A Word on Words; 2216; Paul Hemphill

a word on words of program delving into the world of books and their other this week called ham hill talks about leaving birmingham notes from a native son goes forward outwards mr john sigg involve chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university in a lot of the adult world once again jordan words a night we have back an old friend one who has been in the chair minute done before because he's written many books all have though welcome back your religion it's great dad you are writing and again i haven't seen you for a few years now have about four years ago a model ok well i remember it very well based on a very close will muffle the truck driver about whom i've written various ways in about a week you know well because you are you robert newell well you will only write in here in this and photo

id more than a stirred king of the road which was the good friday the heroic that is one of the amazing things in his times and yet when shell truth that fatal flaw that we find too often in the south of the racism which was easy to do once is you were from birmingham seven watson asking the road and said well there's more and more never have full of tourists your whole soul is conflicted feelings that we have particularly from the left and eighties even from the bombing and i know the chapter you call bombing him well i was one of the words and of course the navy uneasy been learned then what happens if you turn out to be a writer and you come out of a town that doesn't take several pockets over the mountain passes or birmingham is a

steel town is now account executive gentility that we might associate with fabio or memphis charleston not really a southern town industry plop down their boat and that's the voters are more know the year that the woman i am i was very much a child with his mother and a woman so we're down in the valley below surely right smack in the middle of a cover of a working class latino books were red rats it was a struggle and he was in charge of the huge behemoth that even dr want six days on the road going to lie with his where an hour about the road in terms of geography and a certain country music the nashville sound a book about all that we'll have another war we discuss first

but there comes a time i guess when he did in the late fifties comes a time i guess since they were fully world war i because a tampa trailer next enclosure where life might come around full circle on the father died just as i was beginning to work on the road and he runs up to which was what nineteen eighty eight no you do it again you donate and adamo usher cleared to rally that i think you never really leave your childhood to learn how you're the us dies and a momma technically was the walls around us at that point so what did was move them to bryan it took part of this summer instagram ninety to god to facilitate went on but unfortunately our older now go back and investigate and

see where the ghosts were what was it about the life in birmingham and try to go home again no and saying what happened to the steel mills rickwood field at the church a minute well i am baron flew and see what'll happen so it's basically isn't a lot but it's a mohawk of of evolve also burning i know live where it was going to be a you call it the notes of a native son and that is a little more but there are other voices that you give of their work astronomy an elderly fed they're basically three birmingham's want is the one i came out of the one who the father was not clan he was not a violent man i would never think of herding another human

being boy could he talk of a megamerger that was an end of a political parties to offer there was a burning alarm fatigue with blue collar reaction there a hard working good people the revelation of migrants have come out east tennessee level of the combat work the mayans and the other wry you know one of the other brands is black birmingham what should my time as forty percent of the city's population now which is now given the city's black mayor and further i fall remembers the oval the one that i think these are the people with the education the wherewithal the brainpower always we're with advising people now call upscale well now well these are blue gauze and maine as many generations and not broken home work work over five white kingdom it's better by boat book and back away from the smoggy and

smoke lumber am still a steel town the ones who curious and sail long string of that's never really had a vested interest in the city birmingham eleven nineteen oh seven tennessee coal and i was the single big industry that was the one that just the steal we got into trouble on it in it and also his library of jp morgan and manhattan and it was arranged that us steel rebar of all of the moments of the pentagon and birmingham appointed newspaper they were beside themselves with joy we didn't say that we are going to cut the steel producing center of them were well as we stand and oh oh contraire i have

maybe i have a colonial invasion by maybe more a rule so that is as a whole and it's a steal at upper and so right now no odors sold for the ultimate companies to us meaning that now these minimal amount of local students to lessons now we couldn't play with toys that were poisoning wells and so they simply now they work for pittsburgh meaning they had no vested interest and bernie they didn't care after the world cup for generations it is unclear which brings us to the entry of one bull connor as you doing it again a novelist eugene connor has hello total or have the city government powerful personality police commissioner so what is the world will look about that cares what here well we know how voters care of we know about the freedom riders we know about today's bombing

hand what it became as we know about all the freedom riders in nineteen sixty doing research at johns hopkins that women like it hurts you know that right there they're there are photographs of them historically the pick to o'connor authorities each time i see photographs like that it takes me back to a time when birmingham man most of the solar cities were were ripped apart by violence and dissension you spoke about your father owned and what's more he revisits the pages

of government will vote today and i know that all sorts of people have all sorts of family relationships and i'm fascinated by this win because you my friend have then so influenced by a love for this man and still there was with a new rebellion barrett ran against the grain of the racism that give him as well and i you know i must have been asked you know an overdue sellers who went through that period in hand rejected repudiate everything south of fort sill of the south as still other today i haven't asked you know how they come out this way i had to come out that cocoon and

realized that it was wrong to put martin luther king in that place where he wrote the burning love and birmingham it mean for all of us it was probably the thing that he was slapped in the slammer and that it was a great day and that he's drafted there that i thought were in western allies and over and over and over a lot of the allies in this todd i'm tore it was happening just a couple weeks we need to start a lot of a group of twelve step for former birmingham has the most cards rather get it was only toward the city apart what happened and this is thirty years ago but their people grown man like me and they were put in their sixties who grew up that led the attack on tour and hobbes that mr graf being in nigeria but there is an outcry talk about what that town that to him and he still can't get any kind of

closure orders lightly cannot make a separate they say he's got an affection for the theological visited a fraud and still he despises what the favorable it was anything but though i can tailor named there was an awful lot of this tension may not notice again we're not so their earnings not so there we see all the worship of shrine to bear bryant between self worth and hardware were great they were brought us we were right up front we do not practice the gentility that sweet in its own way but you find them batches and memphis troll some of those plays in birmingham resident horror gritty ground is it's in the area and that's part of the right now horses change now that's it's very bold sleepy as its economy is healthy as couples are allowed to spend this year of course these

thirty years and so i haven't gone back again and children from my divorced race in birmingham i'm always loyal ally that rivas of course oh no you can say well it's better than going to your three years ago i was interested in how you gonna handle you just mentioned twelve step i was interested in how you know the issue of alcoholism an un to do sit by it setting a time when new ideas or sister gave a fiftieth way our trade celebration or gay parents and then you say immediately after that anniversary it hit well janet fall far idaho that may

have been their earlier happen that it was going as happens around it he wanted me to have the tickets for me obama won a minute window because it's in the genes of a mile father joseph heller director although it drove as he would say probably three mayor marcelo an accident trudell to muscle strength all at america's problem and you did this director of noah's ark park service but momentous riders cursed who did you feel you had to address it in this know your company all of our own write about him as a right but the whole thing for them to have a cause of this it fits my life if it's a book that i came out on the town like birmingham at a time when i did because it was a pretty pretty gritty

we're alive again the same word knows intimately i've read was on mtv how raines is another writer escape brian but how or it's relative gentility one i don't allow you just used the n word around the house which is the way he grew up he also grew up in the shadow of birmingham southern college which is always a safe haven for whatever liberal goings on we're going on in the fifties and sixties bernie say that i come out of there from birmingham a man as folks work with color in the beginning but once gentility around by the words of lavish a new into the bottle get along well i just felt it was right on the water where you know he was on this program and the name came out

and i think but you know he is own book on the sort of you mentioned it in your book it seems to me that songwriters devotion experienced that period some are going to address the earth shook the ropes very well well because it is what ultimately divided on the dollar and they all cost of their minimum a evidence is there are well first for me columnist and father in those years to apply for a nieman fellowship at harvard are now promising a journalist i'm going to have to lower are you

mr tambo merlo i'm erika more than twelve to go and october manager bob mondello one that the mission and to save us and as all of us who do you say that was a harvard law harvard and then they were pretty old miami i will and thus celebrity but then well by continuing education and i do there have been black friends and exposes as a columnist and a lot of marketing campaign that allows a city where they all came back to lick their wounds before king of all julian bond all the black the civil rights movement groups right so i'm in a line and online learning and whether all of this contest and later on a burger but i had an association i'm at harvard

and twelve name and so was one solar and one black and we became the best friend his name was joe stricken detroit news i'm opposed to three doors away mitchell alleyway was harvard housing apartments and the first time we are you know outbreak and whisk in his role and though is about today was in these these are baboons they need to get into of pokemon red neck broken and it goes next door to each other seven to the rest of the law and it was a i've spent i asked mr amir in the book about a country music in fact when they're given what an issue but the fact that i was there the son of an album a trucker who for common hispanic bush and says what madness is thinking

and your ims because somewhere around there remains a shared and shared his appearance on a bus in savannah with tagging so john strickland was out of detroit but it picked up by handsome young at one place in the book ms mcauliffe the differences but to a city which is the essential <unk> internal atlanta and your own saber have an on the one hand there was probably only other was john campbell grave talk about that dichotomy in in in the framework which you just kind of in the same way that that that those two men give you a sense so tell me until i was about it one more time about we're two things it wants to press and even the feeling of a potential leaders and a town that they have

a truly have vested interests in the welfare of this ad and they go hand in hand the press on carbon about a particular protest or a press on the one that who alls its readers and its its peak this community kitchen and dragon because they think they know the truth and what was right and they're going to they're willing to take a beating at the box office to lose sketch and in order to do the right thing by birmingham news was not like that and is a local station and then i was like that when you have in the lab a coder a public doesn't a hardcore dozens of civic leaders i think most particularly about alan gin they are worth note on this episode the author hid the american liberty bob woodruff coca cola and on most surreal for alan though hartsfield that airport

for him he thought about it and it was too late and i gotta well if you have a handful maybe a dozen people there but then you also have the press you have most particularly rough with you and then you know jane patterson to those too who said oh care this is right where this is coming these people are now forty percent of our population they have a right to have an opportunity to live like you're what the cost is and say this you know to the pursuit of happiness right so therefore we're going to owe the poem new lineup of english along with us and put the paper that us open it was not easy to be rocking you know more eighteen thousand and eight but it was easy for gentle gray zone leaders were all of want to lose one of the other cells with literary the texas system alive shakespeare or quote every college of so

called shakespearean of talents in his skill steel workers and coal mines affect them that one of the collar coat hem him variously as commanding the white citizens and also at a map and clamor boat on its excellent choice of honestly stationary german reads the message that when elmo with an unnamed them and birmingham's formal martin luther king in jail i am a nineteen sixty three and nineteen sixty four in honor and it's no bowl winning native son with a person not at the problem so this is great difference of how the press and the people who have where will all the educated people who won't go to be leading they were not doing that you knew the person or the

alleged leakers imbroglio ali were chemical out i mean these people have an island mr gale anne patterson and all around there are coincidence that they live close to right downtown atlanta all these likeable people an older wealthier bigger role cities like cleveland refused to believe that says it's a prank it's a trick i mean these guys are up so they don't really care for their city hall in toyota i know alan alan i know a week you know you also you also begin there's a role for the show's creator that's not the sixties the nineties

no we i have this big a common here but no but mom was in this club this isn't a member of us are now you know because it the city still isolate themselves never really thoroughly enjoyed or join a committed to the city's lawyer defiance it comes out of you to publish only goes back to the soul warmer prolonged you would think that a city that had as its mayor black league one outcome for a glove that would say that where we'd love to have you join but there were no you know come fly gagliardi was at the gathering fireman found a token black member who said this was good for the city says a one relative anomaly in golf tournament that volunteers

give up played the various people who turn up voices are heard and to turn up in some of the internal chapters of the book some come back again a repeated what has dropped from a it began three birmingham's my voice is one of them two for two in a massive me to go to to be able to get up and make pronouncements about what the black community what it was like for them over a spy by generations and the seminary so i had the idea is a gimmick that i think it works is a very well recurring other voice on the cover us from his farm near last two days earlier the crack about civil rights spoken and harry truman but his care and

to folks like no man off bingo you've cupped to remain giant seaport or tom porter is now pastor largest black church in birmingham you know jon porter tell he tells that story tells about his sharecropper grandparents in his father that your man your man two the guy who has gotten out about power one of those big that they can do it on the new is these big monolithic routers all my hand and the other ones so you're idea was really true to me here's what this black it was doing whatever and headed out into the snow and then you cut to mimi times may me is soul they are family owned land in what would become the re animating twenties when there's a close as they ever have that hasn't caught on the relative one of our to really figure out what the trigger

could really be used for you know people are trying to grow and so far she goes back she's blueblood birmingham and married and then went on to smith college and herself had an epiphany around the time of the freedom riders who think college in the very first time what would later become very old lawyer and eighty six and they can actually somewhat sheepishly explains i'm sorry it soul least i can so it is it is without question no no more blood that is untoward shared by other voices from other people who whose experiences were different that i wanted to give a balanced this in the fairest way paul hemphill author of leaving birmingham notes from a native son as ben our guest on the word on where they are most of them john sigg involved in this program was produced in the studios of

wbez and bash them apologies needed