Category: BirminghamWatch
Alabama Honors Hugo Black’s Complicated Legacy
Alabama native and Supreme Court justice Hugo Black became a civil rights champion after a brief time in the KKK. A new monument honors his complicated legacy. Read more.
Author Documents Police Killings of African Americans During Jim Crow
In the spring of 1941, outside a movie theater in Fairfield, John Jackson waited with his girlfriend to see a show. A white police officer ordered Jackson and the other people in line, all African Americans, to clear the sidewalk. But Jackson, laughing and joking with his girlfriend, did not hear the order.
When challenged by one officer, Jackson asked, “Can’t I laugh?” The police officers forced Jackson into the back of their squad car, beat him severely and shot him four times. He died before reaching the police station.
Three years later, in Donalsonville, Georgia, an “elderly Negro woman” did or said something (or perhaps, nothing at all) that displeased the white clerk in a general store. The 20-year-old clerk followed the woman outside and beat her to death with an ax handle.
Neither the Fairfield cop nor the store clerk, or countless other white killers like them, went to jail for their crimes.
White-on-black violence was both a result and a pillar of Jim Crow. For African American men and women, even “the most commonplace encounters” with whites could turn lethal. And it is this aspect of the Jim Crow system, in which whites could do violence to black people with impunity, all the while being empowered and protected by the legal system, that is the focus of Margaret A. Burnham’s new book “By Hands Now Known.” Read more.
A Journalist Who Doesn’t Want You to Buy His Book
When the best journalists put their work in book form, they invest exhaustive effort to portray the subject as completely and truthfully as possible. Often, they nail it.
Sometimes, in hindsight, they miss.
Sportswriter Jeff Pearlman, a New York Times bestselling author whose work includes books on Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Cowboys, believes he missed with his 2016 book “Gunslinger: The remarkable, improbable, iconic life of Brett Favre.”
Remarkably and improbably, Pearlman went on Twitter on Sept. 13 and told his followers not to buy or read Gunslinger. He did so in the immediate wake of news reports that Favre, the retired Green Bay Packers and Southern Mississippi quarterback, knowingly participated in steering $5 million in government money intended for impoverished Mississippi families to building at new volleyball stadium at Southern Miss, where his daughter played on the team. Read more.
U.S. Steel used convict labor in Birmingham. Has it reckoned with its past?
A century ago, U.S. Steel was one of the companies involved in Alabama’s convict lease system. The steelmaker has a mixed record on acknowledging that history. Read more.
BirminghamWatch looked at the history of convict leasing in Alabama as party of its Legacy of Race kickoff story, Vestiges of Segregation Remain. America Is Fighting Over Them Today.
Memoir Explores ‘Being Black but Growing Up White’ After the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
“Dear Denise” follows Lisa McNair’s life in a series of letters to the sister she never met. Lisa recounts her experience growing up in the first generation of African Americans after legal segregation. Read more.
The Story of ‘the Colony’: How a Small, Black Community Thrived, Survived in Cullman County
The Colony, Cullman County’s only Black community, has a rich history of resilience and self-made success. Its current residents are working to continue it. Read more.
Tattletales: News Media Love to Call Each Other Out
Sunday marked the final broadcast of CNN’s 30-year-old news media criticism show called “Reliable Sources.” The reasons for the cancellation aren’t clear, but the network’s new CEO has said he wants to cut back on opinion, re-emphasize straight reporting and, notably, attract conservative viewers who have turned off CNN.
Good luck with that last part, fella.
There’s still plenty of press criticism out there from politicians and other partisans, but less and less from professional reporters who are designated to do so. In addition to losing “Reliable Sources,” the job of “public editor” – a newsroom reporter given the authority and independence to listen to audience complaints and write about their own organization’s failings – has almost disappeared. Read more.
Sick and Tired of All the Bad News? You’re Not Alone
“I can’t even.”
That was a common remark on social media in the wake of discovery that a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, left a 2-year-old boy orphaned. He was found wandering in the street. “Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon?” he later asked his grandfather.
I can’t even.
Of course, what’s the unspoken part of that sentence?
“I can’t even comprehend something so awful.”
“I can’t even imagine what life will be like for him.”
“I can’t even believe we live in a society where that could happen.”
All of the above.
And for some people: “I can’t even bring myself to read the news these days.”
It’s bad out there: COVID, the Ukraine war, mass killings, political insanity, add your own. Many people decide they just don’t want to read or watch it anymore. They engage in “news avoidance.” Read more.
Emotions of Abortion Debate Put Newswriters in a Language Jungle
I don’t know how journalists writing about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs abortion decision manage to meet their deadlines. They have to stop practically every other sentence to think and avoid words and phrases that are loaded like landmines.
I can’t think of any other issue in which the language has become so politicized. Journalists writing news stories seek truthful characterizations while steering clear of perceived partisanship. This may be impossible here. Read more.
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