It’s good to see that Greg Wittkamper is finally getting some attention close to home. Greg, the main character in “The Class of ’65,” has spoken at two recent book gatherings near his nest in Sinks Grove, West Virginia. One was a party thrown on his behalf at Salt Sulphur Springs, a historic resort near the Virginia border, and the other was a book club in Lewisburg, a charming town near the famous Greenbrier Resort. (That’s Greg with some of the book club members.) There was a lively discussion about Greg’s plight as a persecuted teenager in Georgia, with one woman suggesting that he would have been better off if he had fought back against the classmates who were bullying him at Americus High for his religious and racial beliefs. Greg respectfully disagreed. As the author of the book, I’m with Greg on this one; it would have been a very different story if he had taken a swing at his tormentors -- less Gandhi than Rocky. The local attention will continue next weekend when Greg and I speak at the Lewisburg Literary Festival in an arts center called Carnegie Hall.
The forgotten Selma
Fifty years ago this week, Americus, Ga., made national news as racial unrest boiled over into violence and death. It was the final battle in the fight for the Voting Rights Act, a closing chapter in the struggle that had begun that spring in Selma, Ala. I devoted a chapter of my book, "The Class of '65," to the long hot summer that year in Americus. See that picture of a column of protesters? The white boy toward the left -- the only one in sight -- is my main character, Greg Wittkamper, who had just graduated from Americus High and was joining the marchers with his friend Collins McGee. The trouble started during a special election for justice of the peace when a candidate, a black woman, was told that she would have to stand in a separate voting line for colored people. For the next few weeks, there were daily demonstrations in Americus involving hundreds of protestors, roving bands of Klansmen, future governor Lester Maddox, future network anchorman Tom Brokaw, and civil rights leaders such as Hosea Williams, John Lewis and comedian Dick Gregory. It got ugly; one young man was killed in a drive-by shooting, and state troopers had to be summoned to keep the peace. How did it all end? You'll just have to read the book. (Thanks to Sam Mahone and the Americus-Sumter County Movement Remembered Committee, which found this photo in an old contact sheet.)
Please wait for the boom mic ...
I've been to many book events at the Margaret Mitchell House over the years, but never as the guy on the stage. So I was excited when the Atlanta History Center, which owns and runs the house, asked me to speak about "The Class of '65." And I was doubly excited when I heard that C-SPAN was going to be there taping for its weekend "Book TV" feature. The picture above (taken by my friend Reid Laurens) shows their camera set up before the program started. They really do want audience members to wait until the boom mic gets there before they ask a question. As many of you know, the Mitchell House is the apartment building in Midtown Atlanta where Margaret Mitchell wrote most of "Gone With the Wind." They hold book talks in an auditorium in an adjacent commercial building. We drew a full house that included several familiar faces, including former Atlanta Constitution editor Tom Teepen, noted author Robert Coram, distinguished journalist Ann Woolner, veteran travel editor Fred Brown, and former Congressman Buddy Darden (who bought a book to give his friend former Gov. Roy Barnes). I was also pleased to see Sam Mahone, a civil rights activist in Americus during the 1960s who figures in the story and is working to preserve the history of the Sumter County movement. All in all, it was a wonderful evening. Thanks to Sheffield Hale, Kate Whitman and everyone at the History Center, and to Chuck Reece, whose online magazine, The Bitter Southerner, co-sponsored the event. Chuck (shown with me in the other picture) ably moderated the discussion. The link below takes you to the article I wrote about the book recently for The Bitter Southerner.
Learning from bitterness
The Bitter Southerner, the online magazine with the intriguingly acrid name, asked me to write about the back story of "The Class of '65" and how the book has been received. My piece appears in the July 14 issue (linked below). The Bitter Southerner started a couple of years ago as the brainchild of veteran Atlanta journalist Chuck Reece and a few of his friends. The name originally referred to their enthusiasm for Southern spirits and food, but it quickly took on a broader meaning as they redirected the magazine toward in-depth stories about life and culture in the region -- stories like the tale of race, religion and reconciliation found in my book. Photographer Aaron Coury accompanied Greg Wittkamper and me to Americus, Ga., when the book came out last spring and took some evocative pictures of Greg at his high school and at Koinonia, the communal farm where he grew up. As we revisited the old haunts, there were moments that moved us to tears. While our story is not meant to engender bitterness -- quite the opposite -- some of the memories we summoned from the past are bitter indeed.
"A heartbreaking book"
The Christian Century ran a favorable review of "The Class of '65" this week, calling it a "heartbreaking book that confirms that we all have far to go and much to forgive." (Could I suggest that it might be a little heart-lifting as well?) The Century is among the oldest publications covering religion in America and is considered one of the most influential voices of mainline Protestantism. It wrote about the violence and boycott aimed at Koinonia during the 1950s, so in a sense, this is revisiting an old story with a new twist. "Local whites, unable to tell Christian communal life from Soviet communism and unwilling to countenance blacks and whites living together, tried to starve members out by refusing to trade with them," writes reviewer Lawrence Wood, a minister in Gulf Shores, Ala. "Several times Koinonia was bombed, its orchard was cut down, gunfire shattered windows. The children weren't sure whether to be angry at the townspeople or at their idealistic parents -- or even if they were permitted to be angry at all." Wood then says of the author: "Much of his story has the power to shock, but his telling is more powerful because he is unshockable." Perhaps it just looks that way. Here's a link to the review below: