There are three things most people who know me can agree are true. I love stories, I love history, and I ask a lot of questions. As a child, this meant my parents and grandparents did a lot of talking about their experiences growing up in the decades I had missed. As a child in Alabama, this meant that I heard some things that caused me to feel some conflicting emotions. But as long as they kept talking, I kept listening.

Over the years, I began to piece some things together. When I rode my bike down to the backwater of the Coosa River behind my elementary school and looked south, I was looking directly as the location of my fifth great-grandfather’s original homestead. When I played near Big Wills Creek, I was standing on the boundary of what was once the Cherokee Nation: a very personal line that runs right through the heart of one the most complicated aspects of my family’s history. As a documented descendant of a Cherokee family that moved to Alabama from Georgia several generations ago, it wasn’t lost on me that that I could identify with complex stories on either side of that line.

However, connections weren’t always that clear. There were gaps in these stories. Memories had been lost. Places had been covered or eroded by time and in some cases, river water. Some stories had been buried due to intense pain or shame. People had lived and died leaving behind as much mystery as possessions. Maybe more. I desperately wanted to solve those mysteries. I spent a lot of time in the genealogy room at the Gadsden Public Library. Under the watchful eye of Ms. McElroy, whose patience with me was as endless as the loops of microfilm I requested, I learned something very important. The location of my home wasn’t the result of a recent decision.

When I was born in Alabama, I was thrust into a story that had been unfolding for quite some time. My ancestors had moved towards Alabama with a magnetic force until something made them stop. Was it a conscious choice? A string of random circumstances? Entropy? Exhaustion? Even decades of research as a professional genealogist didn’t make it completely clear, but in all my questioning, I learned something else. I learned that I don’t really need to know. What I really want is to understand.

Understanding is not a simple task. It asks me to confront all the conflicting things that my grandparents’ stories made me feel. It demands that I approach my home as more than the setting of my story, but as a complex character. It’s far from perfect. Sometimes, I wish I lived anywhere else. Other times, I can’t imagine ever leaving. I am an individual. I am not tethered to the choices that my ancestors made, but something keeps me here. I’ve learned in recent years that a big part of that something is the stories and the people who keep them.

Nothing has aided my quest to understand like the experiences and memories people have shared with me in my research. I have been involved in several oral history projects over the years. Most recently, I met with Alabama families who descend from documented Cherokee ancestors such as Evaline Keys McCoy and Jesse Brackett. At the beginning of these interviews, the subjects often speak quietly. They are unsure if anything they share will matter, but that almost always changes. Once the words start coming, they start to remember what it feels like to be free.

I sometimes think that I can see the memories attach themselves to each other like electrons in the air. What used to be a thousand sensations or images become almost sentient as whole narratives are formed from the sweepings of a person’s mind. It is then that it no longer matters why I’m here or they’re here. It just matters that we are. It matters that we’re sharing a human experience in a place that intent or chance conspired to put us both. That matters because if home can be a character as well as setting, then it is subject to character development. We can impact how that unfolds if we choose, and that is why I still call Alabama home.

We have things to do for each other. That is enough for now.

 

Jana Parris, a native of Etowah County, is a writer, folklorist, and genealogist. She now lives in Huntsville, where she works as the Burritt Folk School program manager at Burritt on the Mountain. Parris is also a member of the board of directors of the Alabama Folklife Association and on the editorial board for the AFA’s journal, Tributaries.  

Alabama is so much more than the state itself to me. It is a living, breathing entity that is a part of me — and that feeling it gives is home.

At my core, the land will always bring me back because my family has strong bonds with this land. I come from a wonderful family that has ties to a lot of different places and cultures, but a huge part of our ancestry includes both African American and Native American roots. Growing up with this twin identity proved to be challenging in some instances as it was not accepted amongst everyone. I was bullied a lot for my ancestry, to the point where riding the school bus was nearly impossible. My sister is five years older than I am and she and my older cousins had to protect me a lot during that time.

One of my most vivid memories is from when I was about five or six years old. I was on the school bus and my mom had told me to get off at her mother’s house that day. I usually got off the bus at my father’s mother’s house. Both of my grandmothers have native ancestry but one was more fair-skinned than the other. As the bus driver pulled up to my more fair-skinned grandmother’s home, an older girl told me, “So, you think you’re better than us?”

This girl and I were both brown-skinned, so I was confused and said nothing. She continued: “You’re getting off at your white grandmama’s house today, not your mammie’s.” Still confused, I responded, “My grandmama isn’t white, she’s black, white, and native.”

Her response: “Well, whatever she is, that’s why we hate you.”

I don’t think that those children knew that my family had already instilled in me that no matter what we were “mixed with,” in the state of Alabama, we would still be drinking out of the “Coloreds Only” water fountains if it were still the ’60s. Because we had every race in our family, the color of anyone’s skin did not matter to us, it was all about character. The bullying I experienced could be terrible, but I took those emotions and created art. That was always my outlet.

As a Fine Arts major at Huntingdon College, I started using my art to explore my identity, heritage, and ancestors. A pivotal turning point for me artistically was the piece I did of my grandmother, Annie Lou. Although that painting was created nearly a decade ago, I can remember that day like it was yesterday.

My grandmother and I always had a very special bond, I found her to be a carbon copy of the person I wanted to be — kind, loving, and strong. My grandmother was very old school, and not particularly open to taking pictures or having any of her pictures displayed, so when she agreed to let me take her picture and create a painting of her — well, to say that I was thrilled is an understatement. With permission, I gathered my roommate’s colorful scarf and drove from my dorm straight to her house to have her pose before she changed her mind. We laughed a lot while I was taking photos as she found it especially humorous that she was a model for a painting. “You got me tickled,” she kept giggling as she tried to maintain her pose.

After I finished that painting, I felt something completely different than what any other painting made me feel. I felt proud of the woman on the canvas, and wanted everyone to understand her spirit that I had so desperately attempted to capture on canvas. I loved mixing just the right amount of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and raw umber. There was a sense of power that came with creating fine art of my ancestors and culture, and I decided to create an entire series of works based on Annie Lou. Sadly, my grandmother passed away last year on the 10th of September. But I can say with confidence that her portrait single-handedly shifted my approach to art, and life.

I went on to co-found a nonprofit organization called the Alabama Indigenous Coalition, a platform created for Native, Black Native, kinfolks, and individuals across the Southeast to learn about the history of Native Americans and the complexities that come with being a mixed Native. My grandmother and my family’s memories have pushed me to have the courage to give land acknowledgements and speeches.

I have seen some changes already happen with the work that I have done, so I do have hope that more Alabamians can learn about the rich history this state has to offer, across the board. We learn from stories, and we grow from them, too. I know I do. Over time, these stories build knowledge within me, and it all comes out on the canvas.

 

Tori Nicole Jackson is an artist and advocate from Prattville. She is the co-founder and vice president of the Alabama Indigenous Coalition. Some of her recent work will be on display at Huntingdon College’s annual Black History Month Art Exhibit, February 10-14.

How do you love a state that does not love you?

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Alabama since I was old enough to begin understanding the impacts of political, social and cultural structures here. My formative years were spent in Jasper and Waverly. Even as a kid, it was easy for me to see the difference in how people with monetary comfort were treated verses those whose lives were more hard-scrabble. It was also obvious how people with black and brown skin were treated and regarded compared to those with shades of white skin. The pathways and praise available for males and females also distinctly different. The history of here is so rooted in keeping us apart, to situate humanness on a scale of mattering. And this place also made me.

I did not know how to be my authentic self as a young person — and I thought that what I saw in others was their authentic selves. I did not understand the multi-layered influences that dictate how we are allowed to become.

People like me get crushed here — and that crushing can prompt a departure. It can also cultivate a deep wisdom and stamina. My deep love is connected to a youth spent in the woods, exploring the natural world and learning to fall in love with history (the history I was drawn to was never taught to me, of course), learning to intensely see all which surrounds. Cultivating that sight and longing to grow eventually led me to graduate degrees in poetry and women’s history. I went to New York for that. I did not see a place for me here. In fact, so much told me that I was not welcome.

Alabama does not like LGBTQ people, and when you are young and you feel a place is actively destroying people like you, you long to leave that. Not everyone gets to do that. But beyond being a lesbian, Alabama does not like my head and heart, which is unshakably rooted in love, compassion and a drive for a world in which all people have the opportunity to thrive and become.

So why did I come back? Because I am of this place. I am red clay roads and twisted oaks. I am the vanishing natural landscape and its deeply complicated history. There is such beauty here, though — so many incredible stories and histories often hidden. I realized after graduate school that I had to come back. So many like me leave and don’t return, but I could return and felt compelled to be a part of the long history of people fighting for the people of Alabama who are ignored and silenced. This is not empty rhetoric. It is not the common performative trope of so many lobbying for your votes.

The intensity to come home was the same that I had to leave. Poet Margaret Walker writes in “For My People” about building a world that will hold all the people. That poem was not written for me, I am not Margaret’s Walker’s people, but the poem is truth for me, an anthem.

Poet Langston Hughes writes in “Daybreak in Alabama” about red hands and black hands and white hands holding each other. Both poets write about hope, the belief in a better world. This life, my life, my work is supported by these sacred words. I believe in what we can become, what every child and person can become. And without hesitation, that becoming is rooted in our art, our poems and stories, our histories — whether we like them or not, it is all us.

 

Kyes Stevens is a poet, historian, rescuer of animals, and former volunteer firefighter in her hometown of Waverly. She is also the founder and director of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project at Auburn University.

Conceived in 2001, the Project offers access to educational opportunities to people currently and formerly incarcerated across the state. Over the past two decades, the Project has grown from one poet teaching in one prison to a community of hundreds of writers, artists, and scholars teaching the arts and humanities in correctional facilities across Alabama — thus far, reaching some 7,000 individuals in the process. 

When I was growing up an only child in the 1940s, my mother and father moved often, always trying to find a better job. Although they were the hardest workers I have known, the times were hard: tail end of the Great Depression and onset of the Second World War. We were nomads, moving frequently from Pontotoc, Mississippi, where I was born, to Alabama — to Sheffield, Birmingham, Gadsden, Anniston, Dothan, and also to Augusta and Atlanta, Georgia. It was a lonely world for a young boy.

My father was one of eight children on a sharecrop cotton farm south of Ohatchee, Alabama. The work was endless and to make matters worse, he cut his leg while chopping wood and developed what was then an incurable bone disease which nearly took his life. But he never forgot the beauty of the valley stretching from Goose Neck Mountain near the Coosa River to Anniston. For a stretch of time, during my last few years of high school, I had a view to cherish, too, looking from my bedroom window at the top of Anniston’s 10th Street Mountain Road, out to Cheaha Mountain.

For a time, our family moved away from the valley in the 1940s when the U.S. Army bought the land to use as an artillery range. Not all the shells they fired exploded, so there were live “duds” that could detonate if a careless person handled it.

Once a year on Memorial Day weekend, visitors are permitted to drive the circular road there, the only stop allowed at the cemetery where some of my relatives are buried. The journey took longer than I had planned because I was enthralled by inscriptions on marble tombstones and decaying wood memorials. Those who had owned the land, as well as sharecroppers such as my family who worked it, rested in peace side by side. As I read the simple markers and elegant marble testimonies of success, I pondered lives that commanded attention and those that disappeared almost completely.

If there is one component of life that demands attention in our small sliver of the world, it is our capacity both to remember and to forget, to include both in the tapestry of life we create for ourselves. As I read markers that both extolled and trivialized lives, I concluded that cemeteries may be appropriate places to bury grievances as well.

Like many poor families during the Great Depression, my parents left the land and the state searching for something better, which explains both why I was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, and why I only lived there six months. Then we were like gypsies turned loose on the world. My father was a salesman/storyteller who sold coffee, insurance, roofing, and anything else that people wanted or needed. Gradually, our family was transformed from excessive concern about what people thought about us to what we knew about ourselves.

What has always kept me in Alabama is not its perfection. It is the candor, honesty, and kindness of so many people who disagree with me, yet continue to respect and even love me. And our differences seem trivial when I attend their funerals, or on occasion even deliver a eulogy for them. I will never forget that cemetery near Anniston containing so many messages from distant ancestors reminding me that what we share is more important than our differences.

 

Wayne Flynt, Ph.D., is a distinguished historian and professor emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University. His research focuses on Alabama and Southern culture, politics, religion, education, and poverty. Flynt is the author or co-author of 13 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Poor But Proud and Alabama: A History of a Deep South State. In addition to many other honors, he is an Alabama Humanities Fellow, and served as the founding editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

My love of Alabama’s history and music come with deep roots. I was born in Alabama in the middle of the 20th century to an Alabama dad and an Alabama mom. My ancestors, both paternal and maternal, came to Alabama in the early 19th century. I married an Alabama girl whose family came to Alabama in the early 19th century as well. We have lived and raised two children here, and now have two Alabama grandchildren.

Being a baby boomer, I was raised by the World War II generation. It seemed that most adult males in my life were veterans and these Alabama heroes would often tell me their war stories. When they shared their experiences with me, it eventually became clear to me that history is most often made by common folks dealing with problems that are often not of their own making.

When I was a child, I listened to my father’s 78 RPM records. I listened to jazz and big band music, including the music of Alabamians Erskine Hawkins and Nat King Cole, plus the country music of Hank Williams and The Delmore Brothers. My paternal grandmother from Birmingham was a classically trained pianist and church organist; my maternal grandfather from Clay County was an old-time banjo player who shared his love of old country music, scared harp, and gospel music. With my Dad’s old trumpet, I had the opportunity to join the elementary school band in the fifth grade. I have been a musician ever since.

In 1972, armed with a Samford degree in accounting and economics, I began a six-year stint in the corporate world while playing music on the side. Thanks to the kindness and support of many wonderful people, I and my fellow members of Three On A String left our day jobs to work full-time in the music business. This move allowed me to find many opportunities to combine my love of history with my love of music.

In 1985, Milton Bagby, an Alabama film producer, hired me to do the music for his film set in the 1860s. On a quest for authentic period music in the Southern History Room of the Birmingham Public Library, I discovered at least a hundred pieces of original sheet music from the mid 19th century. The discovery of this music eventually led me to a career of recording, producing, and marketing recordings of historical music, while also arranging, playing, and recording music for historical documentary films. I have since traveled around the country sharing these songs with their backstories in a concert-lecture format.

I have learned so much about our ancestors through their music. Prior to Mr. Edison’s invention of the recording machine, if people wanted music, they had to make it themselves. They sang songs about the things that really mattered to them. Their songs were often used by parents to teach their children: this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is our history, and these are our heroes.

Our ancestors sang about all aspects of life in Alabama. They used music to have silly fun, to dance, to make fun of themselves or others. These songs also spoke of home, family, daily life, love, hope, faith, and death. Alabamians who were enslaved were singing spirituals like “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” — a song that says if the Lord got Daniel out of the lion’s den, he can surely get me out of the terrible situation I’m in. During the Civil War, soldiers from Alabama sang about their experiences, their hardships, their reckoning with suffering and death, and their dream of going home. These songs go straight to the heart of men who were caught up in the whirlwind of total war.

Today, through my own travels, I have learned that America is an incredibly beautiful country with warm, wonderful people everywhere you go. Still, there’s nothing like the feeling I get when heading home and I see the sign that says, “Welcome To Alabama The Beautiful!” In spite of our warts and our problems, our history and our songs show how far we have come. Yes, we are still a work in progress, but in our music, I hear hope for our future.

 

Bobby Horton lives in Birmingham and is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and music historian. He has produced and performed scores for 19 PBS films by Ken Burns, including The Civil War, Baseball, and The Roosevelts, along with 23 films for the National Park Service. Horton is an Alabama Humanities Fellow. He and his Three on a String bandmates (of 50-plus years!) are also inductees of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Bessemer native and actor André Holland in a scene from his 2024 film, Exhibiting Forgiveness. 

 

I grew up in a small house with no storm cellar. Before I was old enough to know the name of the land I lived on I played with lightning bugs in the yard. On warm summer evenings, I helped my mother hang the laundry to dry as the setting sun turned the clouds pink and indigo. I walked on the same flat dirt roads that my mother used to walk after school as she made the thirteen-mile trek up to Birmingham to march with Dr. King. I learned to read the sky for signs of an approaching tornado. I would gather up my sisters and push our mattress up against the front door — after that there wasn’t much else to do but pray. I belonged, and we all belonged to each other.

 

Alabama taught me how to be a good neighbor, how to approach other people with compassion, and how to show up for them. I had a community that looked out for me and to whom I was accountable. As I’ve grown older, I have found that not everyone grew up in such a supportive environment. There is a tendency toward selfishness and shortsightedness in our national culture, a disconnect amongst people that is the polar opposite of my upbringing. I have found myself falling prey to this hyper-individualism on more than one occasion. Living in New York where instant gratification is the norm, you pass so many people every day you begin to resent drawn out conversations about each other’s lives. There is always another meeting in five minutes, and it’s always important. I am reminded, writing this, how special growing up in my community was and how much I value the life lessons I was taught.

My family fought so hard to make our home a better place to live. My parents, aunts, uncles, and family friends were very active in the civil rights movement, so I grew up steeped in it. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all of the people who were and are active in our community. I hope as we greet the future we will take better care of our poor people, that we will increase arts funding, and that we will do our part to take care of the natural world. That we will continue to love each other better, and model that for the rest of the country. To me, being an Alabamian means insisting that our country strive to live up to the best of ourselves.

My community was full of people who relished any opportunity to tell a story and who knew how to do it well. This led to a love of storytelling that eventually turned into my career. It is my hope that I can help give a platform to the wonderful people of Alabama. I am grateful to have the opportunity to bring Black stories to life on the screen. I will continue searching out our stories and telling them.

 

Since 2017, my mother and I have been working to restore the Lincoln Theatre in my hometown of Bessemer. My hope is that one day, it will be a space for the community to gather together. A place that inspires young people and encourages the older generations to share their stories. There is a quote often attributed to James Baldwin, although there is no documented proof he said these words in this way, which is: “Life is more important than art; that’s what makes art important.” This concept that life and art are intrinsically connected, and our desire to provide a space for that in Bessemer, has been our inspiration from the beginning. It is one of the great privileges of my life that I am able to create art that begins to explore the complexities of our culture and what it means to exist.

I think oftentimes people have a negative perception of Alabama, which it has earned in a lot of ways and has deserved in others, and yet there are a lot of wonderful people there who are doing great work everyday. And I want to celebrate those people. Wherever I am in the world or in my life, Alabama remains my home.

 

André Holland is a native of Bessemer, Alabama, and an award-winning actor of stage, television, and film. He is perhaps best known for his role in Moonlight, which won the 2017 Academy Award for Best Picture. Holland’s most recent film, Exhibiting Forgiveness, has earned universal acclaim and served as the Sidewalk Film Festival’s 2024 opening night film.

Holland returns to Alabama often, including when he appeared alongside Imani Perry as headliners of “Anabranch,” AHA’s 2019 Alabama Book Festival. 

I live in Alabama, but my Alabama looks a little different than what most folks might imagine. My Alabama speaks Spanish. My Alabama is the scent of tacos from trucks and the vibrant aisles of Mi Pueblo supermarket. My Alabama is sipping mezcal cocktails at Adios with friends, sharing stories of community and hope. It’s a place where cultural richness thrives, though it may not always be visible on the surface.

I was born in Nicaragua and grew up in San Francisco, where I took for granted the presence of people who looked like me and spoke like me. After earning my doctorate at Michigan State University, I moved to Alabama in 2013 to become a professor of Latin American history at Samford University.

The first question my mother asked when I told her we were moving to Alabama was, “Is it safe there? Will you be safe there?” It’s a question that speaks volumes, not just about Alabama, but about the fears and perceptions many of us carry when we think about the South. My wife, our one-year-old daughter, and I had been living in Atlanta while my wife completed her postdoc at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and I finished my dissertation. We were hesitant, but when Samford University offered me a position, we decided to take the plunge.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I quickly realized I was the only Latino professor on campus, and I wondered if I would ever find a community that felt like home. I helped organize the first Latino student organization on campus as a faculty advisor. It is often said that students succeed when they have teachers and professors who look like them, but for me, it was the students who gave me a sense of community. This effort introduced me to many Latino students, including Dulce Rivera. Dulce’s family had started the Spanish language radio station La Jefa and the Latino supermarket Mi Pueblo. Today, Dulce is the CEO of Mi Pueblo and serves on the ¡HICA! Board of Directors, a testament to the strength and continuity of our community.

In 2018, after five years at Samford, I left the university to join ¡HICA! because I saw the powerful impact of its work. ¡HICA! advocates for opportunities and removes barriers for the growing Latino and immigrant population in Alabama. We work tirelessly to create access within Alabama’s justice and health systems, facilitate legal immigration services, and help young people find educational and employment opportunities. We also provide pathways to home ownership and entrepreneurship. In short, ¡HICA! works to unlock the potential of the Latino and immigrant community in Alabama, and I knew I wanted to be a part of that mission.

 

What people might not know is that my family’s journey in the U.S. began when we came here on a tourist visa. For about six years, we were undocumented immigrants, navigating a system that felt unforgiving at times. Eventually, we were able to adjust our status, and that was a transformative moment for my family. It’s why becoming a U.S. citizen in 2014, just one year after moving to Alabama, meant so much to me. It validated the sacrifices my parents made, and it was a recognition of everything they had endured for our future. This personal experience is what drives my work at ¡HICA!. When I see families walk through our doors, I am reminded of my family and how we needed organizations like ¡HICA! to survive and later thrive. When I see the kids, I see myself.

What’s most remarkable is that ¡HICA! has been doing this work for 25 years, in a state that might seem, at first glance, like an unlikely place for such a movement. We’ve done it with the support of Alabamians who care deeply about creating a welcoming environment for Latinos and immigrants.

Of course, my Alabama is also the one that the rest of the country knows too well: the Alabama that passed HB 56 in 2011, a law designed to make life so difficult for immigrants that they would self-deport. Just a month after I moved here, I joined a demonstration coordinated by the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ) to protest HB 56. My wife, our daughter, and I marched in defense of immigrant rights.

Since then, Alabama has become more than just the place I live — it has become the place where I give back. In 2020, I was elected to the Homewood City Council, becoming the first-ever Latino elected official in Alabama. This community has embraced me in ways I never expected, and I am proud to serve in this role, helping to build a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all.

And now, after over a decade in this state, I find myself reflecting on what Alabama has come to mean for me. In some ways, I still don’t know if I consider myself an Alabamian. But when I look at my daughter, I see it clearly: Alabama is in her voice, in the way she says “family” with a Southern twang. She was born in Atlanta, but she has spent most of her young life here in Alabama. This is her home, and through her, it has become mine as well.

I see it too in how our neighbors have embraced our nephew, Byron, who lives with us now. They didn’t just welcome him into our family; they welcomed him into our community. In moments like these, I realize that my Alabama, the one that I’ve built with my family, friends, and colleagues, is not so different from the Alabama that others call home.

At ¡HICA!, we’re building a future where our community can fully realize their potential, where young people can pursue their dreams, where families can find stability and opportunity, and where being Latino in Alabama is not an exception but a part of the vibrant, diverse fabric of this state. When I think about the future, I think about an Alabama that will be better because immigrants are here.

This is my Alabama story. And like Alabama itself, it is a story of complexity, resilience, and, above all, hope.

Carlos E. Alemán, Ph.D., is a historian, former professor, and chief executive officer of ¡HICA!, the Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama.

 

Born in Birmingham’s industrial suburb of Fairfield during the waning days of Jim Crow, I was a city kid but also socialized in the two nearby rural communities of my parents’ upbringing. Every Sunday we attended the church of my mother’s childhood and summers were spent with cousins. I feel most connected to my state and heritage on Decoration Days in the Spring when I travel back to these communities to clean the graves of family members. These loving occasions offer a stage for oral histories and a chance to hear about the triumphs and struggles of my forebears.

My childhood interest in history coincided with the modern civil rights movement and the Civil War centennial, an undeniable example of “what’s past is prologue.” My White, working-class, evangelical Christian home provided a relatively safe haven from the volatile politics of Alabama.

My father was a steelworker and, when I was a toddler, he often went on strike. Mother went to work as an insurance underwriter, and my parents hired African American women to babysit me. This was at a time when Birmingham was considered the most segregated city in America, and our family benefitted from racist and inequitable systems. In hindsight, it is telling that a young family that couldn’t afford a car could afford full-time domestic help. As I grew, I became aware that I was culturally different from the White America that I saw on television.

Due to the historic rise of the working and middle classes, my family acquired a car and then another; at the same time, we weren’t spared the challenges of an unpopular war, a rancorous split in our rural Baptist church, and school integration. Later, most of my high school years would be spent at an all-White private school to avoid a busing “crisis.” I could feel the anxiety and fear of change in folks all around me, and I wanted to make sense of it. I soon became of the first generation in my family to attend college. Through study of history, archaeology, and folklore, I sought to understand Alabama and what was happening around me.

I found a dialectic of historical triumphs and failures. These failures were shrouded by a dishonest official narrative strewn with alternative facts downplaying the racial power imbalances that provided the land and much of the labor that built our state. Alabama’s politicized rendering of our past allowed for divisive shenanigans that continue to this day.

By leaving the state for graduate school, I gained perspective to see the qualities of Alabama that I loved more clearly and how Alabama’s story fit into regional and national patterns. Mostly, I focused on the confluence of Europeans, Africans, and American Indians on contested ground and how rich generational knowledge survived such turmoil.

 

I came home to Alabama hoping to make a difference in the place I love. I dove into the state’s pottery-making traditions, and, through the narratives of Alabama’s potters, I found stories of breathtaking creativity, soul-crushing tragedy, and inhumane enslavement. Eventually becoming the state folklorist at the Alabama State Council on the Arts, I spent 36 years working with others to document, present, and fund traditional arts activities. To this day, the beauty of Alabama’s folk traditions moves me, whether represented by a well-made piece of stoneware, a gourd martin house array, a swept graveyard, or a lined-out Dr. Watt’s hymn.

Our heritage of cultural diversity makes Alabama (and the South) unique. Centuries of sharing food traditions, hunting techniques, horticulture, music, storytelling, and crafts from three continents created the distinctness and beauty that is Alabama. While we celebrate the end product, we must acknowledge that the process has been, and remains, one of inequity and injustice. Such is the case with two of Alabama’s most impactful cultural exports.

The Muscle Shoals Sound is clearly the fusion of Black and White music. The joy we hear in those iconic hits was forged in an atmosphere of racial and political strife. The epic narratives of those artists tell a story of creative conflict and cooperation in tension with cultural and regional differences. Likewise, the quilt making of the African American women of Gee’s Bend has mesmerized the art world and has brought glory to Alabama. But their aesthetic directions with an art form of European origin were born of necessity in a rural community intentionally isolated by politics.

My Alabama is at its best when we embrace and honor cultural differences as strengths that can pull us together and reduce inequitable division. We must understand that the past was not idyllic, and that change is inevitable. In my vision for Alabama, education will not be a luxury but essential for developing life skills. The arts and humanities will enrich our classrooms so that our citizenry can effectively communicate, research, and discern. STEM alone is not enough to produce such outcomes.

Balancing the beauty of Alabama with its difficult past provides hard lessons on being human. It formed me, and like many, I developed a love/hate relationship with my state. My Alabama is a place of geniuses and demagogues, pride and embarrassment, homeruns and unforced errors, forgiveness and stubbornness, jonquils and tornados, and other extremes. Yet I love this place and its people, and I refuse to be complacent. Alabama’s inheritance can be a cross to bear, but its future can be a song we sing.

 

Joey Brackner is the retired state folklorist for Alabama, and former host of the Alabama Public Television series “Journey Proud.” He is the author of Alabama Folk Pottery, and currently serves as vice president of the board for the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation.

Our stories are like a quilt, each piece is different, but when stitched together gives us a better picture of our past and present.

My mother had a saying, “If you don’t know where you’ve been, you’ll never know where you’re going.” Little did I know that these words would spark a flame to tell and preserve the stories of people, whose hard work and commitment helped to shape my hometown of Decatur, particularly the Old Town community.

My family’s roots run deep in Alabama soil. Prior to President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, they were enslaved here. An ancestor fought during the civil war to preserve the Union and for freedom. I have fond memories of my great aunt — Effice Polk Pearson, daughter of Alen Polk, a former slave — who had a unique ability to paint vivid pictures of the past that captured one’s attention and curiosity. These “Effice Stories” were the first that I penned in a tribute at her funeral.

My early childhood was during an era of segregation. Daddy worked hard, he and his brother purchased a duplex. We lived on one side and they the other. The brothers were the first in their immediate family to become homeowners. Our community was close-knit. Neighbors helped, encouraged, and looked out for one another. They visited, sat on porches talking and, on occasion, borrowed a cup of sugar, meal, flour, or a couple eggs to finish a dish; or when the peddler came, fifty cents or a dollar. No one locked doors. Early in life, I was taught to be responsible and caring. While attending Mrs. Orr’s kindergarten, my task was to return home and teach my younger siblings what I learned that day. Several elderly couples lived in our block. One might yell across the street to my mother and summon me to sweep, dust, wash dishes, or retrieve clothes from the clothesline and fold them; or they’d have me run to the store, money secured, knotted in a handkerchief, and tied to my clothing. My brother and I had a paper route, my first job. I suppose that was to teach responsibility, too.

Before the Civil Rights Act passed, I was introduced to politics. Our neighbor ran for city council in 1963, sprinting from door to door in the community; we passed out campaign flyers. Religion was important. At a time when women preachers were unheard of, my grandmother was the first Black female pastor in Morgan and surrounding counties, during the early 1950s. I was always amazed at the respect people gave her as she stood in her God-given purpose in a male-dominated field.

During segregation, Decatur’s Vine Street business district thrived with Black businesses. Unless they were within the African American community, Blacks were served at back doors or small walkup windows. Bus stations, train stations, and theatres had separate seating.

Black schools provided learning, social outlets, cultural programs, and other opportunities. We had caring educators. School books didn’t include Black accomplishments; only one Decatur story stands out, that of enslaved people whose craftmanship built the Old State Bank Building — now thought to be the oldest surviving bank building in the state.

As an author, I tell little-known or forgotten stories of amazing Alabamians. My passion was sparked by my own childhood experiences and by learning of the remarkable achievements of people in the face of enormous odds. Their courage, sheer determination, and perseverance — amid oppression — has been an extraordinary influence on my journey. From slavery to freedom, to Jim Crow, to the Scottsboro Boys, civil and equal rights, to now, we’ve experienced so much in this region. And knowing where we’ve been is insightful to all generations, if we are to know where we are going.

We are history and each story when stitched together gives us a powerful legacy of survival and endurance. My hope is that by telling our stories, we are not only informed about where we’ve been; but united, inspired, enriched, and empowered to spark flames of hope, to value the contributions of all, to engage in constructive dialogue and work together to improve the lives of all Alabamians.

 

Peggy Allen Towns is a historian who has conducted extensive research on her hometown of Decatur, Alabama. She shares her knowledge as a Road Scholar for the Alabama Humanities Alliance. And she is the author of three books: Duty Driven: The Plight of North Alabama’s African Americans During the Civil War (2012); Scottsboro Unmasked: Decatur’s Story (2018); and Scapegoat: The Tommy Lee Hines Story (2021). In 2022, she received the Alabama Historical Association’s Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award for her contributions toward a better understanding of Alabama’s history. 

 

First memory: Homewood, Alabama. Summer, 1967. I’m 8 years old. Whatever happened to me or around me between being born in 1959 and 1967 is lost to time. My three sisters and my mother are standing on the porch of our house, 1906 Mayfair Drive, waiting for my father. He’s called, apparently, and told my mother that he would be arriving home from work and that all of us should be outside to see him drive up. “He bought a new car,” my mother says. “He wants us to see it.”

She is not as impressed with the acquisition as he would have her be, I think. Could I have known that then, as an 8-year-old? It’s a stretch. But I feel like I did know that, that there was an imbalance between the intended effect and the effect he would achieve, and that this was a motif in their marriage, from the beginning of it to the end.

But she takes us all outside anyway. It’s hot, of course, the air is heavy and wet. The gnats cloud in front of my face like the blurry static of an old television set with bad reception.

My mother lights a Salem. Barrie, my younger sister, is standing in front of me, and Rangeley and Holly, my two older sisters, flank my mother. Everyone has dark brown hair except for Barrie, who is blond. Here we are, all of us waiting on the porch for my father to arrive in his brand-new car.

And arrive he does, leaning out the driver’s window of a sleek black Electra 225. He’s beaming. He waves, he honks. All of us run to the car and pile in. “Careful,” he says, laughing. “Careful!” All but my mother, that is, who is finishing her Salem. When she’s done with it, she sets it down in a concrete divot between two bricks and meanders to the car, slipping into the passenger side.

He turns to her. They lock eyes. And it’s so clear that this is not about him – the car, I mean – or about us, even though we’re all a part of it, his vision, to varying degrees. It’s for her, really. To him, it’s for her. Getting the car is another thing he’s doing to win the heart of the woman with whom he already has a mortgage and four kids.

“A deuce and a quarter,” he says, prompting a reaction he hoped would happen on its own.

She runs her fingers along the shiny black faux leather, soft and cool. “It’s nice, Dan,” she says. “Congratulations.”

That’s it. That’s all he gets. It’s nice. But she gets even less. Turns out the car is not what either of them was after all along.

Anyway, he drives us all around the block, and my parents were married for another twenty years.

After this first memory I have a lot of them. The world comes flooding in, and for the next 18 years until I leave for college most of my memories find their landscapes in Alabama: Homewood, Mountain Brook, Crestline, Avondale, Southside, Shelby County, Birmingham, Cullman, Montgomery, Gulf Shores. At this writing I’m just a few years shy of being half a century living away from Alabama, meaning I’ve had fifty years of life and stories and experiences that happened outside the Heart of Dixie. And yet almost every tale I’ve told takes place somewhere in Alabama. Even if I give the place another name, it’s always Alabama. It’s my permanent setting, my forever home.

But the Alabama in my books doesn’t exist. The actual Alabama, the one you can visit, the one you can live in, or leave, the one you can hear about in the news, is a different animal altogether.

I vividly remember growing up believing that I was witnessing the end of a generational inheritance. That most of the bigots, the racists, all the know-nothings of the George Wallace variety – all those old people, you know – would have children, and those children would grow out of it. They would see the light. Embrace difference. Give everyone the same honest breaks. Stop using the Bible to justify hate. And just in general stop being ridiculous. Knowing what I knew then, seeing what I saw, how could they not?

But I was a kid. I didn’t know anything. A few months ago, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through in vitro fertilization and living in a freezer should be considered children. Really?

Really. Which is just to say that claiming a place, or being claimed by it, can be awkward. But it’s like family: it’s also beautiful. You make the best of it. It’s the only one you’ve got.

 

Daniel Wallace, a Birmingham native, is the author of six novels, two children’s books, countless short stories, and, most recently, a memoir, This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew. Wallace is a member of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame and has received the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer. He teaches writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he’s the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English.