Young girls during the turbulent months of 1965, Webb and Nelson dramatically recount their memories of the civil-rights demonstrations that took place in Selma, Alabama

Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil-Rights Days

Politics & Social Sciences

Webb, Sheyann

Sikora, Frank

Nelson, Rachel West

Politics & Government

William Morrow & Co.

An affectionate, humorous account of small town Alabama during the civil rights era.
When Frank Sikora's six-year-old daughter contracted pneumonia in 1962, his wife Millie vowed that would be the last winter she would spend in Ohio. Despite their misgivings about the racial tensions erupting there, they moved their family of six south, where Frank hoped to fulfill his dream of becoming a newspaper reporter. But when those dreams didn't materialize immediately, mounting bills, repossession, and eviction forced them to move in with Millie's parents, Dan and Minnie Belle Helms, in rural Wellington, Alabama.
With even slimmer prospects for employment in impoverished Calhoun County, the Sikoras came to depend heavily upon the Helmses and extended family members and all their lives became closely intertwined. The Helmses were uneducated, unpolished people, but Sikora's narration of his life with them—often humorous but never condescending—provides a compelling portrait of the attitudes and lifestyle of poor whites in Alabama during the second half of the 20th century, just as James Agee's monumental work, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, illuminated the Depression years in Hale County, Alabama. Sikora illustrates how resourceful, southern women, in particular, held their families together through trying times.
Interwoven with this commentary on rural white culture in the Deep South is the story of Sikora's developing career as a newsman. Determined to succeed, he finally lands a job with the Gadsden Times reporting the news of black citizens. From that introduction to journalism, Sikora becomes one of Alabama's most acclaimed chroniclers of the civil rights movement, eventually writing some of the acknowledged masterpieces about the subject. Like his landmark book, Selma, Lord, Selma, Sikora's newest work tells the stories of ordinary Alabamians and their perspectives on extraordinary times.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Women: A Memoir (Fire Ant Books)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Fire Ant Books

It was a time when Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders rallied black youth and adults to march for their civil rights, a time when the Ku Klux Klan was active in cities and throughout the countryside of the Deep South, employing 19th-century tactics to intimidate blacks to stay “in their place.” It was also the year that the worst act of terrorism in the entire civil rights movement occurred just as Birmingham, Alabama, was coming under close national scrutiny. This book tells the story of one grim Sunday in September 1963 when an intentionally planted cache of dynamite ripped through the walls of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended the dreams and the lives of four young black girls. Their deaths spurred the Kennedy administration to send an army of FBI agents to Alabama and led directly to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. When the Justice Department was unable to bring anyone to trial for this heinous crime, a young Alabama attorney general named Bill Baxley began his own investigation to find the perpetrators. In 1977, 14 years after the bombing, Baxley brought one Klansman to trial and, in a courtroom only blocks from the bombed church (now a memorial to the victims), persuaded a jury to return a guilty verdict. More than 20 years later two other perpetrators were tried for the bombing, found guilty, and remanded to prison. Frank Sikora has used the court records, FBI reports, oral interviews, and newspaper accounts to weave a story of spellbinding proportions. A reporter by profession, Sikora tells this story compellingly, explaining why the civil rights movement had to be successful and how Birmingham had to change.

Until Justice Rolls Down: The Birmingham Church Bombing Case (Fire Ant Books)

History

Africa

From Publishers Weekly\nWhile more limited as a character study and legal/historical analysis than Jack Bass's Taming the Storm (reviewed above), this book is a useful complement. Using long stretches of court transcripts and equally long quotes from Johnson, Sikora, a staffer on the Birmingham (Ala.) News, dramatically reconstructs several major cases handled by the Federal Judge, whom former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brennan considers ``a remarkable man and a remarkable judge.'' Sikora describes courtroom arguments regarding the Montgomery bus boycott, Freedom Riders in Montgomery and, notably, the march Martin Luther King Jr. led in Selma. Sikora presents Johnson as a serious man with a sense of humor and of spirituality, but should have further explored Johnson's distance from standard liberalism: Johnson maintains that Northern liberal whites in the Civil Rights Movement were ``sorely misguided,'' personally opposes interracial marriages and by 1984 believed that blacks should compete equally with whites in education. Photos not seen by PW. 
Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The Judge: The Life and Opinions of Alabama's Frank M. Johnson, Jr.

Professionals & Academics

River City Pub

When her brother is killed in Iraq, Abbie Staley's world is shattered. The eighteen-year-old college student finds her rural Alabama values torn asunder, altering her views on religion as well as the issue of abortion. But then a stranger comes to visit her at her home in the crossroads community of Winter Chapel. Another visit follows at the college campus. The stranger knows much about her life, and that of her brother, so much that at first she is terrified. But only then does she realize the visitor is of divine origin. While others have doubts about who she has seen, Abbie realizes that she has been chosen for something special, and devotes her life to helping others, one at a time. Her visitor comes one last time at Christmas, to leave a lasting gift that others share.

The Visitor at Winter Chapel

Literature & Fiction

Batcheler, Michelle

Contemporary

NewSouth Books

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the black drive for civil rights, but the changes he sought came largely in legal opinions issues by federal judges. Foremost of these was Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., of Montgomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the rights movement―hearings brimming with dramatic and poignant testimony from the black people who cried out for the freedoms that are the legacy of all Americans. Beginning with Judge Johnson’s coming-of-age in the hill country of Winston County, Alabama, this book covers many of his notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo, as well as Johnson’s work for prisoners, women, and the mentally ill. Much of the book is comprised of interviews and direct quotes from Johnson himself, making this recounting of Judge Johnson’s life dynamically autobiographical. Includes a new introduction and afterward by the author, Frank Sikora.

Historical

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