Thanks for the Memories A friend from college visited me earlier this summer. She’s a great gal and it’s always terrific to see her but before she arrived, I wondered where I should take her during our visit. We have the usual amenities within easy driving distance but why bring her to some spot like another near her home? In the end, we went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a museum and memorial to the Civil Rights Struggle in Birmingham, Alabama. It was the right thing to do. Birmingham’s history with the Movement may not be what the city wants to be known for but it’s our calling card in the pages of history. Hiding from the past never helps. Because of Birmingham’s infamous role in that struggle, explaining positive aspects of this place to the casual outsider can be difficult. (Well, some of my Caucasian friends have admitted this is hard; I haven’t got the nerve or bad manners to find out if my African-American friends here face the same issues.) In the face of bombed churches and fire-hoses, how can anyone describe warm-hearted people and neighborhoods without sounding like a fool or a racist? How can the domestic…
Birmingham, Alabama has a favorite son and I’ll bet they’ve forgotten his name. He was an editor and minister’s son, a foreign correspondence that parachuted into Normandy during World War II and a novelist. Of all things, Joe David Brown was a very good novelist who invented a great loud-mouthed little girl. Her name was Addie Pray. Does that child’s name ring a bell? Probably not if you’re less an 45 and that is your misfortune, Miss Addie Pray is a pragmatic girl with a will of her own. Book critics have called her a cross between Huck Finn and Scout Finch and they’re just scratching the surface. Add that she shares the indomitable will of True Grit’s Mattie Ross and the picture becomes clearer. Of course she can steal your heart but that’s to be expected. Addie Pray is a trickster, a confidence kid and the heroine of Paper Moon. Let me backtrack a minute. During the Depression (before he parachuted into Normandy and won a chestful of medals) Joe David Brown was a reporter for the Birmingham News. A police reporter, specifically. Part of his beat took him down among those guests of the county who were awaiting…