Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr

Virginia Foster Durr

Fire Ant Books

The original book on the renowned Freedom quilters of Gee's Bend. 
In December of 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, a white Episcopal priest driving through a desperately poor, primarily black section of Wilcox County found himself at a great bend of the Alabama River. He noticed a cabin clothesline from which were hanging three magnificent quilts unlike any he had ever seen. They were of strong, bold colors in original, op-art patterns—the same art style then fashionable in New York City and other cultural centers. An idea was born and within weeks took on life, in the form of the Freedom Quilting Bee, a handcraft cooperative of black women artisans who would become acclaimed throughout the nation. 
"The author expertly weaves the history, the hardships of poor blacks in a downtrodden racist society and the economics of the long struggle to become self-sufficient. Callahan proves she can handle a complex, multi-charactered, significant piece of Southern history." —Atlanta Constitution

The Freedom Quilting Bee: Folk Art and the Civil Rights Movement (Fire Ant Books)

History

Callahan, Nancy

Americas

This portrait of one of John Steinbeck's closest friends illuminates the life and work of a figure central to the development of scientific and literary thought in the 20th century.
Marine biologist Edward F. Ricketts is perhaps best known as the inspiration for John Steinbeck's most empathic literary characters Doc in Cannery Row, Slim in Of Mice and Men, Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, and Lee in East of Eden. The correspondence of this accomplished scientist, writer, and philosopher reveals the influential exchange of ideas he shared with such prominent thinkers and artists as Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, Ellwood Graham, and James Fitzgerald, in addition to Steinbeck, all of whom were drawn to Ricketts's Monterey Bay laboratory, a haven of intellectual discourse and Bohemian culture in the 1930s and 1940s.
The 125 previously unpublished letters of this collection, housed at the Stanford University Library, document the broad range of Ricketts's interests and accomplishments during the last 12 and most productive years of his life. His handbook on Pacific marine life, Between Pacific Tides, is still in print, now in its fifth edition. The biologist's devotion to ecological conservation and his evolving philosophy of science as a cross-disciplinary, holistic pursuit led to the publication of The Sea of Cortez. Many of Ricketts's letters discuss his studies of the Pacific littoral and his theories of “phalanx” and transcendence. Epistles to family members, often tender and humorous, add dimension and depth to Steinbeck's mythologized depictions of Ricketts. Katharine A. Rodger has enriched the correspondence with an introductory biographical essay and a list of works cited.

Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: The Life and Letters of Edward F. Ricketts (Alabama Fire Ant)

Biographies & Memoirs

Edward Flanders Ricketts

Katharine A. Rodger

Arts & Literature

Chronicles the role of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron as an important Federal contingent in Florida. 
"[Buker] argues that the presence of Union sailors and their extensive contacts ashore did serious damage to home-front morale and retarded Florida's value as a component of the rebel war machine. Since the state's long coastlines made it a ready target for a naval cordon, its commercial life suffered beginning in 1861 and deteriorated even further as the war progressed despite the efforts of blockade runners. Florida Unionists, antiwar natives, and runaway slaves flocked to these Federal warships to seek protection and quickly became a source of manpower for their crews as well as for land forces." —Journal of Southern History 
"The proliferation of publications concerning the American Civil War occasionally produces one that really contributes to our understanding of that conflict. George E. Buker’s Blockaders, Refugees, and Contrabands is such a book." —Journal of American History

Blockaders, Refugees, and Contrabands: Civil War on Florida's Gulf Coast, 1861-1865 (Fire Ant Books)

Buker Ph.D., George E.

Examines naval logistics, tactics, and strategy employed by the Union blockade off the Atlantic coast of the Confederacy.

From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War (Fire Ant Books)

Robert M. Browning Jr.

Details conditions in Alabama and the role of its citizens in a time of military crisis unknown since the Civil War. 
Alabama and its people played a conspicuous role in World War II. Not only were thousands of servicemen trained at military facilities in the state—at Fort McClellan, Camp Rucker, Camp Sibert, Maxwell Air Field, and Tuskegee Army Air Field—but Axis prisoners of war were interned in camps on Alabama soil, most notably at Aliceville and Opelika. More than 45,000 Alabama citizens were killed in combat or died as POWs, some came home injured, and many labored in war factories at home.

Forth to the Mighty Conflict: Alabama and World War II (Fire Ant Books)

Cronenberg, Allen

A notable and tragic case of the struggle between legal and social justice. Reelfoot Lake has been a hunting and fishing paradise from the time of its creation in 1812, when the New Madrid earthquake caused the Mississippi River to flow backward into low-lying lands. Situated in the northwestern corner of the state of Tennessee, it attracted westward-moving pioneers, enticing some to settle permanently on its shores. Threatened in 1908 with the loss of their homes and livelihoods to aggressive, outsider capitalists, rural folk whose families had lived for generations on the bountiful lake donned hoods and gowns and engaged in “night riding,” spreading mayhem and death throughout the region as they sought vigilante justice. They had come to regard the lake as their own, by “squatters' rights,” but now a group of entrepreneurs from St. Louis had bought the titles to the land beneath the shallow lake and were laying legal claim to Reelfoot in its entirety. People were hanged, beaten, and threatened and property destroyed before the state militia finally quelled the uprising. A compromise that made the lake public property did not entirely heal the wounds which continue to this day. 
Paul Vanderwood reconstructs these harrowing events from newspapers and other accounts of the time. He also obtained personal interviews with participants and family members who earlier had remained mum, still fearing prosecution. The Journal of American History declares his book “the complete and authentic treatment” of the horrific dispute and its troubled aftermath.

Night Riders of Reelfoot Lake (Fire Ant Books)

Vanderwood, Paul

The account of the landmark constitutional law decision on racial redistricting. 
"Bernard Taper's small but meaty book . . . is an example of how the human considerations that lie behind a Supreme Court decision can be brought to life. . . . By applying the microscope to a single case, Mr. Taper has said a great deal about how and why issues reach the Supreme Court, and how they are decided." New York Times 
This book was first published in 1962 to critical acclaim. It details the lawsuit that Charles C. Gomillion, chairman of Tuskegee Institute's Division of Social Sciences and president of the Tuskegee Civic Association, filed against that Alabama city's mayor, Philip M. Lightfoot, to protest the black community's loss of voting rights. Because Tuskegee’s black population in 1957 (5,300) far outnumbered its white population (1,400) and because the highly educated black community had made persistent and successful efforts to register as voters, the Alabama Legislature redrew the city's boundaries to exclude most of the African-American districts, effectively converting Tuskegee to a white city. Gomillion's lawsuit, which was lost twice in lower courts, alleged that Tuskegee's black citizens had been illegally gerrymandered out of their constitutional right to vote. In 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, writing, "The inescapable human effect of this . . . is to despoil colored citizens, and only colored citizens, of their theretofore enjoyed voting rights."
 As a result of Gomillion vs. Lightfoot, the Supreme Court unanimously questioned the constitutionality of redistricting voting precincts along racial lines, not only in Tuskegee but nationwide. Taper's well-written, thorough account will be welcomed by students and scholars of constitutional law, Alabama and southern history, and civil rights.

Gomillion Versus Lightfoot: The Right to Vote in Apartheid Alabama (Fire Ant Books)

TAPER, BERNARD

Highlights the finest moments of Alabama players—on the court, on the field, and on the course This collection presents 26 accounts of memorable victories and bittersweet failures marking the most significant sports events in Alabama’s history, from 1899 through 1994. The stories capture the excitement of native son Willie Mays’s heroic backfield catch in 1954, Joe Namath’s shining defeat in the Orange Bowl, Auburn’s stunning basketball win over Kentucky, and Alabama’s unforgettable Rose Bowl victory. The stories cover several arenas of sport—football, basketball, golf, baseball, tennis, auto racing—and are sprinkled with the glories of both notables and relative unknowns. “Prelude to a Grand Slam” describes how a young Bobby Jones won the Birmingham golf tournament on his way to the national crown, while “Grand Champion” is the story of blind golfer Charley Boswell. We learn about the “night Hank Aaron out-homered Babe Ruth” and how the father-son duo of Bobby and Davey Allison shone at Daytona Speedway. There are pieces on high school football heroics and Dixie Series baseball and one on the historic football rivalry between Auburn University and The University of Alabama. Sixteen of the stories were written by Benny Marshall and appeared in his book Twenty Grand, published in 1968. Additional stories were contributed by sportswriters Clyde Bolton, Jim Martin, Wayne Martin, Phillip Marshall, and Wendell Givens. Collectively, they offer a panoply of highlights that will delight sports fans everywhere, especially in Alabama, where sport is nigh to obsession.

All-Time Greatest Alabama Sports Stories (Fire Ant Books)

Marshall, Benny

Brings to light an overlooked aspect of Florida’s importance to the Confederacy.
 Florida's role in the Civil War has long been overlooked or discounted by students of the conflict. Despite its isolation and the lack of important land battles, the state made a contribution to the Confederate war effort far out of proportion to its small population. After seceding from the Union in 1861, Florida joined the Confederacy with a reputation, born in the 1850s, as an area of great agricultural potential for the newly created country. Rebel leaders quickly came to regard Florida as an abundant source of foodstuffs. The state became a major supplier of salt, beef, pork, and corn both for the rebel forces and for many civilians. Cattle in particular were driven northward in large numbers, providing rations for Confederate troops from Chattanooga to Charleston. Unfortunately, however, senior officials in the field and in Richmond often held unrealistic expectations about the volume of supplies Floridians could actually deliver. These same authorities for the most part also failed adequately to defend this crucial food source, a factor that may have accelerated the Confederacy's ultimate disintegration.

Rebel Storehouse: Florida's Contribution to the Confederacy (Fire Ant Books)

Taylor, Col. Robert A.

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