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

OK. Now that I have the anger out I can get to the real review of the book. What I have long thought is that the plight of blacks in this country happened because, as opposed to what we learn in school, the South won the Civil War, defeating the emancipation principle in civilian life. Certainly the North won the battles and the country did not split, but where was the freedom promised to blacks? 100 years later, in this book, here the blacks are seeking to have access to the rights GUARANTEED to them by the Consitution. Rights regularly denied them by the governments in the states comprising the old Confederacy.

McWhorter takes an unblinking look at her home town, a center of racial conflict that marked the effort to continue denial of show more those rights. And a process of denying that we are one country, white and black. She looks at the many skirmishes and battles along that pathway, pointing out that it was largely the violent efforts of those wanting to maintain segregation and the denial of rights that brought an end to what they wanted to keep. They were their own worst enemies.

Sadly, we are seeing a move again toward the denial of rights, but in more states than just the old Confederacy. Hidden under the cloak name "States Rights", it is a movement again seeking to deny to citizens of color access to the ballot box. And that voting rights also get denied to poor whites, well, that's just collateral damage. Their fault for being poor and no better than any N-word anyway. Make no mistake, "States Rights" is an effort to reconstitute, legally, white supremacy in the US -- an effort fully supported by the Republican Party leadership. Can you say "racist"? None are so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear.

Are they going to make us go through all this s*** again? Seems so. All this little old white lady can say is "damnation". show less

There is no doubt Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution is testimony to McWhorter's nineteen year mission. Her conviction to expose the truth is on every page. What makes Carry Me Home so compelling in the unflinching examination of McWhorter's own family's beliefs and involvements in the tumultuous time of civil unrest. Interjecting personal biography give the book a unique drama. The detail with which McWhorter writes allows readers to not just walk in the footsteps of history but experience as if they are walking side by side in real time.

This book ticks off certain local folks (I live in Birmingham) but not for any good reason that I can see. McWhorter weaves the history of her family into that of the city, in order to give a glimpse of how white residents managed to shelter themselves for quite some time from the revolution taking place downtown. Fred Shuttlesworth, founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, emerges as the principal hero of the movement.

Detailed but dry events spanning twenty or so years of Birmingham history around the early Sixties leading up to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. McWhorter's father was apparently involved with Ku Klux Klan and perhaps with the bombing which she talks about. It's horrifying that the local and state police, courts and government collaborated with the Klan. It was disappointing in that it didn't explain why people were so invested in racism.

3650. Carry Me Home Birmingham, Alabama The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter (read 16 Nov 2002) I have wanted to read this since it came out, and when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction this year I had another reason to read it. The author was born in 1952 and was a young girl while Birmingham was going thru the civil rights struggle, highlighted by the church bombing on Sept 15, 1963, which killed four young black girls. The book is quite "local" and no doubt people in Birmingham will be more caught up by the account than was I. I did not find it as good as David Garrow's Bearing the Cross (read 16 Jan 1989) nor as Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters (read 15 Dec 1994). But it is absorbing reading show more if a bit long and not overly well-written. It is well-documented and has a good bibliography. One has to be consistently appalled at the awfulness of the attitudes of so many whites in 1963 Birmingham, and relieved that now the murderers of the little black girls can be convicted whereas at the time they could not be. show less

Traces and maps my time in Ensley, Alabama, when cast out by my family of origin...