Leaving Birmingham - Hardcover

Hemphill, Paul

4

57 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067084778X ISBN 13: 9780670847785

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1993

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In an affecting memoir, a racist's son returns to his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, to examine how Birmingham's segregationist violence in the 1960s happened, explore the social changes that have occurred, and reunite with his family. 25,000 first printing. $15,000 ad/promo.

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About the Author:

Paul Hemphill, a former columnist for the Atlanta Journal, is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Ballad of Little River, a book about Little River, Alabama, site of a black church burning in 1997. Hemphill lives in Atlanta with his wife, Susan Percy.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Timed for the 30th anniversary of Birmingham's infamous summer of racial violence: a memoir from Birmingham native son Hemphill that's as much about two men--his father and himself--as about the mind-set of a particular city. Interweaving the history of a city founded only in 1871 with the stories of himself and his family--working-class whites who moved to Birmingham in the 1920's in search of jobs--Hemphill rounds out these ``attempts to make something positive of his past'' with two other voices: those of Mimi Tynes, a member of Birmingham's white elite, and John Porter, the son of black house- servants. As a child, Hemphill adored baseball and lived for the weekends when his beloved father--a legendary trucker who once drove six thousand miles in ten days to Portland, Oregon, and back- -would take him to games. Back then, Birmingham not only hadn't ever quite lived up to its boast of being the ``Pittsburgh of the South,'' but it was rapidly being overtaken by rival Atlanta, which had an enlightened leadership and a diversified economic base. Hemphill describes the almost universal acceptance of segregation and racist attitudes among whites, attitudes that were to harden in the late 50's as the civil-rights movement grew and Bull Connors and his cohorts brutally fought back. It wasn't until he spent a year in France with the army that Hemphill began to appreciate the cruel realities of racism--an understanding that would lead to bitter quarrels with his father, alienation from Birmingham, and a sense that the city was irredeemable. But in 1992, after his father's death and during a lengthy visit back to Birmingham, Hemphill had a cathartic encounter with the new black owners of his childhood home that suggested that ``justice had finally prevailed.'' A moving record of a painful personal journey toward acceptance of a deeply flawed parent and place. (Sixteen b&w photos) -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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