Inspiring story of Benjamin Sterling Turner shared in new children’s book embraced by Congresswoman Terri Sewell
Neither Congresswoman Terri Sewell nor Benjamin Sterling Turner were born in Dallas County, Alabama, but both came to represent the 7th District of Alabama with fervor and dedication. Turner was born a slave and rose to be Alabama’s first African American representative in Congress. 140 years after Turner took office, Terri Sewell was put in […]
Barry Alexander Brown, Spike Lee team up on movie project based on Bob Zellner book
Legendary civil rights activist Bob Zellner gained a loyal cadre of fans after the publication of his award-winning memoir The Wrong Side of Murder Creek in 2011, a book which was recently re-released in trade paperback, but the story will reach an entirely new audience with the production of Son of the South, a movie […]
Author Foster Dickson bridges school borders in the name of sustainability
Foster Dickson is many things: a writer, an English teacher, a Southerner, and a former NewSouth staffer. He’s taught at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, Alabama, for many years now, but he recently embarked on a new project aimed at educating his students about environmental sustainability, especially with respect to the production […]
Aileen Kilgore Henderson awarded Druid Arts Award from the Arts Council of Tuscaloosa
Aileen Kilgore Henderson is much beloved in artistic and historical circles in Alabama. So we are pleased to see her work celebrated last month by the Arts Council of Tuscaloosa, which awarded her the Druid Arts Award in the Literary Arts. The award recognizes the demonstrated quality of her body of work, her contributions to […]
Frye Gaillard adds Jefferson Cup Honor Book for Go South to Freedom, film documentary about Journey to the Wilderness to list of credits
Award-winning author Frye Gaillard is enjoying a banner year: his book Go South to Freedom has just been named a Jefferson Cup Honor Book for young adult readers by the Virginia Library Association. The Jefferson Cup honors a distinguished biography, work of historical fiction or American history book for young people. Presented since 1983, the […]
Anniston, Alabama’s pitfalls, triumphs, told in books
A new book by University of Alabama professor Ellen Spears, Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, tackles environmental issues in Anniston, Alabama, citing NewSouth’s Beyond the Burning Bus by J. Phillips Noble, about the attacks on Freedom Riders in Anniston, and making powerful linkages between Anniston’s civil rights history and the polychlorinated biphenyls environmental crisis …
On MLK’s Holiday, a Few Words About the Poor
Today is the MLK holiday, although in Alabama the adoption of the holiday passed the legislature only by designating it as also being in honor of the birth of Robert E. Lee, who coincidentally shares the same birth week as King, so that white state workers taking the day off didn’t have to do so in tribute to civil rights. Setting aside that head-in-the-sand Alabama political posturing, it is MLK Day, which means it’s a good day to remember that though MLK is rightly celebrated as a leader of the movement which broke the back of legalized segregation, toward the end of his life he was mostly campaigning to end economic injustice and war …
Jeff Benton compiles Montgomery reading list, recommended books
Jeffrey Benton, author of Respectable and Disreputable: Leisure Time in Antebellum Montgomery, Alabama, has compiled a list of books about Montgomery in completing the writing of his own book …
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 …
Remembering Alabama education pioneer Dr. Ethel Hall
Dr. Ethel Hall, the first African American woman elected to the Alabama State Board of Education, died this month at age 83. Hall had recounted both her two decades on the Board of Education and her early struggle to achieve higher education in her memoir My Journey, published earlier this year by NewSouth Books …