Books-Leaving Birmingham

Paul Hemphill left his hometown of Birmingham as a young man to become a newspaper reporter. He returned almost three decades later in 1992 to live and to reflect on what happened in the city in 1963, one of the most pivotal years in the history of the civil rights movement. In Leaving Birmingham, Hemphill, a former columnist for the Atlanta Journal, delivers a poignant memoir that highlights major historical events in the city such as the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four Black girls, the demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr., and law enforcement’s attacks on nonviolent demonstrators protesting segregation. Hemphill also writes about coming to terms with his past and his own father’s racism while capturing the stories of other longtime Birmingham residents, both black and white. (University of Alabama Press)