REVIEW:

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-1960s@h-net.msu.edu (August 2005)

Frye Gaillard.  _Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed
America_. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. xvi + 419 pp.
Bibliography, notes, index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8173-1388-5.

Reviewed for H-1960s by Karen R. Utz, University of Alabama/Birmingham and
Sloss
Furnaces National Historic Landmark

Alabama’s Struggle for Justice

_Cradle of Freedom_ focuses on the key events of the civil rights movement in
Alabama: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, George Wallace’s infamous stand in the
doorway at the University of Alabama, the Freedom Rides, the bombing of the
16th Street Baptist Church, and Bloody Sunday.  Frye Gaillard’s fine book
speaks to the bravery and wisdom of the leaders and legends of the movement –
Rosa Parks, Martin L. King, Jr., Stokley Carmichael, and Fred Shuttlesworth,
who claimed that for him the cause took “divine insanity” (p.106).

The strength of this extraordinary story, however, is Gaillard’s compelling
portrayal of the early civil rights leaders, as well as all the ordinary
“apostles of decency,” both black and white, who believed it was possible to
build a better world (p.xvi). Gaillard recognizes such overlooked individuals
as Charles Gomillion, a professor at Tuskegee Institute who spent over thirty
years crusading for black voting rights, and Vernon Johns, King’s eloquent
predecessor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, who continually spoke out against
the “indignities of segregation” (p.xvi). Twenty years earlier, Alabamian
Aubrey William, Roosevelt’s director of the National Youth Administration,
championed the concept of work relief and provided jobs to young black and
white males during the Great Depression. In his later years he returned to
Birmingham and started the _Southern Farmer_, a publication that spoke to
numerous issues, including segregation.

While these exceptional leaders have carved their indelible places in history,
Gaillard stresses that the brunt of the work was done by the “foot soldiers as
well as the generals” (p.xvi). It came out of the will of ordinary people
determined to challenge an unfair system and fight what King referred to as “a
degenerating sense of nobodiness” (p.146). This grass-roots energy became the
pattern throughout Alabama in the mid 1960s. It was fueled by colleges and
churches, as well as county organizations (the Freedom Quilting Bee, located in
Wilcox County, sold hand-crafted quilts and used the funds to send black kids
to college). This energy was found in Lemon Johnson, an early supporter of the
Share Croppers Union who had battled for living wages since the 1930s.  And it
was evident in Jonathan Daniels, a young Episcopalian priest brutally gunned
down as he attempted to protect Ruby Sales, a young black woman from Lowndes
County.

In the acknowledgment section of _Cradle of Freedom_, Gaillard notes that the
civil rights movement became the “primary political and moral reference point”
for many Alabamians of his particular generation (p.349).  Perhaps this is the
reason Gaillard, an Alabama native, succeeds in providing an incredibly moving
and well-researched history of his state’s role in the civil rights movement.

This thoughtful, in-depth, and highly readable (thank goodness!) account of
what
occurred during the civil rights movement in a state once deemed the Cradle of
the Confederacy will definitely be required reading in my America in the
Sixties class.

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