State's history is for all Alabamians, not just a favored few
Growing up in Montgomery in the 1940s, on Monroe and Adams Streets, I walked a block south to Decatur Street Elementary School for the first of the 12 grades I enjoyed in the Montgomery Public School System. Thereby did I begin an educational journey as a student, faculty member, and administrator that lasted more than six decades at six public universities and, a block east from our apartment, the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH). I've frequented the latter over the years, even researching there my master's degree at Auburn University in the 1960s and the four books I've written after I retired in 2014 from Troy University.
At ADAH, I learned the history of Alabama — or rather the Marie Bankhead Owens white-washed version of it. Even as a seven or eight-year-old, I wondered as I wandered its cool marble halls in the summers before air conditioning, "Where are all the Black people, who once outnumbered the white people in Alabama?"
In those days, the Archives recognized primarily Confederate, Native American, and WWI history. I don't recall learning any African American history or, a more egregious omission, the history of slavery that once dominated business on Court Square, ground zero in the "Cradle of the Confederacy," where I frequented the Strand Theatre on Saturdays. I had to fill in those blanks in history later, reading on my own and taking college courses, such as Dr. Malcolm McMillan's popular AU course in the History of the South.
Over the past sixty years, that deficiency at the ADAH and in public education has been rectified. At least, that was so until defendant Donald J. Trump and a host of Republican "know-nothing" governors, including Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, herself a teacher and a friend of mine since 1963 at Auburn, began trying to undo much of it. Why? — to try to solve such non-problems as the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), "wokeness," and unappreciated laws protecting racial and LGBTQ civil rights.
Never mind that CRT is not being taught in K-12 here or anywhere else. (Until a few decades ago, the only CRT being taught in Southern public schools was WCRT — White CRT. Never mind that "wokeness" lacks an agreed-upon definition and is only a convenient buzzword of Florida's regularly "rebooting," presidential contender, Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, whose recent book even fails to tell readers clearly what it is. And never mind that LGBTQ community members have only had mostly equal rights in our land for about a decade.
Now comes a state senator from Baldwin County, threatening the ADAH for its continuing efforts to expand our previously biased understanding of Alabama history and to support the teaching of competent, comprehensive state history. Why? Because it recently hosted an LGBTQ historian, grant-funded, at one of its noon Architreats sessions.
I've spoken twice at those brown-bag luncheons, and I was more controversial than she was, arguing, as I did, that my friend Gov. George Wallace was not the greatest national politician to come out of Alabama. That honor goes to U.S. Senator Oscar W. Underwood, his party's leader in both Houses of Congress and twice a presidential contender (1912 and 1924, when he took on the KKK), who turned down President Woodrow Wilson's offer of a U.S. Supreme Court seat (I found the letter in Archives files).
Dr. Ed Bridges's successor as director of ADAH, Dr. Steve Murray, has been doing an outstanding job of bringing the Archives' coverage of our state's history up to date and ensuring that it is no longer biased against certain groups, with a special emphasis on its neglected aspects, including African American history. After all, 27 percent of our population is African American, warranting, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, two Congressional districts for the more than one milion Alabamians who are black or brown. And, if Alabama has the same percentage of gay people as the nation at large (6-7 percent), there must be at least a quarter of a milion LGBTQ citizens in Alabama. Do they not pay taxes? Do they not enrich our communities as much as any other citizens? Do they not bleed when assaulted and battered? Do they not hurt when they are victims of discrimination?
Would you, white, straight Alabamian, trade places with these children of God, made in his image just as you were? Why should they be treated differently from you because of a few cherry-picked Bible verses? Why should their history be slighted at the ADAH, because a state senator says a few, perhaps homophobic, constituents called him to complain about a talk made there to a small audience of adults? Why should the budget of the ADAH take a $5 million hit so that one state lawmaker can placate a few probably prejudiced voters in his district? He told The Advertiser in its July 26th edition (an article from the new "Alabama Reflector" news website) that "he didn't think sex, including heterosexual sex (how broadminded), should be discussed in the government building (ADAH occupies)." That was from a member of a political party that obsesses in statehouses about sex, while legislating irrationally on abortion, LGBTQ rights, contraception, rape, and more, usually curtailing the related rights.
If the senator persists in his quixotic campaign against the ADAH, he will continue to build support for the nation's first state archives, causing me and many others to support it with our dollars, our feet, and our fannies in seats in its auditorium, as we listen to more interesting and informative talks about topics of importance to all Alabamians, teaching us that history is not what we want it to be.
History is what it is
Dr. Jim Vickrey is a retired university president and lawyer, living in his hometown of Montgomery, and still using the ADAH since he was a boy in the 1940s, who has also been an Architreats speaker..
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: State's history is for all Alabamians, not just a favored few
