Book Review: 'Devil in Dixie' a riveting looking at civil rights
struggle in Alabama
"Devil in Dixie" is a street-level look at the civil rights struggle in
Alabama (and in a greater sense, throughout the South), the story of
those brave souls who dedicated their lives to the effort to knock down
the bulkheads thrown up to protect against the flooding tide of
integration.
It is also the story of the young Southern lawyers, both black and
white, who picked up the gauntlet in the confrontation against
discrimination and carried it to the next level. Once the high-profile
demonstrations subsided and "the Freedom Riders moved on," their work
continued. And it is the story of two white Montgomery policemen, Jack
Snows and T.J. Ward, who, unable to get a conviction in the bombings by
the "boys from Ward Five," continued to investigate and arrest the
perpetrators in an effort "to keep the violence to a minimum." And it is
the story of Bill Baxley, the "people's attorney general," who "kept the
fires burning" in the quest to bring the bombers to justice.
Seventy-year-old author Wayne Greenhaw, who was a reporter for the
Alabama Journal and Montgomery Advertiser during this period,
experienced many of these events firsthand. The award-winning writer
takes us back to this contentious time through a series of fascinating
vignettes.
He tells of courageous Alabama natives Charles Morgan Jr., Fred Gray,
Morris Dees, Joe Levin Jr., and John Hulett, who in fighting the
injustices of the status quo often found themselves also in
confrontations with their friends, neighbors and sometimes even their
relatives. And of Sam and Amelia Boynton, brave pioneers who established
the Selma Voters League in the effort to break down the barriers at the
polls that precipitated the famous march to Montgomery.
He also follows segregation's "poster child," George C. Wallace, as he
toured the nation arguing against the Civil Rights Act and spreading the
gospel of "the true story of segregation and civil rights" and the
"Southern way of life."
He also writes about Asa Earl Carter, the founder of the Original Ku
Klux Klan of the Confederacy and a speech writer for Wallace, who
watched in disgust as the governor changed his philosophy and attempted
to remake his image from the race-baiting "Segregation forever"
politician to "the most important friend that black people could have in
the 1980s."
Although Greenhaw tells of the fight against Carter and the Klan by
Dees, his Southern Poverty Law Center and others, the subtitle of the
book, "How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama is
extremely misleading. This book is much more than that.
Greenhaw re-emphasizes this by ending with a quote from Julian Bond
delivered in a 1989 speech at the dedication of the Civil Rights
memorial in Washington, D.C.
"Most of those who made the movement weren't the famous; they were the
faceless. They weren't the noted; they were the nameless. We honor all
of them today."
As does Greenhaw.
Note: The author will be at the Amelia Island Book Festival Feb. 18 and
19.
Lee Scott lives in Avondale
'Fighting the Devil in Dixie'
Author: Wayne Greenhaw
Data: Lawrence Hill Books, 316 pages, $26.95
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