2014 proved to be a banner year for the YA biography Eugene Bullard: World’s First Black Fighter Pilot by Larry Greenly, and the honors continue with the new year. After receiving two awards for YA literature — the New Mexico/Arizona Literary Award and the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award — the book has just been honored by Booklist magazine …
The February 2015 edition of the Episcopal Journal offers a full-page feature on Reverend Phil Noble’s book Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town, and the events in Anniston, Alabama, that lead to the city’s formation of the Human Relations Council. With racial tension in the news and resurgent interest in the Civil Rights Movement with the release of the movie Selma, Noble’s first-hand account of the violence and reconciliation in his town remains required reading …
Mazel tov to Matzo Frogs by Sally Rosenthal with illustrations by David Sheldon. It made the “best Jewish children’s books of 2014” list published by Tablet Magazine. Marjorie Ingall calls Matzo Frogs a “livelier, goofier, amphibian tour-de-force,” adding, “The book teaches kids the expression mitzvah goreret mitzvah — one good deed leads to another. The nutty frogs are bold and vibrant, outlined in black ink, against blurry backgrounds, so they really jump” …
The Dothan Eagle recently profiled S. M. “Mac” Otts, author of Better Than Them: The Unmaking of an Alabama Racist in connection with Mr. Otts’s presentation at the Houston-Love Memorial Library. The feature recounts the story of a young man ready to assault civil rights protesters who grew to become the adoptive father of an interracial child, dedicated to improving relations between blacks and whites …
A new review in the Journal of Architectural Education calls Ellen Weiss’s biography of African American architect Robert R. Taylor “a vital addition to architectural history, African American studies, the history of education, history of the South, and that of campus architecture.” Professor Katherine Wheeler writes that Weiss’s book deftly details “the challenges black architects faced in the South after the Civil War, as well as underlining the importance of architecture’s role in promoting racial equality” …
Voices Beyond Bondage editor Erika DeSimone was interviewed last week on National Public Radio’s “Here and Now.” In a lively exchange, DeSimone told host Peter O’Dowd about the 19th century African American literary movement celebrated in her newly published anthology, co-edited with Fidel Louis. Only recently have scholars even begun to look at the verse that appeared in scores of black-owned newspapers dating from the antebellum and postbellum periods. Not surprisingly, says DeSimone, readers have been intrigued by the beauty and strength of the poems within the book’s pages …
Young adult author Ted Dunagan, winner of the Georgia Author of the Year for his first three novels, starting with A Yellow Watermelon, was interviewed recently by ArtsATL. The amiable author chatted with Sarah Sacha Dollacker about his childhood desire to become a writer and the inspiration for his books …
Alan Cross, author of When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus, was quoted recently in a Religion News Service article on current events in Ferguson, Missouri and New York that ran in papers across the country, most prominently in the Washington Post. He noted that “what often happens when white evangelicals try to speak into this is that we continue to think first in terms of our own position. We should consider what people in the black community are saying, what are they going through, what is their experience” …
Kathryn Tucker Windham — nationally renowned author, storyteller, journalist, photographer, and beloved daughter of the state of Alabama — has been named as the sole inductee into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame for 2015. Windham passed away in 2011. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, the honor of being the only inductee for a year is one afforded to those with “exceptional backgrounds.” NewSouth Books is proud to have been Windham’s publisher during the last years of her prolific writing career, releasing a new edition of the popular Alabama, One Big Front Porch as well as the new titles Ernest’s Gift, Jeffrey’s Favorite 13 Ghost Stories, Spit, Scarey Ann and Sweat Bees: One Thing Leads to Another, and Windham’s final book, She: The Old Woman Who Took Over My Life …
Today, November 13, in 1956 was Day 345 in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was also the day that the boycotters won victory in their struggle that began after the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955. The boycott began four days later, on December 5, 1955, on the morning of the day that she was to be tried in Montgomery city court on misdemeanor charges of violating the city law that said that blacks and whites had to sit in segregated sections on local buses …