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Learning from Birmingham: A Journey into History and Home
A steel town daughter’s search for truth and beauty in Birmingham, Alabama
“As Birmingham goes, so goes the nation,” Fred Shuttlesworth observed when he invited Martin Luther King Jr. to the city for the transformative protests of 1963. From the height of the Civil Rights Movement through its long aftermath, images of police dogs, fire hoses and four girls murdered when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church have served as an uncomfortable racial mirror for the nation. Like many white people who came of age in the Civil Rights Movement’s wake, Julie Buckner Armstrong knew little about this history. Only after moving away and discovering writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker did she realize how her hometown and family were part of a larger, ongoing story of struggle and injustice.
When Armstrong returned to Birmingham decades later to care for her aging mother, Shuttlesworth’s admonition rang in her mind. By then an accomplished scholar and civil rights educator, Armstrong found herself pondering the lessons Birmingham holds for a twenty-first century America. Those lessons extended far beyond what a 2014 Teaching Tolerance report describes as the common distillation of the Civil Rights Movement into “two names and four Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and ‘I have a dream.’” Seeking to better understand a more complex local history, its connection to broader stories of oppression and resistance, and her own place in relation to it, Armstrong embarked on a journey to unravel the standard Birmingham narrative to see what she would find.
Beginning at the center, with her family’s 1947 arrival to a housing project near the color line, within earshot of what would become known as Dynamite Hill, Armstrong works her way over time and across the map. Weaving in stories of her white working-class family, classmates, and others not traditionally associated with Birmingham’s civil rights history, including members of the city’s LGBTQ community, she forges connections between the familiar and lesser-known. The result is a nuanced portrait of Birmingham--as seen in public housing, at old plantations, in segregated neighborhoods, across contested boundary lines, over mountains, along increasingly polluted waterways, beneath airport runways, on highways cutting through town, and under the gaze of the iconic statue of Vulcan.
In her search for truth and beauty in Birmingham, Armstrong draws on the powers of place and storytelling to dig into the cracks, complicating easy narratives of civil rights progress. Among the discoveries she finds in America’s racial mirror is a nation that has failed to recognize itself in the horrific images from Birmingham’s past and to acknowledge the continuing inequalities that make up the Civil Right’s Movement’s unfinished business. Learning from Birmingham reminds us that stories of civil rights, structural oppression, privilege, abuse, race and gender bias, and inequity are difficult and complicated, but their telling, especially from multiple stakeholder perspectives, is absolutely necessary.
“As Birmingham goes, so goes the nation,” Fred Shuttlesworth observed when he invited Martin Luther King Jr. to the city for the transformative protests of 1963. From the height of the Civil Rights Movement through its long aftermath, images of police dogs, fire hoses and four girls murdered when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church have served as an uncomfortable racial mirror for the nation. Like many white people who came of age in the Civil Rights Movement’s wake, Julie Buckner Armstrong knew little about this history. Only after moving away and discovering writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker did she realize how her hometown and family were part of a larger, ongoing story of struggle and injustice.
When Armstrong returned to Birmingham decades later to care for her aging mother, Shuttlesworth’s admonition rang in her mind. By then an accomplished scholar and civil rights educator, Armstrong found herself pondering the lessons Birmingham holds for a twenty-first century America. Those lessons extended far beyond what a 2014 Teaching Tolerance report describes as the common distillation of the Civil Rights Movement into “two names and four Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and ‘I have a dream.’” Seeking to better understand a more complex local history, its connection to broader stories of oppression and resistance, and her own place in relation to it, Armstrong embarked on a journey to unravel the standard Birmingham narrative to see what she would find.
Beginning at the center, with her family’s 1947 arrival to a housing project near the color line, within earshot of what would become known as Dynamite Hill, Armstrong works her way over time and across the map. Weaving in stories of her white working-class family, classmates, and others not traditionally associated with Birmingham’s civil rights history, including members of the city’s LGBTQ community, she forges connections between the familiar and lesser-known. The result is a nuanced portrait of Birmingham--as seen in public housing, at old plantations, in segregated neighborhoods, across contested boundary lines, over mountains, along increasingly polluted waterways, beneath airport runways, on highways cutting through town, and under the gaze of the iconic statue of Vulcan.
In her search for truth and beauty in Birmingham, Armstrong draws on the powers of place and storytelling to dig into the cracks, complicating easy narratives of civil rights progress. Among the discoveries she finds in America’s racial mirror is a nation that has failed to recognize itself in the horrific images from Birmingham’s past and to acknowledge the continuing inequalities that make up the Civil Right’s Movement’s unfinished business. Learning from Birmingham reminds us that stories of civil rights, structural oppression, privilege, abuse, race and gender bias, and inequity are difficult and complicated, but their telling, especially from multiple stakeholder perspectives, is absolutely necessary.
240 pages, Paperback
Published May 22, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 20, 2023
I'm going to start off with the disclaimer that I have known the author for many years and think of her as one of my Very Favorite People. However, reading this book that delved so intensely into her roots and her psyche gave me a greater understanding of just why I admire her so. I am also a white girl (or in my case, white-passing) who grew up in a Southern town that was deeply racially divided and had no knowledge of the very different lives being lived by my BIPOC contemporaries on the other side of town. My coming-of-age was in the '80s and '90s so the segregationist policies were not as clearly delineated in the laws but were still being actively practiced, sometimes by mere habit. I followed a similar path as the author as a first-generation-in-college student whose eyes were opened by classes (for me in anthropology and criminology) that started me on a journey to unpack my own privilege and tear apart my own racism bit by bit, a journey we both continue upon to this day.
Dr. Armstrong is unflinching in her examination of the ways she was unknowingly complicit in the violent racial history of her hometown, and her honest unburdening serves as a call to all white people to do the work of becoming not just un-racist but anti-racist. It's also worth noting, however, the way that she recognizes and eventually makes peace with the role Birmingham's unique history has played in shaping her personage even decades after leaving the city for new adventures. In an American society that values mobility and cherishes the story of the "self-made" success story that leaves (or cleaves) all roots behind, the message I received from this book was about the lasting impact of the geography, history, and culture of our hometowns, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. This would have been an enjoyable and thought-provoking read had I merely plucked it off a shelf. The fact that it was written so beautifully by a person whose way of being in the world is something I so admire makes it an instant personal classic.
Dr. Armstrong is unflinching in her examination of the ways she was unknowingly complicit in the violent racial history of her hometown, and her honest unburdening serves as a call to all white people to do the work of becoming not just un-racist but anti-racist. It's also worth noting, however, the way that she recognizes and eventually makes peace with the role Birmingham's unique history has played in shaping her personage even decades after leaving the city for new adventures. In an American society that values mobility and cherishes the story of the "self-made" success story that leaves (or cleaves) all roots behind, the message I received from this book was about the lasting impact of the geography, history, and culture of our hometowns, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. This would have been an enjoyable and thought-provoking read had I merely plucked it off a shelf. The fact that it was written so beautifully by a person whose way of being in the world is something I so admire makes it an instant personal classic.
May 9, 2023
Last night when watching Jeopardy I was shocked that none of the three contestants knew where the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church took place. Julie Buckner Armstrong makes a strong case in her book Learning from Birmingham for the idea that little has changed with regard to racism. People have yet to absorb the lessons from Birmingham and that time of struggle.The city has dedicated Kelly Ingram Park to a tribute memorial walk in honor of the civil rights struggle and the four girls who were killed there in 1963, yet black people are still getting killed by police. The book is a very interesting read, being a story of the city through the eyes of a white woman who was shielded from racism as a child and is now intimately involved with the history of civil rights both as a literature professor and an activist.
One of the cases discussed is of Robert Chambliss, the KKKer responsible for the bombing. Although exonerated the first time, the second trial in 1977 got him convicted, but was this any kind of healing? Today Professor Armstrong’s students at the University of South Florida ask questions, but at the same time Florida is going through a backlash in the schools regarding the teaching of racism. Positive changes in racism haven’t progressed the way many of us have wanted.
Growing up in Birmingham in 1960s, Julie Buckner Armstrong tells stories and analyzes her experiences as a young person and how white young people and others were shielded from racism, how much homophobia, too, was used persecute people and swept under the rug, yet “the idea of waking up—of moving from ignorance to insight—persists.” She believes while leaving Birmingham and traveling helped her see herself and the city’s history more clearly, “Birmingham also taught me to see the world.”
I appreciated the time she devoted to the crackdowns on LGBTQ+ residents in the city. She tells the sad story of her own gay relative David, as well as the story of how the popular Birmingham transgender hairdresser Jody Ford was killed. At the same time of the civil rights struggle, George Wallace and Bull Connor and others conducted what they called “pervert patrols.” The Alabama Criminal Sexual Psychopath Law basically claimed that “a ‘sex criminal’ meant anyone from a murderous pedophile to a gay man to a heterosexual crossdresser.” How horrifying indeed!
Although her Uncle Bobby may have changed as a result of his military presence in Little Rock, he didn’t think most people could. Individual change is one thing, but the whole system must change. Racism is one of the bedrocks of the profit-making capitalist system we inhabit. Her reference to Audre Lorde’s words “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” was right on the mark. However, as Julie Buckner Armstrong writes: “I bump up against the edifice that is my own ignorance.” We all do and we keep trying.
I loved reading this book because I am familiar with Birmingham and lived there as an activist for about five years in the 1980s. The book covers a lot of ground, even Birmingham black artists, the mining industry in relation to the environment, and other subjects. I heard Julie Buckner Armstrong speak about the need for monuments to those who have been lynched, still a hidden history. Her other book Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching (2011) is dedicated to the brutal violence of lynching and the traumas thereafter. Learning from Birmingham is a book that works toward understanding a part of our social fabric that we may never see changed but we can learn.
One of the cases discussed is of Robert Chambliss, the KKKer responsible for the bombing. Although exonerated the first time, the second trial in 1977 got him convicted, but was this any kind of healing? Today Professor Armstrong’s students at the University of South Florida ask questions, but at the same time Florida is going through a backlash in the schools regarding the teaching of racism. Positive changes in racism haven’t progressed the way many of us have wanted.
Growing up in Birmingham in 1960s, Julie Buckner Armstrong tells stories and analyzes her experiences as a young person and how white young people and others were shielded from racism, how much homophobia, too, was used persecute people and swept under the rug, yet “the idea of waking up—of moving from ignorance to insight—persists.” She believes while leaving Birmingham and traveling helped her see herself and the city’s history more clearly, “Birmingham also taught me to see the world.”
I appreciated the time she devoted to the crackdowns on LGBTQ+ residents in the city. She tells the sad story of her own gay relative David, as well as the story of how the popular Birmingham transgender hairdresser Jody Ford was killed. At the same time of the civil rights struggle, George Wallace and Bull Connor and others conducted what they called “pervert patrols.” The Alabama Criminal Sexual Psychopath Law basically claimed that “a ‘sex criminal’ meant anyone from a murderous pedophile to a gay man to a heterosexual crossdresser.” How horrifying indeed!
Although her Uncle Bobby may have changed as a result of his military presence in Little Rock, he didn’t think most people could. Individual change is one thing, but the whole system must change. Racism is one of the bedrocks of the profit-making capitalist system we inhabit. Her reference to Audre Lorde’s words “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” was right on the mark. However, as Julie Buckner Armstrong writes: “I bump up against the edifice that is my own ignorance.” We all do and we keep trying.
I loved reading this book because I am familiar with Birmingham and lived there as an activist for about five years in the 1980s. The book covers a lot of ground, even Birmingham black artists, the mining industry in relation to the environment, and other subjects. I heard Julie Buckner Armstrong speak about the need for monuments to those who have been lynched, still a hidden history. Her other book Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching (2011) is dedicated to the brutal violence of lynching and the traumas thereafter. Learning from Birmingham is a book that works toward understanding a part of our social fabric that we may never see changed but we can learn.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews