"You Have to Have a Conscience in Order to Have a Crisis of Conscience"

"While Trump does not have such blood directly on his hands, he has campaigned and governed on the basis of racist dog-whistles about restoring a formerly 'great' America. Racial intolerance has been perhaps the only consistent part of Trump's political character; it runs unbroken from discriminating against blacks in his family’s apartment empire, to demanding the death penalty for the wrongfully convicted Central Park Five, to trumpeting the birther lie about Barack Obama, to urging the crowds at his rallies to rough up black protesters, to rhetorically defending neo-Nazis and Confederate symbols as president.
"And Trump's denunciations and policies against Muslims, Mexicans, Central American immigrants, and African 'shithole countries,' topped off by inciting anti-Chinese sentiment during the Covid-19 pandemic, make him a more expansive bigot than Wallace ever was."

In The Guardian, Samuel G. Freedman writes, "Stop comparing Trump to the infamous racist George Wallace. It's unfair to Wallace."

"Poured Gasoline on the Fire of Racial Division"

"Many factors have contributed to today's tribalistic politics, but race remains the bedrock of that division. Transcending racism is essential if our government is to break out of its current paralysis. If we do not succeed and Wallace's legacy of dividing us by race continues to shape American political life, then perhaps he won after all."

Dan T. Carter and Paul Stekler in the Los Angeles Times connect George Wallace to Donald Trump.

"The Epitome of the 'Record Man'"

"The big break came in 1961, after the partnership had been dissolved, with Hall keeping the Fame name. A local singer named Arthur Alexander came in with a song he had written, a mid-tempo country-inflected R&B ballad called You Better Move On. Hall liked it, put a small group of musicians together for a recording session, and took the tape to Nashville, 120 miles away, where he licensed it to Dot Records, Pat Boone's label. The song was the first of Alexander’s run of hits and entered the repertoire of many British groups, notably the Rolling Stones, who recorded it in 1964.
When Hall received a cheque for $10,000 as the initial proceeds of Alexander’s success, he built a full-scale studio in nearby Muscle Shoals, where musical lightning would strike over and over again. Jimmy Hughes's Steal Away; Maurice and Mac's You Left the Water Running; Staton's I'm Just a Prisoner; Clarence Carter's Patches and Etta James's Tell Mama were among the Hall productions that attracted world attention to the Muscle Shoals sound.

Richard Williams at The Guardian writes an obit for record producer Rick Hall.

"A Regime with Its Heart in Dixie"

"As a Georgian who spent some years working in community and economic development, once the thought occurred to me, Trump's behavior struck me as entirely predictable. In places that don't have a whole lot going for them to create new jobs or attract investors, public officials (especially governors) spend a lot of time pretending they personally have a big brawling, deal-making effect on decisions to keep or retain jobs. Because their individual efforts are vastly more tangible than the thousands of public policies that affect the viability of a state or locality, they get away with taking credit for private-investment decisions. And the investors involved are always happy to go along with the game in exchange for tax or infrastructure or regulatory concessions. While this is a bipartisan habit in the South and elsewhere, southern Republicans are especially eager to treat public resources from school revenues to labor and environmental regulations as expendable if giving them up creates a ground-breaking or ribbon-cutting opportunity. Everything about the Carrier case smells like that sort of scam."

Ed Kilgore at New York characterizes the incoming Trump administration as "Alabama With Nukes."

Do You Like Good Music

"Otis decided it was time to manage Conley himself and met him for the first time early in 1967. A couple of weeks later, they were in the FAME Studios in Alabama, updated a Sam Cooke classic, called 'Yeah Man' and 'Sweet Soul Music' was born. The song, on Atlantic Records Atco subsidiary, quickly rose to number two on both the pop and soul charts. The follow-up, a misguided remake of Big Joe Turner's 'Shake, Rattle And Roll' didn't do as well. Then, at the end of 1967, Otis Redding was killed in a plane crash in Wisconsin, and Arthur lost his producer, mentor and guide."

Ed Ward on NPR's Fresh Air explores the life of Arthur Conley.

"Harper Lee Announces Third Novel, 'My Excellent Caretaker Deserves My Entire Fortune'"

"Morrison added that, without spoiling too much, he could reveal that the book’s final pages feature a fully notarized last will and testament signed by the author herself."


From The Onion.

"They Held No Elected Office. But They Led a Nation"

"The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort. President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office. President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office. One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects. If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year."


Time provides a transcript of President Obama's speech in Selma, Alabama, marking fifty years since "Bloody Sunday."


James Fallows and Matt Ford at The Atlantic react to the speech.


As does Jonathan Chait at New York, and Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast.

They’ve Been Known to Pick a Song or Two

"How do we make sense of the fact that 'Mustang Sally' and 'When a Man Loves a Woman' and Aretha Franklin’s breakthrough hit 'I Never Loved a Man' and any number of other funk, soul and R&B classics were recorded with a band of backwoods Alabama white boys? Well, it’s complicated–let’s start there. Of course white privilege was involved, because even though Rick Hall grew up dirt-poor, he still belonged to the class of people who were able to buy property and start businesses in 1950s Alabama, and he hired white musicians–at least at first; his post-Swampers bands were integrated–because it was the natural thing to do. All that said, Hall’s also a guy with a tremendous ear and immense soulfulness who knew what he wanted–and what he wanted was a sound that fused Delta blues, hillbilly and urban African-American music. And something geographical or historical or spiritual about that obscure river-bend in northern Alabama made that possible."

Andrew O' Hehir in Salon reviews Muscle Shoals.

"My Dear Fellow Clergymen"

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. That’s a beautiful creed,” King told his crowd. It is easy to read such sentences in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and other works by King and leave it at that. But it is vital to read what he said next: “America has never lived up to it.”

Jonathan Rieder in The New York Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Hush that Fuss

"She spent nearly two decades before the bus incident struggling, organizing and agitating for civil rights, mostly as the secretary of the Montgomery, Ala., branch of the N.A.A.C.P. But it wasn’t until Parks was in her 40s and attended an integrated workshop that she found 'for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society.' This didn’t mean that she was eager for integration, though. She was later quoted as saying that what people sought 'was not a matter of close physical contact with whites, but equal opportunity.'"

Charles M. Blow in The New York Times discusses a new biography of Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis.

Alabama Death Wish Boogie Woogie

The Los Angeles Times publishes obituaries for civil-rights activist James A. Hood, baseball manager Earl Weaver, baseball player Stan "The Man" Musial, director Michael Winner, journalist Hans Massaquoi, journalist Stanley Karnow, singer Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner, singer Patty Andrews, and former NYC mayor Ed Koch.

"You Would Never Believe People Would Do People Like That"

"Half a century ago, when the Greyhound bus carrying some of the Freedom Riders pulled into Anniston, in the foothills of the Appalachians, a crowd awaited. Klan members pummeled the vehicle and slashed its tires. It limped away 20 minutes later, and a convoy of cars followed. Six miles later, the bus stopped with a flat.
"Bernard Emerson still lives on a hill overlooking the spot, which now bears a historic marker. Someone had tossed burning rags through a smashed bus window. 'The smoke was getting pretty thick,' he recalls. 'One lady was coming out of the window. She got her foot caught, and she was kind of hanging there.'"

Larry Bleiberg in the Los Angeles Times follows the route of the 1961 Freedom Rides.

Routes

"In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, marked the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House."

In The New York Times, Rachel L. Swans and Jodi Kantor trace Michelle Obama's family tree.

And a variety of writers and professors offer their opinions.

Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

The New York Times runs an obituary for Rosa Parks, civil rights icon.