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Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama
Shortly after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Ku Klux Klan—determined to keep segregation as the way of life in Alabama—staged a resurgence. The strong-armed leadership of governor George C. Wallace, who defied the new civil rights laws and became the poster child for segregationists, empowered the Klan’s most violent members. An intimidating series of gruesome acts of violence threatened to roll back the advances of the nascent civil rights movement.
As Wallace’s power grew, however, blacks began fighting back in the courthouses and schoolhouses, as did young Southern lawyers including Charles “Chuck” Morgan, who became the ACLU’s Southern director; Morris Dees, who cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center; and Bill Baxley, Alabama attorney general, who successfully prosecuted the bomber of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and legally halted some of Wallace’s agencies designed to slow down integration.
All along, journalist Wayne Greenhaw was interviewing Klan members, detectives, victims, civil rights leaders, and politicians of all stripes. In Fighting the Devil in Dixie , he tells this dramatic story in full for the first time—from the Klan’s kidnappings, bombings, and murders of the 1950s to Wallace’s run for a fourth term as governor in the early 1980s, in which he asked for forgiveness and won with the black vote.
Fighting the Devil in Dixie is an essential document for understanding twentieth-century racial strife in the South and the struggle to end it.
As Wallace’s power grew, however, blacks began fighting back in the courthouses and schoolhouses, as did young Southern lawyers including Charles “Chuck” Morgan, who became the ACLU’s Southern director; Morris Dees, who cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center; and Bill Baxley, Alabama attorney general, who successfully prosecuted the bomber of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and legally halted some of Wallace’s agencies designed to slow down integration.
All along, journalist Wayne Greenhaw was interviewing Klan members, detectives, victims, civil rights leaders, and politicians of all stripes. In Fighting the Devil in Dixie , he tells this dramatic story in full for the first time—from the Klan’s kidnappings, bombings, and murders of the 1950s to Wallace’s run for a fourth term as governor in the early 1980s, in which he asked for forgiveness and won with the black vote.
Fighting the Devil in Dixie is an essential document for understanding twentieth-century racial strife in the South and the struggle to end it.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 11, 2011
At least once a week I join the writer of this book for a roundtable at the only bar that matters in Montgomery, Alabama, El Rey Burrito Lounge. Two-dozen books into a 40+ year career, Wayne remains an inspiration to us. This latest book of his is a fascinating history of players in the Civil Rights movement and its aftermath who don't often get their due. From the 1957 murder of Willie Edwards through the men and women whose investigative reporting kept the abuses of segregation in the public eye to the founding of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the book is a testament to progressive humanism: it demonstrates how social justice depends on dozens of anonymous heroes as well as iconic inspirations. The style mixes history and memoir, with illuminating asides into the backgrounds and private lives of its cast of characters. For anyone interested in Alabama history, the Civil Rights story, or the South in general, it's a must read.
October 30, 2011
Good book. At times it goes into more detail than I can process; I end up skimming paragraphs until the writing comes back to the main narrative.
The subject matter makes me so angry, though, that I am unable to finish it.
The subject matter makes me so angry, though, that I am unable to finish it.
March 29, 2011
Not quite what I was expecting. While the author contains his study to the state of Alabama, he doesn't adhere very closely to his thesis of pitting civil rights activists against the Ku Klux Klan. I'm conflicted over my feelings about Fighting the Devil in Dixie - partly because I can't tell exactly what it is.
It isn't a typical history of the civil rights movement, because key events are omitted (Little Rock, AR; Raleigh, NC; Oxford, MS; Albany, GA) - but that may be due to the fact the author attempted to confine his study to the state of Alabama.
It may be an account of changes within Alabama politics, as numerous governors - from Bibb Graves to Jim Folsom to George Wallace - are compared and contrasted, complete with dramatic arcs and late-stage metamorphoses. But there were some intense conversations between Robert Kennedy's office that go unmentioned. President Johnson's famous, "Don't you bullshit me, George Wallace" admonition is dropped as much for color as revelation.
Fighting the Devil may be an account of how Alabama journalists were affected by covering civil rights. The focusing lens of a camera forces one to see things for what they are, not what they are presented by the establishment to be. But the camera tended to reform opinion at the national level, while fire-eating editorial kept the southern dailies a normalizing torrent of segregationist gospel, despite the brutality of photographs slowly seeping into newspaper pages.
The most striking feature of Fighting the Devil is that it tells the stories of powerful and ambitious young, up-and-coming whites who would mount the homegrown legal challenges to Jim Crow and fortress segregation. This is one aspect of the era that, in my opinion, is under-reported. Had this been the focus of Greenhaw's book, I would have left much more satisfied. But, alas, this too was just one of many courses to be found in the slapdash potluck of discussion here.
Ultimately, I find fault with the way the author covers the KKK - especially in Birmingham, where it was fairly organized. Klansmen met the freedom riders at the Greyhound terminal in 1961. They beat Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth as he tried to enroll his daughters in public school. Hell, they bombed him, beat him, and blew him up. The KKK orchestrated the protracted terror that came to rechristen certain neighborhoods "Bombingham." That orchestration may have been less than centralized, but was certainly more than informal and spontaneous. The Georgia klansman, J. B. Stoner repeatedly travelled across the state line to bomb Birmingham churches.
The FBI was pressured by the US Attorney General's Department to fight domestic terrorism and used several informants within the Klans. The most notorious was Gary T. Rowe, who is mentioned in Fighting the Devil. A former professor of mine taught that Rowe's federal handlers grew nervous when his enthusiasm for the undercover work grew dangerously, to the point where it was hard to tell when Rowe was acting as observer and when his role was more proactive in the organization of terrorist acts. There is a lot of information to mine in this dynamic alone. Mr. Greenhaw does not explore it.
In the end, my strongest complement for Greenhaw's book is that the author stayed true to half his thesis and kept his narrative to the state of Alabama. However, I'm more than a little disappointed that he failed to cover the other half - the Klan - with much depth. As a civil rights history, Fighting the Devil in Dixie has tremendous value. However, as a specimen of the genre, it lags behind other notable exemplars... The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, to name just two.
It isn't a typical history of the civil rights movement, because key events are omitted (Little Rock, AR; Raleigh, NC; Oxford, MS; Albany, GA) - but that may be due to the fact the author attempted to confine his study to the state of Alabama.
It may be an account of changes within Alabama politics, as numerous governors - from Bibb Graves to Jim Folsom to George Wallace - are compared and contrasted, complete with dramatic arcs and late-stage metamorphoses. But there were some intense conversations between Robert Kennedy's office that go unmentioned. President Johnson's famous, "Don't you bullshit me, George Wallace" admonition is dropped as much for color as revelation.
Fighting the Devil may be an account of how Alabama journalists were affected by covering civil rights. The focusing lens of a camera forces one to see things for what they are, not what they are presented by the establishment to be. But the camera tended to reform opinion at the national level, while fire-eating editorial kept the southern dailies a normalizing torrent of segregationist gospel, despite the brutality of photographs slowly seeping into newspaper pages.
The most striking feature of Fighting the Devil is that it tells the stories of powerful and ambitious young, up-and-coming whites who would mount the homegrown legal challenges to Jim Crow and fortress segregation. This is one aspect of the era that, in my opinion, is under-reported. Had this been the focus of Greenhaw's book, I would have left much more satisfied. But, alas, this too was just one of many courses to be found in the slapdash potluck of discussion here.
Ultimately, I find fault with the way the author covers the KKK - especially in Birmingham, where it was fairly organized. Klansmen met the freedom riders at the Greyhound terminal in 1961. They beat Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth as he tried to enroll his daughters in public school. Hell, they bombed him, beat him, and blew him up. The KKK orchestrated the protracted terror that came to rechristen certain neighborhoods "Bombingham." That orchestration may have been less than centralized, but was certainly more than informal and spontaneous. The Georgia klansman, J. B. Stoner repeatedly travelled across the state line to bomb Birmingham churches.
The FBI was pressured by the US Attorney General's Department to fight domestic terrorism and used several informants within the Klans. The most notorious was Gary T. Rowe, who is mentioned in Fighting the Devil. A former professor of mine taught that Rowe's federal handlers grew nervous when his enthusiasm for the undercover work grew dangerously, to the point where it was hard to tell when Rowe was acting as observer and when his role was more proactive in the organization of terrorist acts. There is a lot of information to mine in this dynamic alone. Mr. Greenhaw does not explore it.
In the end, my strongest complement for Greenhaw's book is that the author stayed true to half his thesis and kept his narrative to the state of Alabama. However, I'm more than a little disappointed that he failed to cover the other half - the Klan - with much depth. As a civil rights history, Fighting the Devil in Dixie has tremendous value. However, as a specimen of the genre, it lags behind other notable exemplars... The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, to name just two.
January 26, 2016
Amazing book. It was like ten books of information in one it was so in depth. I also appreciated that it referenced so many people, books, and movies for additional study. This is definitely the most thorough and informative book on the Civil Rights Movement that I have read thus far.
January 4, 2017
Author Wayne Greenhaw, who begins with the admission that his own "kin" marched in Ku Klux Klan parades, is a journalist who documents the historic hatred in his home state of Alabama which led to atrocious beatings and killings of black citizens and to a church bombing which killed four little black girls getting ready for Sunday school and blinding a fifth. The book concludes with court victories by the Southern Poverty Law Center against KKK killers and the transformation of once racist Gov. George Wallace who at the end of his life asked for forgiveness for laxness towards those who persecuted their black brethren. This book published in 2011 seems to have an uplifting ending until considering that in 2016 the KKK could be undergoing a resurgence and the Southern Poverty Law Center is being called upon to deal with an outpouring of hate incidents. Worthwhile book to read in these times. Good bibliography.
August 18, 2023
As a UK citizen we weren’t taught a lot of American history at school, in fact I don’t recall learning much after the Boston Tea Party. I have to confess an almost total ignorance of the racism faced by former slaves after the American Civil War. I had a little awareness of people like MLK but no concept of how systemic the oppression of the black community was. I was horrified to read this story how the KKK could operate with impunity for such a long time with the people in authority ignoring their actions. One of the scary things in this book is how white Christian churches could seemingly go along with what was happening in society and not see how wrong it was. While it could be argued that things have changed it is clear that all is still not well in race relations in the US, see what happened to Rodney King and more recently George Floyd and countless others. I think this book is definitely worth reading.
December 22, 2015
Gripping, overwhelming in detail, and narrated as only a seasoned journalist can, Fighting the Devil in Dixie is a no-holds-barred recounting of the gradual and inevitable victory of conscience and humanity over selfishness and insufferable oppression in Alabama. It is a historical accounting of Civil Rights struggle in a state where a politician's cry of "Segregation forever!" rallied the populace.
Wayne Greenhaw writes in an engaging, impersonal style. His intimate familiarity with events in Alabama, and the civil rights struggle, makes the stories lucid...to the point that reading them brings up deep and unpleasant emotions. I found myself transported into the times, the places, and at times struggled to comprehend, or even recognize, the attitudes and inhumanity of the period. I did skip paragraphs, even pages at times, for the stories are innumerable, and the hate experienced intolerable. One can only imagine the suffering of the oppressed section of the population...ameliorated gradually (perhaps far too gradually) through non-violent methods, by a struggle between the Federal and State courts of America, and by appealing to conscience and humanity. Wayne is to be commended for a comprehensive journalistic work.
Nevertheless, I did feel that the work, through its unbiased reporting, did not offer any hope of intrinsic, spiritual, transformation in populations that lived through the times, places, and events described. I wonder if anything much has changed, even in the present, as evidenced by statistics of prison populations, harsh judgments against minorities, and extra-judicial killing of African American and Hispanic members of citizenry by law enforcement of all states of the United States of America. A sense, a deep feeling, that laws and enforcement do not change hearts and minds remains ever present as one goes through the book.
For an immigrant to America, even one who has lived for nearly a generation here, there is no more disheartening message than this realization. Perhaps I am biased: my own work, Humbling and Humility , delves into willful corruption and discrimination in the legal system here.
I do recommend Wayne Greenhaw's book to anyone desirous of comprehensive education in the Civil Rights struggle, the attitudes that divided people in the times and places described, and a legal and largely non-violent approach that brought about gradual change.
Wayne Greenhaw writes in an engaging, impersonal style. His intimate familiarity with events in Alabama, and the civil rights struggle, makes the stories lucid...to the point that reading them brings up deep and unpleasant emotions. I found myself transported into the times, the places, and at times struggled to comprehend, or even recognize, the attitudes and inhumanity of the period. I did skip paragraphs, even pages at times, for the stories are innumerable, and the hate experienced intolerable. One can only imagine the suffering of the oppressed section of the population...ameliorated gradually (perhaps far too gradually) through non-violent methods, by a struggle between the Federal and State courts of America, and by appealing to conscience and humanity. Wayne is to be commended for a comprehensive journalistic work.
Nevertheless, I did feel that the work, through its unbiased reporting, did not offer any hope of intrinsic, spiritual, transformation in populations that lived through the times, places, and events described. I wonder if anything much has changed, even in the present, as evidenced by statistics of prison populations, harsh judgments against minorities, and extra-judicial killing of African American and Hispanic members of citizenry by law enforcement of all states of the United States of America. A sense, a deep feeling, that laws and enforcement do not change hearts and minds remains ever present as one goes through the book.
For an immigrant to America, even one who has lived for nearly a generation here, there is no more disheartening message than this realization. Perhaps I am biased: my own work, Humbling and Humility , delves into willful corruption and discrimination in the legal system here.
I do recommend Wayne Greenhaw's book to anyone desirous of comprehensive education in the Civil Rights struggle, the attitudes that divided people in the times and places described, and a legal and largely non-violent approach that brought about gradual change.
January 30, 2011
Great compilation of names and stories from the Civil Rights struggle.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews