Stars Fell on Alabama

Carmer was a Northerner who taught at the University of Alabama in the 1920s. This book is a hodgepodge of personal memories and collected stories. The stories are versions of folk tales or ghost stories that may be based on fact, but have fictionalized elements added in the telling. Carmer chooses the best version for his book. His personal memories are also a bit fictionalized to avoid offending some of the subjects. This is a raw, honest portrayal of the endemic racism of 1920s Alabama--but probably 1920s America as well, although Carmer certainly doesn't share in that belief. Still, his stories are full of white and black people using the N-word and using other racial stereotypes that will be very jarring for a modern reader. The show more racism of many of the Whites is purely endemic - it is so much an accepted part of their lives that they take it for granted. But the black characters, while not using the word in the same sense, also subscribe to many of the same outmoded beliefs. Carmer does a good job of going into black households and churches, and his portrait is probably quite accurate, but it speaks of times and attitudes that are thankfully alien to most of us in 2019. If you're an Alabama native, as I am, I recommend reading this book, as so much of it will awaken old memories and places. I don't think it will mean quite as much to a non-Alabama or non-Southern reader who doesn't pick up on the accents and ways of speaking that Carmer portrays with pretty much unfailing accuracy.

Wayne Flynt's introduction is excellent, by the way. No surprise there, of course. Definitely read it before diving into this book. show less

excellent yet disturbing Northern Journalist narrative of social life in Alabama circa 1930 (Upper class judges in KKK) etc etc

3559. Stars Fell on Alabama, by Carl Carmer (read 17 Mar 2002) Reading this was first suggested to me when I read the aforementioned Fifty Years of Best Sellers on 22 May 1946 but I never did till it was discussed on a book board I follow, and since I had access to it from a local college library, I decided to finally read it. It was a 1934 nonfiction bestseller, and is an account of the six years the author spent in Jim Crow Alabama in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The author does not approve of the then prevalent white Alabamian view but reports it in a non-condemnatory way. The book is full of non-interesting things (e.g., much discussion of Ala. superstitions) to one not connected to Alabama.