to comply with the school integration ordered by Brown. The vast majority of white children had continued their education in a private, whites-only academy. But more than 2,000 black students were left without a formal education by the five-year closure. Their lives were forever changed.A Civil Rights Reparations Story: The Road to Healing in Prince Edward County, Virginia, by Ken Woodley, is his first-person account of the steps taken in recent years to redress the wound. The book's centerpiece is the 18-month fight to create what legendary civil rights activist Julian Bond told the author would become the first Civil Rights-era reparation in United States history; it was led by Woodley, then editor of The Farmville Herald, still owned by the original family. If the 2003-04 struggle to win passage of a state-funded scholarship program for the casualties of massive resistance had been a roller coaster, it wouldn't have passed the safety inspection for reasons of too many unsafe political twists and turns. But it did.The narrative unfolds in Virginia, but it is a deeply American story. Prince Edward County's ongoing journey of racial reconciliation blazes a hopeful and redemptive trail through difficult human terrain, but the signs are clear enough for a divided nation to follow. The history is as important for its insights about the past as it it about what it has to share about a way into our future.

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In 1870 Benjamin Turner, who spent the first 40 years of his life as a slave, was elected to the U.S. Congress. He was the first African American from Alabama to earn that distinction. In a recreation of Turner's own words, based on speeches and other writings that Turner left behind, co-authors Marti S. Rosner and Frye Gaillard have crafted the story of a remarkable man who taught himself to read when he was young and began a lifetime quest for education and freedom. As a candidate for Congress, and then as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Turner rejected the idea of punishing his white neighbors who fought for the Confederacy—and thus for the continuation of slavery—believing they had suffered enough. At the same time, he supported the right to vote for former slaves, opposed a cotton tax that he thought was hurtful to small and especially black farmers, supported racially mixed schools, and argued that land should be set aside for former slaves so they could build a new life for themselves. In this bicentennial season for the state of Alabama, the authors celebrate the life of a man who rejected bitterness even as he pursued his own dreams. His is a story of determination and strength, the story of an American hero from the town of Selma, Alabama, who worked to make the world a better place for people of all races and backgrounds.

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In Anna Olswanger’s Greenhorn, a young Holocaust survivor arrives at a New York yeshiva in 1946 where he will study and live. His only possession is a small box that he never lets out of his sight. Daniel, the young survivor, rarely talks, but the narrator, a stutterer who bears the taunts of the other boys, comes to consider Daniel his friend.The mystery of what’s in the box propels this short work, but it’s in the complex relationships of the schoolboys that the human story is revealed. In the end, Aaron, the stutterer, finds his voice and a friend in Daniel, and their bond offers hope for a future life of dreams realized, one in which Daniel is able to let go of his box.Greenhorn is a powerful story that gives human dimension to the Holocaust. It poignantly underscores our flawed humanity and speaks to the healing value of friendship. Families will want to read Greenhorn together.

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For over a decade, syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson has been spending several months a year in Southwest Louisiana, deep in the heart of Cajun Country. Unlike many other writers who have parachuted into the swampy paradise for a few days or weeks, Rheta fell in love with the place, bought a second home and set in planting doomed azaleas and deep roots. She has found an assortment of beautiful people in a homely little town called Henderson, right on the edge of the Atchafalaya Swamp.These days, much is labeled Cajun that is not, and the popularity of the unique culture’s food, songs and dance has been a mixed blessing. The revival of French Louisiana’s traditional music and cuisine often has been cheapened by counterfeits. Confused pilgrims sometimes look to New Orleans for a sampler platter of all things Cajun. Close, but no cigar.Poor Man’s Provence helps define what’s what through lively characters and stories. The book is both personal odyssey and good reporting, travelogue and memoir, funny and frank. This beguiling place is as exotic as it gets without a passport. The author shares what keeps her coming home to French Louisiana.And as NPR commentator Bailey White observes in her foreword, "Both Rheta's readers and the people she writes about will be comfortable, well fed, highly entertained, and happy they came to Poor Man's Provence."

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Albert James Pickett’s History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period first appeared in Montgomery bookstores in September 1851. The buyers of his two-volume work paid $3 and the demand caused Charleston publisher Walker and James to issue a second and third edition before year’s end. William Gilmore Simms, the South’s most prolific writer, referred to the publication as "one of the prettiest specimens of book making ever done in America." Newspapers in Alabama and literary journals in New York, Charleston, and New Orleans commended Pickett for his "absolutely enchanting" fresh writing style, for using "great care" throughout his book, and for "his important service to his state." While some reviews questioned his narrative style, his sources, or his focus on facts, others credited Pickett for producing "a very valuable" chronicle for the people of Alabama and urged him to produce a third volume for "rising generations."Pickett opens volume one with Hernando de Soto’s explorations from Florida to Arkansas, encounters with native people, and discovery of the Mississippi River. He shifts from the early chiefdoms of the protohistoric period to the Natchez and smaller tribes in the coastal plain and then to the major Indian nations of the interior into the late eighteenth century. While the struggles of French Louisiana with the Natchez dominate the first volume, Pickett establishes the English presence with the founding of Oglethorpe’s Georgia colony and ends with the surrender of the French forts Tombecbé and Toulouse to the British. In volume two, Pickett traces the English push into present-day Alabama and Mississippi and the Revolutionary War era, the Spanish occupation of East and West Florida, the intrigues of Alexander McGillivray and William Bowles, and Georgia’s Yazoo land sales. He devotes several chapters to the Mississippi Territory, Aaron Burr, and the Indian unrest that led to the massacre at Fort Mims, the Creek War of 1813–14, and Andrew Jackson’s campaigns to destroy the Red Sticks and defeat the British in the Gulf South. Pickett concentrates his final chapters on the emergence of Alabama as a territory and state, including biographical sketches of early state leaders, the state constitutional convention, and Alabama’s first governor, William Wyatt Bibb, who died in 1820.Despite Pickett’s failure use his firsthand knowledge to bring his History chronologically beyond 1820, his work continues to be a relevant study of the state’s protohistory, colonial, territorial and early foundations. His work and his papers in the state archives are cited by all serious scholars who study Alabama’s colonial and territorial eras. While he sought all the available printed primary sources and manuscripts for volume one, his second volume was principally informed by the memoirs, reminiscences, letters, and oral interviews of the participants in the events that shaped the development of Alabama from the pre-Revolutionary era through the 1840s. Although recent literary deconstruction of Pickett and his History has been critical of his motivation and writing, Harper Lee, Alabama’s most consequential writer in the twentieth century, asserted in 1983 that he "deserves a place in American literature" and assessed his History as a "unique treasure" that "should be in every high school library" in Alabama. More recently, historian Leah Rawls Atkins declared Pickett to be the writer made the "most historical contribution to Alabama" in the antebellum period. This new edition is the first to provide general readers and scholars with a readily available hardbound, fully indexed, and annotated version of Pickett’s History.Albert James Pickett’s two-volume History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period first appeared in September 1851. Demand for the $3 set caused Charleston publisher Walker and James to issue a second and third edition before year’s end. William Gilmore Simms, the South’s most prolific writer, called it "one of the prettiest specimens of book making ever done in America." Newspapers and literary journals commended Pickett’s "absolutely enchanting" fresh style and "his important service to his state."Volume one covered De Soto’s explorations from Florida to Arkansas, encounters with native people, and discovery of the Mississippi River. The narrative shifts from the early chiefdoms of the protohistoric period to the Natchez and smaller tribes in the coastal plain and then to the major Indian nations of the interior into the late eighteenth century. While the struggles of French Louisiana with the Natchez dominate the first volume, Pickett establishes the English presence with the founding of Oglethorpe’s Georgia colony and ends with the surrender of the French forts Tombecbé and Toulouse. In volume two, Pickett follows the English into present-day Alabama and Mississippi and the Revolutionary War era, the Spanish occupation of East and West Florida, the intrigues of Alexander McGillivray and William Bowles, and Georgia’s Yazoo land sales. He devotes several chapters to the Mississippi Territory, Aaron Burr, and the Indian unrest that led to the massacre at Fort Mims, the Creek War of 1813–14, and Andrew Jackson’s campaigns to destroy the Red Sticks and defeat the British. Pickett concentrates his final chapters on the emergence of Alabama as a territory and state, including biographical sketches of early state leaders, the state constitutional convention, and Alabama’s first governor, William Wyatt Bibb, who died in 1820.Pickett’s History continues to be a relevant study of the state’s protohistory, colonial, territorial, and early foundations. His work and his papers in the state archives are cited by all serious scholars who study Alabama’s colonial and territorial eras. While he sought all the available printed primary sources and manuscripts for volume one, his second volume was principally informed by the memoirs, reminiscences, letters, and oral interviews of the participants in the events that shaped the development of Alabama from the pre-Revolutionary era through the 1840s.This new edition is the first to provide general readers and scholars with a readily available hardbound, fully indexed, and annotated version of Pickett’s History.— first-ever edition of Pickett’s History that is fully annotated, updated and indexed— first hardcover edition of the work in over 100 years— the release of Pickett’s History coincdes with the 200th anniversary in 2019 of Alabama statehood; heightened interest in early settlement of the state will develop opportunities for book— this new edition will be handsome and easily readable, unlike existing facsimile editions

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