Tommy Stevenson has a terrific article in the Tuscaloosa News about recently re-discovered files from the Tuscaloosa County sheriff's office about civil rights in 1964. The files include photographs -- perhaps the only ones in existence -- of a civil rights march to the Tuscaloosa County Court House in late summer 1964. This reminds me again how much important work is to be done on the history of race in Alabama--how much we still need to recover about the history of civil rights, as well as the eras of slavery and Jim Crow and how many stories are waiting, almost in plain sight, to be recovered.
Update: I wrote this entry and set it to post this morning before the devastating tornado that swept through Tuscaloosa yesterday.
My deep sympathies go out to the Tuscaloosa community; the pictures of destruction are horrifying and though the University seems to have been spared mostly, the neighborhoods immediately around the University were destroyed. The human cost is obviously extraordinary.
The New York Times is now reporting that the University of Alabama's law school was spared and is one place that people gathered in the wake of the storm.
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