Here is a taste of Tish Harrison Warren’s New York Times piece on the late Birmingham civil rights activist: On Sept. 9, 1957, the very day President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act and lawyers sought injunctive relief to force...
Alabama
The Author’s Corner with Victoria E. Ott
Victoria E. Ott is James A. Wood Professor of American History and the coordinator of Gender and Women’s Studies at Birmingham-Southern College. This interview is based on her new book, The Failure of Our Fathers: Family, Gender, and Power in...
A historian of the South has a few words for the Alabama State Legislature
Here is the legendary Wayne Flynt, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Auburn University: Dear Alabama Legislators: I called the office of my state senator several weeks ago concerning House Bill 312, which proposes to restrict how K-12 public school educators...
Nick Saban rips on “self absorbed” Alabama fans
In case you haven’t seen this yet: Saban is probably right. But as far as “self-absorption” in college sports is concerned, I think there is enough to go around right now....
Alabama crowd boos Trump for recommending the vaccine
Back in February I live-tweeted Trump’s speech at CPAC: Some of you may recall a post I wrote in March 2021 about pro-Trump evangelical Franklin Graham’s efforts to get his followers vaccinated. It did not go well. Here were some...
Alabama governor Kay Ivey slams the unvaccinated people in her state
Alabama has the lowest population of fully vaccinated people in the nation (33.91%). 49% of Alabama residents identify as evangelical Christians. Even a staunch Alabama conservative like Kay Ivey understand the science. Watch: Also near the bottom of the list:...
Judson College closes
Judson College, an Alabama Baptist women’s college and a member of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, has closed. Here is Inside Higher Ed: After teetering on the edge of closure for months, Judson College’s Board of Trustees voted...
The John R. Lewis Memorial 10 Highway
Glad to see this. Here is WSFA 12 News: The Alabama legislature passed a bill Thursday to name a portion of U.S. Highway 80, from Selma to Montgomery, after the late civil rights icon and congressman, John R. Lewis. According to...
Mo Brooks announces Alabama senate run
In case you missed it, this was Mo Brooks on January 6, 2021: The guy who represents Alabama’s 5th congressional district is running for Senate. Here is NBC News: A conservative firebrand and staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump...
Teaching Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
This is a revised and updated version of a post originally published on March 6, 2020: After a couple weeks focusing on “creation” in my Created Called for Community (CCC) course at Messiah University, we have shifted gears slightly to focus on the...
Alabama GOP wants to pass a resolution declaring Trump “one of the greatest and most effective Presidents in the 245-year history of this Republic.”
Look on the bright side. At least they are not calling Trump THE “greatest and most effective president” in U.S. history. Here is Brandon Moseley at the Alabama Political Reporter: When the Alabama Republican Party executive committee meets for its...
When 20th-century students memorized “Dixie” and “long lists of forgettable governors”
Over at The Montgomery Advertiser, Brian Lyman reports on the treatment of the Confederacy in Southern history textbooks: For much of the 20th century, southern classrooms treated Black history — when they touched the subject at all — as a sideshow to...
Populists in 1895: America “is not a Christian nation”
This article appeared in the People’s Party Advocate, published in Ashland, Alabama, in 1895. Fri, Aug 16, 1895 – 4 · People’s Party Advocate (Ashland, Alabama) · Newspapers.com As I argued in the first four chapters of Was America Founded...
Alabama Department of Archives & History apologizes for promoting a Confederate view of history
Here is the statement from the Department of Archives & History: As our state and nation struggle to navigate through a place of contention, fear, and uncertainty, the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) recommits itself to the mission...
The unsettling similarities between a 1964 George Wallace letter and the rhetoric of Donald Trump
Earlier this week, presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted a 1964 letter written by segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace to a woman in Cedar Spring, Michigan: Here is the text of the entire letter: Dear Miss Martin: This will acknowledge and...
Trump in Tuscaloosa
After he was booed in Washington D.C. at the World Series and in New York at a UFC fight, Donald Trump appears to have found a generally friendly audience in Tuscaloosa, Alabama at a University of Alabama football game. ESPN...
Christian Right Leader Urges Trump to Clean-Up His Act
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyZutImCyZU&w=560&h=315] Wallace Henley is the Associate Pastor at Houston Baptist Church, a 69,000 member megachurch. He worked as a White House aide in the Nixon administration, served as president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, and was an award-winning journalist...
The Author’s Corner With Thomas Balcerski
Thomas J. Balcerski is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University. This is interview is based on his new book Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King (Oxford University Press, 2019). JF: What led you...
Why Jews and Muslims Might Claim a Religious Liberty Exemption to the Alabama Abortion Bill
Steven Waldman, author of a new book titled Sacred Liberty: America’s Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom, makes a fascinating argument in a recent op-ed at Newsweek. What happens when a pro-life position on abortion clashes with religious liberty? Jews...
Alabama Governor Signs Anti-Abortion Bill One Day and Plans to Execute Someone on the Next Day
Today I had a long conversation with New York Times reporter Adeel Hassan. He was trying to figure out how Alabama could execute a convicted murderer on the day after the state passed a very extreme abortion law. Here is his...