Randall Williams – Page 2

Remembering John Egerton

The South (and the nation, too, though he was a true Southerner in the best senses of the term) was diminished today with the sudden death by heart attack of the Nashville-based writer John Egerton. We at NewSouth were privileged to know John and work with him for several decades, first through the Southern Regional Council, and later as the publisher of an insightful collections of essays, Where We Stand (2004), to which he contributed, and his wickedly satiric comic novel takedown of George W. Bush, Ali Dubya and the Forty Thieves (2006) …

November 21, 2013 No Comments

Sojourner Truth, Mother Jones, and Emma Lazurus — pondering the nation and its Uriah or Goliath moments

On the Sunday after July 4th, a minister reflected on the nation’s “Uriah moments when out of arrogance and blindness of power, we have betrayed trust and squandered opportunity” and its “Goliath moments when out of weakness that refuses to be afraid, we have toppled giants and beheaded them.” At this dark moment in American history, these words make us feel more hopeful …

July 23, 2012 No Comments

Memoirist Sue Pickett shares an economics lesson, still meaningful

Sue Pickett’s memoir The Path Was Steep recalls hard life in the coal camps of Alabama during the Depression. Her story of a child’s pride should awaken us all to important current debates over economic policy, the safety net, and the nature and role of government itself …

June 27, 2012 No Comments

The Order Katzenbach Was Enforcing . . .

Nicholas Katzenbach, former Attorney General of the United States, died on May 8 at age 90 and was widely memorialized as an important figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “The nation has lost a faithful and forceful advocate for civil and constitutional rights with the passing of Nicholas Katzenbach,” said civil rights lawyer Fred Gray, author of Bus Ride to Justice …

May 11, 2012 No Comments

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was a giant of the Movement

That breeze you feel this morning must be one of two things: either it is caused by Bull Connor spinning in his grave over the international expressions of sympathy for the passing and admiration for the life of the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, or it is caused by a lot of angel wings flapping as Shuttlesworth has arrived in heaven. Where he will begin organizing and demonstrating shortly …

October 6, 2011 No Comments

No Holiday Cheer in Poverty Statistics

As Southern members of Congress continue to say “no” to most safety-net and stimulus proposals, the grim reality is that poverty is deepening across the nation and especially in the region. According to a report issued today by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), extreme poverty in the United States increased during 2009 by 12.9 percent, expanding the number of people living below 50 percent of the poverty threshold by more than 2.1 million. As a result, extreme poverty was the fastest growing income group in America last year, and the South’s share of the increase was almost twice that of any other region of the country …

December 22, 2010 No Comments

Damned good advice for writers and editors . . .

. . . in the 8/4/2010 New York Times Schott’s Vocab column. In the item, guest columnist David Crystal, a linguistics professor at the University of Bangor in Wales, writes about what he learned when he recently asked a 12-year-old to go through one of his manuscripts and underline anything she didn’t understand. The result — demonstrating that there’s a vast cultural knowledge gap between today’s youngsters and the rest of us — may seem obvious, but writers and editors working on material targeted for children or young adults still stumble over this every day …

August 4, 2010 No Comments

Remembering Robert Byrd

The passing this week of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia makes one miss the days when Southern politicians were complicated rather than merely crass. Yes, Byrd clung to office longer than he should have. Yes, he was a master of pork barrel spending. Yes, he lined up with the states’ rights and nullification Dixiecrats in the 1960s. But — like his fellow former Klansman Hugo Black of Alabama — he overcame his racist upbringing and became a supporter of civil rights, a defender of the promises of a living Constitution, and a champion of the poor and middle classes …

June 29, 2010 No Comments

More on SEF child poverty report

Southern Education Foundation vice president Steve Suitts (author of Hugo Black of Alabama) has followed up on the SEF’s recent report on expanding child poverty with an article on the Southern Spaces website. (Southern Spaces is “an interdisciplinary journal about the regions, places, and cultures of the American South.” Sort of like NewSouth Books.) Suitts writes: “The Worst of Times: Children in Extreme Poverty in the South and Nation raises serious questions about the impact and validity of current educational policies and practices at every level on children in extreme poverty” …

June 29, 2010 No Comments

Southern Education Foundation releases distressing child poverty report in the South

Steve Suitts, author of NewSouth’s critically acclaimed biography, Hugo Black of Alabama, is also a senior staff member at the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation (SEF), which has just released a distressing new report on the extent of child poverty in the South …

June 15, 2010 No Comments

Author: Randall Williams