Damn Yankee

I bristle every time some coastal progressive proclaims they’re never going to set foot in Alabama / Florida / Texas / South Carolina – whichever Southern state is the locale for whatever is the latest outrage.  I get even angrier when they declare that we’d all be better off if those horrible Southern states really did secede, so that the good people on the right side of history could live comfortably ever after in their pristine blue bubble.  Willful ignorance.

Facts – in the last Presidential election, over a third of the Alabama vote went to Biden.  That’s 850,000 living, breathing human beings working hard to live their best life.  Many of them are Black, of course, not to mention those brown or Indigenous or from Asian or Central American backgrounds, etc., etc., along with plenty of white folks like me.¹ Hillary got a third.  Obama nearly forty percent each time.   Jefferson County, where Birmingham sits, was 56% Biden.  Montgomery (state capital) was 65%.  In the counties of the Black Belt (so-called for the rich soil, not the impoverished demographics) you see 73%, 74%, 81%!   I don’t point this out to refute the notion that Alabama is the Trumpiest state – it obviously is, but to echo Obama’s famous exhortation that in reality there are no red states or blue states.  That the South is so much more complex than the caricature.

Walk back with me... twenty-nine years...

We’d had to park some blocks away, but I could still hear the music thumping in the distance.  It had been a fine summer day at the City Stages festival in downtown Birmingham.  Some rock bands, a bit of Americana, blues, jazz, even a string quartet in the cool of an Episcopal sanctuary.  Big name touring acts, local bands just starting to break out. Beer vendors, food trucks with turkey legs and foot long Italian sausages and funnel cakes. Little girls in summer dresses, gleeful and dancing while the mothers looked on indulgently, scolding if they ran too far.  I was in a happy, mellow mood, looking forward to one more night with Lynn before driving back to St. Louis.  We turned a corner and as I scanned the street looking for our car, I saw, across the pretty little urban park we were next to, a church.  I swiveled to check the street sign.  Sixteenth street.  That meant this was Kelly Ingram Park, where the children gathered before marching out to face the Dobermans and the firehoses.  And that was the 16^th Street Baptist Church, where four other little girls were murdered in an explosion that rippled all across the country, including up to my lily white paper mill town in Wisconsin, where I was just two months shy of my eighth birthday.

The welcoming Birmingham I’d been coming to know in the six months I’d been driving down to visit came crashing up against the Birmingham of history, the city that in those terrifying years of the late fifties and early sixties vibrated with the turmoil of all that was corrupt and fine in the American experiment.  Bombingham.  The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.  Bull Connor.  A.G. Gaston.

I was raised in a liberal household and we’d watched it all on tv.  The riots, the assassinations, George Wallace, federal marshals.  I knew much about what had happened here.  But to be here, on sacred ground, brought me face-to-face with the story of my country in a way that I’d never experienced before, even after four years living in DC and seven in St. Louis.  I’d started loving Birmingham because the woman I loved was here, now I was being drawn into its life – a music festival for all ages right in the middle of downtown; the restaurants presaging what would become one of the country’s finest farm to table dining destinations; an urban university already well regarded for biomedical research; all of it nestled beautifully across the last three mountains of the Appalachian chain.  And then the tangle of history.

I knew much about what had happened here, but there was so much more to know.  So that summer I read Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters for a deep dive into the events in Montgomery and Birmingham.  I spent time at the Civil Rights Institute, across the street from the 16^th Street Baptist Church, going slowly through the displays tracing the rise of the thriving Black middle class of the thirties & forties, then into the horrors of the next decade and on through the struggles that continue to this day.  A uniform from the Birmingham Barons, pride of the Negro Baseball League.  Water fountains with the placards specifying who could drink from which.  A fire-bombed Greyhound bus.  The barred door from the jail cell where King wrote The Letter From Birmingham Jail.  Visitors toss pennies and dimes through the bars onto the narrow cot.

Slavery was the fuel that powered the economy of the South, but racism has no regional affiliation.  When I lived in St. Louis (late 80s & early 90s), that city was sharply segregated.  Whites in the south, Blacks in the north, with a narrow, uncomfortably integrated band a few blocks wide between the two.  The city was tightly controlled by a small number of white families that dominated the business and political spheres.  I remember the controversy over building a pedestrian walkway on the new bridge across the Mississippi, because it would make it too easy for Black kids from East St. Louis (one of the poorest cities in the country) to cross over.  Of course, it was never stated that openly.  Everything was in well understood code.  If ever anyone explicitly questioned the effects of the ongoing structural racism pervading all aspects of the city they were quickly castigated as troublemakers.  The official line was clear – racism was not a problem in St. Louis, had never been a problem, and anybody who suggested otherwise was condemned.  It was a willful hypocrisy that had worked well for a century.

Birmingham didn’t have that luxury.  I found it refreshing to have that veneer of so-called civility ripped away.  The effects of racism, past and present, were visible everywhere.  Sure, there was still plenty of denial in the pockets of over the mountain communities where the old money lived.  But they’d lost much of their hold on the political life of the city, even as they retained tight control of the economics, and still dominated the government of the state.  Everywhere, the struggles to combat the poisons of that past were in evidence.  Anger and compassion.  I moved here just thirty years after the bombing of the 16^th Street church, and could see there was progress.  The hard won dismantling of legalized segregation.  Halting steps towards equality of opportunity.  Another thirty years on, there’s a few more steps forward.  The struggle continues. It’s a city of heroes.  But the corruption from the centuries of slavery and decades of Jim Crow is still thick, the muck and the fog we fight each day.  I don’t understand how anyone could take an honest look at the complexity of the city of Birmingham, with all of its history and promise, and remain ignorant of the depth of structural racism that accompanies that history.  I mean, I know people do; I just don’t understand how.

You don’t need to deny that rot to appreciate that always, here in the South, the rich layers of the culture manage to thrive.  A couple of weeks ago Lynn and I had a date night downtown.  We had dinner at Helen, emblematic of the breed of restaurants that has grown throughout the city over the last several decades.  Following in the steps of local boy Frank Stitt, who made his mark in the 90s with Highlands Bar and Grill,² these Southern restaurants are deeply rooted in the region, focusing on locally raised produce and game, seafood fresh from the Gulf of Mexico, and cooking techniques that are a blend of the tips and tricks of grandmothers from generations past, the classic techniques of French gastronomy, with infusions from the Pacific Rim, Mexico, and, well, everywhere else where cooking with local ingredients brings meals close to home.  It’s as cosmopolitan a dining scene as you’ll find anywhere in the country.  At Helen we had rabbit crêpes and grilled iberico presa, served family style with a slaw of celery and blue cheese, crispy potatoes and sweet spring onions.  Think about that.

From the restaurant we strolled the few blocks to the Lyric Theater, Lynn pushing me in the wheelchair.  Other people out relaxing, couples going in or coming out of the other fine restaurants and quirky bars we pass along the way.  People of all colors and persuasions.  The vibe is lively, comfortable, safe.³

The Lyric is an old vaudeville theater, beautifully restored a decade or so ago.  Intimate.  Impeccable acoustics.  Not a bad seat (including the ADA section!) We come once or twice a year — Randy Newman with his impossibly long arms and wingspread hands talk-singing the lie the slavers told the Africans, the pitilessness of the government man in Louisiana 1927; Mavis Staples laughing with defiant glee while giving us songs from her latest album along with songs she sang on the streets of the south sixty years ago, facing down armed men who wanted her dead. Tonight it’s Lucinda Williams and her band, tales of broken souls, the sights and sounds and characters of Louisiana and West Texas. They sing those songs on tour all over the world, but the poignancy runs deep when they sing ‘em down here.

Across the street is the Alabama Theater, one of those grand, incredibly ornate movie palaces from the thirties, organ rising from beneath the stage and all.  In August, the Alabama will anchor the Sidewalk Film Festival, now in its 24^th year.  The festival runs for a week, drawing 15,000 indie film lovers locally and from across the country.  Sidewalk now has their own Cinema Center with two 90 seat theaters, a classroom, programs and showings of first run and indie films throughout the year.  This spring they did a special series of discussion panels featuring Everything Everywhere All at Once, the multi-Oscar winning film.  One of the writer/ director Daniels, Scheinert, is Birmingham born and raised, as is Paul Rogers, who won the film’s editing Oscar, so there’s lots of local pride.  The festival (which now runs in tandem with the annual SHOUT LGBTQ+ film festival) includes seven sites, all within walking distance.⁴  We typically check into a downtown hotel from Friday afternoon through Monday morning fitting in as many films, along with a couple of the big parties, that we can manage.  I love watching the outfits on the LA types, listening in on conversations, the young actor in the tight dress who’s been here several years in a row talking to her first-timer companion in his stylishly scuffed leather jacket (which is really too warm for Birmingham in August), “Didn’t I tell you it’d be great!” 

JoBug will be a freshman at Ol’ Miss in the fall, majoring in Southern Studies.  Oxford, Mississippi is another perfect place to explore the complexity and the influence of the South on the rest of the country (and, by extension, the rest of the world).  The Center for the Study of Southern Culture takes an interdisciplinary look at all the angles and intersections.  Stroll around Courthouse Square and lose yourself for an hour in Square Books, one of the country’s greatest independent bookstores; take a selfie on the bench next to the statue of William Faulkner, the old dead white guy whose novels remain indispensable for any deep dive into the heart of America; have dinner at the award winning City Grocery where the menu includes an Okinawan style fried chicken, an idiosyncratic take on shrimp & grits, and an appetizer of brown-sugared pig tails. 

When she was filling out the application she had to answer, “What’s a question about the American South that intrigues me?”  We talked about it and I suggested “Why does so much great American music have its roots in the South?”  She liked that and a version of it made it into her essay.  From City Grocery it’s an easy hour and a quarter drive to the Crossroads, just outside Clarksdale.  The intersection of highways 49 & 61, where Robert Johnson gambled with the devil.  Listen to the sounds of the blues, steeped in the agony of slavery and the hope of redemption; listen harder to history and hear the cheers & jeers of the mobs at the lynchings and the songs of hope and defiance from the marchers.  Freedom songs.  Listen again as Armstrong’s trumpet weaves its call up Hwy 61 from New Orleans, veers right to Chicago and then New York and around the world.  It’s all here, never to be forgotten, despite all the attempts to bury it.  The constant struggle.

One year I spent a few days at the Shack Up Inn, five minutes down Hwy 49 from the Crossroads road sign.  I stayed in the Robert Clay Shack, one of a couple dozen shotgun shacks collected from the area and moved to the grounds of the old Hopson cotton gin.  I sat on the porch, playing my guitar and singing.  A group of German tourists were moving into the Pinetop shack next door and they were dazzled.  They listened to a couple of songs, believing that this was authentic, the real deal.  And it was, even if I didn’t have the heart to tell them I was a transplant from way up north, just as amazed to be there as they were.

A few weeks ago, Kyle Whitmire was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his series of articles, “State of Denial: How 150 Years of Whitewashed History Poisons Alabama Today.”  In these seven pieces, Whitmire tells of the highly successful efforts to erase the reality of our history, going back to the late nineteenth century and the abomination that is the 1901 state constitution that was explicit in enshrining white supremacy as the basis for all law in the State.⁵  He makes clear that this is not some buried history, that the mythology of the Lost Cause and the evil that it spawned remains with us every day.

Alabama has one of the first, and best, state archives organizations in the country, housed in a gleaming marble palace across from the capitol building in Montgomery.  It’s a testament to the determination and drive of one woman, who became the archivist in 1920.  Marie Bankhead Owen’s husband was the first state archivist and when he died, she took it over and ran it for 35 years.  It is thanks to her that the documents and artifacts from which the story of Alabama can be fully told have been preserved.  She came from a family of powerful politicians and that gave her the clout to do what she believed had to be done.  It’s an inspiring story.  She was a woman of unyielding determination.  A force to be reckoned with.  A woman on a mission.  Which was to make sure that the story the archives told was of the nobility of the Lost Cause, that there would be no mention of Reconstruction, that the Confederacy would be held up as the finest of achievements, its soldiers glorified as heroes.  In her telling, it would be Lincoln who started the War Between the States, the divisive issue was taxes, the heroes had no choice but to defend their homes and their way of life.  She was so successful in spreading that story into the schools that the people who hold power in Montgomery now, proud Alabamians, remain convinced that the war had nothing to do with slavery, that the slaves were generally happy and well treated and that the mission today is to preserve as much of that way of life as possible.  They passed a law not long ago prohibiting any municipality from moving any of the monuments to the Confederacy that litter the state.  They claim those monuments are history.

But monuments aren’t history.  Documents and statues, plaques and proclamations are only the raw material of history.  Those of us in the memory institutions – archivists, librarians, curators, journalists – are charged with organizing and preserving the artifacts of history, written and otherwise.  Then it’s up to the historians to pick and choose, trying to honestly reveal the tales they tell.  It’s the work of generations, and it never ends.  Steve Murray, the current state archivist, and the team he works with have been patiently opening up the story.  Owen’s allegiance was to the Lost Cause.  Theirs is to the truth.  And if it weren’t for the tireless work of a woman determined to bury the truth, they wouldn’t have the resources to bring it to light.  Such a fabulously American story.  How can you not love it, even while it breaks your heart?

I look around this place where so much of the best of American literature, music, food, and science took root.  Depending on the day I feel hopeful and inspired, or desperate and sick to my stomach.  The great debates of our time cascade around whether we can ever recover from the effects of slavery or if the wounds and the rot are too deep.  You can love this country and be proud of its people and its accomplishments and still wonder.  But if you want to see the whole thing, to embrace it all, all the greatness and all the evil, if you want to truly have a lived understanding of this great experiment, you have to contend with life in the South. Hopeful one day, despairing the next.  Determined to keep fighting.

I come from Wisconsin.  The corn fields, the paper mills, the rivers and lakes.  The ten foot high snow drifts of my childhood.  Eat cheese or die!  The open generosity and tight-mindedness of the people living in those small towns with their three churches, two supper clubs, and fifteen bars.  Loved growing up there.  Yankee, through and through.  I’ve been lucky enough to travel this land widely, explored the streets and alleys of the biggest cities and the small towns, driven the back roads across prairies and mountains, have seen so much that has thrilled, amazed, and horrified me.  But it’s here in Alabama, immersed in all the promise, all the hatred, all the brilliance and fear and astonishing bravery, that I feel myself the most entwined with my country.  I come from Wisconsin – but it’s here that I’m most American, it’s here that I’m home.⁶

1. And for those insisting that they’ll never spend a dime in this awful state, I’ll just mention that there are over 70,000 Black owned small businesses in Alabama.  What are you achieving with your shallow performative preening of purity?

2. Frank is from Cullman, small town a little ways north of B’ham.  The James Beard Foundation (Oscars of the restaurant industry) named him Best Chef in the Southeast in 2001; in 2018 Highlands was awarded Most Outstanding Restaurant in the country.

3. But don’t try telling that to some of the denizens of those over the mountain enclaves who would be horrified at the thought of taking their lives into their hands by going downtown at night.

4. Alabama Theater, Lyric Theater, Sidewalk Cinema, First Church Birmingham, Carver Theater, Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama School of Fine Arts.

5. “But if we would have white supremacy, we must establish it by law — not by force or fraud.” — John B. Knox, chairman of the Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1901.

6. Yankee – a northerner.  Damn Yankee – a northerner who stays.