Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, written by Diane McWhorter and published by Simon & Schuster in 2001, won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. [1]

McWhorter grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and recounts being about the same age as the girls killed in the September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, though she "was growing up on the wrong side of the revolution". While four black girls were murdered in that day's bombing, McWhorter recalls that the only repercussion of the killings on her white high school was the cancellation of a play rehearsal. Carry Me Home describes how bigotry was prevalent among whites and her interviews and reviews of documents from the civil rights era showed "the long tradition of enmeshment between law enforcers and Klansmen", ranging from local and state police to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[2]

She describes how local political leaders and newspaper editors supporting segregation exercised consistently poor judgment, with police chief Bull Connor consistently rescuing the cause of civil rights demonstrators during the Birmingham campaign, responding to peaceful protests from local teenagers with high-pressure fire hose and police dogs. Wyatt Tee Walker of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference recounted how "Birmingham would have been lost if Bull had let us go down to the city hall and pray".'[2]

McWhorter notes the May 3, 1963, photo by Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson of Walter Gadsden, an African-American bystander who had been grabbed by a sunglasses-wearing police officer, while a German Shepherd lunged at his chest.[3] The photo appeared above the fold, covering three columns in the next day's issue of The New York Times, as well as in other newspapers nationwide.[4] McWhorter wrote that Hudson's photo that day drove "international opinion to the side of the civil rights revolution".[5]

In his review of the book in The New York Times, David K. Shipler credits McWhorter as being "impressive at gathering facts and sourcing them precisely", though he notes that "[a]t times, the themes are lost in dizzying detail, the trees overwhelm the forest".[2]

The book won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Non-Fiction" (web). pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2008-03-14.
  2. 1 2 3 Shipler, David K. "Bombingham Revisited: A daughter of Birmingham's white elite explores the causes of the city's civil rights violence in the summer of 1963.", The New York Times', March 18, 2001. Accessed June 28, 2010.
  3. ↑ Hailey, Foster. "DOGS AND HOSES REPULSE NEGROES AT BIRMINGHAM; 3 Students Bitten in Second Day of Demonstrations Against Segregation 250 MARCHERS SEIZED Robert Kennedy Fears Rise in Turmoil--Dr. King Says Protests Will Be Pressed Marchers Are Dispersed DOGS AND HOSES REPULSE NEGROES New Meetings Rumored Water Is Turned On", The New York Times, May 4, 1963. Accessed June 28, 2010.
  4. ↑ Sedensky, Matt via Associated Press. "Bill Hudson; photojournalist chronicled civil rights era; at 77", The Boston Globe, June 26, 2010. Accessed June 28, 2010.
  5. ↑ via Associated Press. "Bill Hudson, a Photojournalist During the Civil Rights Era, Dies at 77", The New York Times, June 25, 2010. Accessed June 28, 2010.
  6. ↑ Mehegan, David. "MCCULLOUGH'S `JOHN ADAMS' WINS", The Boston Globe, April 9, 2002. Accessed June 28, 2010.

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