Coming back to Birmingham by Leaving Birmingham

Well, here's my first shot and it's a book review (more of my thoughts on it than a review). The book is Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Son by Paul Hemphill, from here on out, LBNNS to keep it good and confusing.

I was born in Birmingham in 1975 and subsequently joined the "white flight" moving to a small university town (Montevallo) about 25 miles south of Birmingham. This book caught my interest because I sort-of feel like a native son of B'ham myself, but really don't know much about it or it's history.

LBNNS is certainly a good summary of the town's history. While it doesn't provide much in the way of hard and thorough historical facts, Hemphill does a great job of describing the culture of early B'ham. I was totally unaware that B'ham was established towards the end of the Civil War and not really until after that. Once iron was found, it was quickly taken over by carpetbaggers.

It's pretty obvious from the start that the book is a kind of cartharsis for Hemphill. His father was a rough guy who hated "niggers, commies, and jews". Hemphill himself was a sports nut and didn't really pay attention to the civil rights war in Birmingham until much later in life. This book describes how he came to terms with his blindness and lack of balls to do something about it...it just took him (and Birmingham) about 50 years to see it.

LBNNS has interviews with people (white and black, liberal and conservative) who lived during the time and their impressions then and now. Very interesting stuff. I have to say I was very moved by the descriptions of what happened to the Freedom Riders and the Protestors. I also think that I underestimated the impact that segration and discrimination had on blacks living in the south at the time.

Hemphill is definitely a whacko left-winger. He keeps it down in the book, but is pretty derogatory towards Republicans and conservatives in general. He equates conservative Republican with evil, racist, violent oppressors while the enlightened, ivy-league attending, social activist, Democrat, socialist/communist person was loving and compassionate. He didn't really get into arguments one way or the other, he just assumed that Republican = bad and Democrat = good.

Overall, I really liked the book. I learned a lot about Birmingham and Hemphill is really good and introducing you to the people he writes about and who were involved in the goings-on in Birmingham during the '60s. It's prompted me to ask my parents and grandparents who lived through it what they remember. Very thought provoking and highly recommended.

Whuzzat? A New Blog

I'm starting this blog with extreme skepticism over my willingness to keep it up to date, but whatever. I'm going to use it to chronicle the stuff I read, watch, or listen to...sort of a nate-pourri of music, theology, philosophy, history and sci-fi stuff.

Probably not very useful to anyone, including myself, but for posterity's sake (and I'm just an egoistic kind of guy), here goes nothing.