Customer Reviews

Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Copies of "We Are Not Afraid" and "Parting the Waters" are on my bookshelf. These books about the civil rights movement are difficult to put down, not just because of the stories they tell, but because of the writing styles of the authors. "Carry Me Home" is as packed with history as these other books. Its focus on Birmingham is more narrow, but McWhorter doesn't skimp on facts. The problem is that McWhorter is so anxious to deluge the reader with facts that hardly a sentence flows without some diversion or interruption. Here is one of my favorites:

"On the evening of November 20, 1938, more than 1500 delegates- some 250 of them black- representing every state in the Old Confederacy, converged on Birmingham's tidy grid of a downtown, with the "so many vacant lots" that Jonathan Daniels, the New Deal liberal from an old North Carolina newspaper family, had described in his newly published A Southerner Discovers The South as "not so much areas of despair as shares in promise".

That's one sentence. If you followed it in one reading, congratulations.

I pick up "We are not Afraid" and "Parting the Waters" every so often to enjoy again. Reading "Carry Me Home" was rewarding, but not an experience that I would repeat.

This book does a wonderful job of conjuring up the life of a young white girl from Birmingham's elite and her family, people from the kind of society that made it possible for the tragedy there to happen. The book is meticulous in its rendering of history, and really goes into the minutiae of how the church bombing happened and who did it. Still, McWhorter keeps it interesting, where other historians might tumble under a weight of detail. It's a big (long) book, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

This book superbly puts into focus the critical juncture of the Civil Rights revolution and almost no one emerges unscathed from an unholy cauldron of evil-doing by the shifting alliances of the FBI, the Kennedys, Governor George Wallace,the Birmingham News (the state's largest newspaper), local Alabama industrialists, U.S. Steel and many others. The story continues even today.

The perpetrators of a bombing that killed four children went on to participate in other infamous acts including more murder, while the FBI stood back, just as today it reluctantly minimizes its cooperation with prosecutors as two more accused in the bombing go to trial after 37 years. What does the FBI fear now from its now dead informant who was involved up to his neck? Does the perverse racist and vindictive spirit of J. Edgar Hoover still drive the motives of the FBI? Is the FBI still as paranoid about people who might "embarrass and humiliate the bureau" to the extent they forget the real public responsibility neglected here.

Everyone who was anyone for the most part got into bed with the Ku Klux Klan, including the FBI and George Wallace. Wallace, whatever he said or thought, was disgusting until the day he died with his public lies about his Klan connections.

I was born and raised in Birmingham, worked there as a journalist during and after this period and covered many of the bombings and events Ms. McWhorter discusses. This is a magisterial work. Not just about the Civil Rights Revolution, but about dirty politics and corrupt journalists who pandered to the racists and the Klan. Ms. McWhorter pushes aside the clouds of hate and fear to see both the heroes and the villains. And she tells the story as only someone who knews the terrain could tell it.

This is a highly readable and significant addition to the literature on the Civil Rights Movement. I almost missed it because of the bad review by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post! Don't make that mistake. Yardley's contention that McWhorter adds nothing to what we know about Birmingham and civil rights is far off the mark.

Of all the histories of the civil rights era, Diane McWhorter's Carry Me Home is easily the best. She packs more passion and insight into a single sentence than most of her competitors do in entire chapters. The wooden-prosed Garrow comes to mind. For those of us who grew up in the lower South who may be tempted to join the current "reconciliationist" impulse to gloss over how truly bad the "bad old days" were, Carry Me Home is a full immersion baptism in the cold, cold waters of reality, a healthy antidote to our generation's cheap therapeutic dreams of "closure." Her portrait of Fred Shuttlesworth reminds us, in this leadership-challenged age of smarmy black spokesmen like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, of a time when giants roamed the earth. Especially moving were McWhorter's personal reminiscences of her privileged Mountain Brook girlhood and her family's intersection with the dark currents running through Birmingham's racist power elite. If the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce had any sense instead of restoring the statue of Vulcan they'd erect a monument, if not to Shuttlesworth, then to Ms. McWhorter and let it shine as the beacon that the Magic City has long deserved and long been denied. The Pulitzer Prize Committee got it right. Carry Me Home carries us home.

In the last ten years there have been a number of truly excellent first hand accounts of the events that transformed America in the 1950s and 1960s through the actions of the civil rights movement. Yet none of these masterful accounts is better than this first hand account by one of the principals in the final such confrontation in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Diane McWhorter, a journalist and also a native Alabamian, carefully essays the complex welter of conflicting forces animating the growing battle between the conservative forces of the white establishment on the one hand, and the coalition of different black and other liberal groups on the other, determined to finally break down the color barriers in Birmingham once and for all.

In language that often seems more powerfully written in the prose of fiction than in the antiseptic words of journalism, the author ignites the pages with a firestorm of powerfully etched incidents and images, describing the seemingly indescribable historic events that frame the story of the epic struggle that was Birmingham. Early in the spring of 1963, civil rights protestors, including black school children, were met with senseless systematic ferocity by armed thugs and attack dogs. A few short weeks later, the KKK cowardly bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, murdering four pre-adolescent black girls in one of the most horrific and despicable acts of the entire civil rights era. Thus in a few short months, Birmingham became the most violent epicenter for the most bloody final episode of the entire burgeoning civil rights struggle.

The scenes recounted are gripping and dramatic, ranging from those of ordinary black folks facing down brutality and violence with quiet resolve, never resorting to all too understandable revenge or payback. Each scene is backed up by a extremely well-documented series of vignettes and facts, supporting all of the historical accounts with a riveting web of first person knowledge and a sense for the central crucial elements of the story as it memorably unfolds with all of its native drama and innate excitement. From the opening events of terror-filled reprisals against "nonconforming" 'colored' individuals to the increasingly well organized and masterfully orchestrated campaigns conducted by savvy and experienced civil rights activists, as the smoke clears it is the forces for change that emerge victorious, despite all of the resources and powers of the established order being marshaled against them.

This is an extremely well written and eminently readable book that masterfully summarizes a plethora of related incidents and historical events into an entertaining and educational work that will certainly stand the test of time and will likely become a standard reference for students wishing to understand one of the most fateful of the battles eventuating in the success of the civil rights movement. This is a book I can highly recommend for all readers. Enjoy!

"Bring Me Home" is electrifying and reads like a murder mystery, which in fact it is. All of the elements are present: villains, murderers, thieves, and victims. And in many respects the story has been a mystery, with some of the perpetrators only recently brought to justice -- 23 years after the 12th Street Baptist Church bombing-murder, with numerous related crimes still unresolved. The author herself, for whom this is in part a memoir, was unable to get a definitive answer from her own father, whose involvement in the era's events or lack thereof remain somewhat murky.

This is a serious historical work, and reading it requires commitment and energy. However, McWhorther is an excellent writer which makes the effort extremely pleasurable -- with her lightening the drama of the horrific events with frequent dry sarcastic and ironic observations on the era's events, and the culture of the Southeast.

The author logically and factually substantiates how racism was employed by local capitalist hegemony to control working class whites, as well as to maintain black oppression by manipulation of the Klu Klux Klan and other extremist racists. While I have been a student of this era I was fascinated by McWhorter's depiction of the Klu Klux Klan's origins as a populist white movement. Additionally, McWhorter gives long overdue recognition to the pivotal role played by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth whose substantial achievements based in unrelenting activitism were eclipsed by the politics in the civil rights movement, resulting in Martin Luther King's being thrust into the limelight and receiving disproportionate credit.

The poignancy of this book is also largely a function of the writer's background as a member of one of Birmingham's upper crust families, with the irony of her father electing a working class white lifestyle. McWhorter owns up to her culpability in the disenfranchisement and oppression of blacks as a member of this society, and this book is in part an effort at compensation. It is truly an excellent work.

I'm not usually a non-fiction reader, but when I reached the end of "Carry Me Home," I wanted to go right back to page one and read the whole thing over again. It's a page-turner, startlingly lucid - brilliant storytelling. It's a work of sharp, muscular scholarship: McWhorter's research is so thorough -- the reader knows no lead has been ignored, no microfilm unread, no significant (living) character in the drama left uninterviewed. Lastly, as a look at one of the pivotal tragedies in the history of the United States - the murder by bombing of the four little girls in Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, and the history that led up to, and flowed from, the event - it uncovers much about the history of race, class and power in this country, and how we all live a part of that history.

Heroes. such as the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and other early Movement leaders, are brilliantly brought to life. As are the villains. Extraordinary courage -- murderous cowardice. The reader lives with them both.

For me, "Carry Me Home" raised the whole question of collective responsibility for racial murder, simply by telling the story so well.

Diane McWhorter, obviously driven by an intellectual curiosity of the first order, has created a work that will make all who read it better students of American history. In fact, I think "Carry Me Home" should be required reading in every eleventh grade U.S. History class -- as well as a staple of college U.S. History syllabi.

Carry Me Home is simply one of the best books I've ever read. Ms Mc Worter's work is well conceived and very well written. She brings a unique perspective on the pivitol events that took place in Birmingham Alabama, that of a young resident. She lived on the edge of privledge and was sheltered from most of the shattering events of her childhood.

This did not stop her from digging relentlessly into her past. She has interviewed many surviving players in these events (including members of the KKK) and has given us a glimpse and how her family was impacted by what went on around them.

She also provides an inside portrait of how these events were shaped by the giants of the civil rights movement and how the events shaped them.

I highly recommend this book.

I expected this book to be about the infamous Birmingham church bombing, the subject of the intriguing Spike Lee documentary. In fact, this book is a remarkable expose of the "pre-Civil Rights era" on through to a defining moment in US history (the bombing) and how divided and scarred America remained after the Civil War. She explores the issues of race, power, and hate with restrained passion for her subject, making the tale even more compelling. The author weaves a great history of a dark time, paints compelling portraits, and adds emotional depth I think few but a native of Birmingham could have touched. A remarkable work.