Whereas other studies have focused on George Wallace's career as a national figure, Stand Up for Alabama provides a detailed, comprehensive, and analytical study of Wallace's political life that emphasizes his activities and their impact within the state of Alabama. Jeff Frederick examines the development of policy during the Wallace administrations and documents relationships with his constituents in ways that go beyond racial politics. He also analyzes the connections between Wallace's career and Alabamians' understanding of their history, sense of morality, and class system.

Opening the Doors is a wide-ranging account of the University of Alabama’s 1956 and 1963 desegregation attempts, as well as the little-known story of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s, own civil rights movement. Whereas E. Culpepper Clark’s The Schoolhouse Door remains the standard history of the University of Alabama’s desegregation, in Opening the Doors B. J. Hollars focuses on Tuscaloosa’s purposeful divide between “town” and “gown,” providing a new contextual framework for this landmark period in civil rights history. The image of George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door has long burned in American consciousness; however, just as interesting are the circumstances that led him there in the first place, a process that proved successful due to the concerted efforts of dedicated student leaders, a progressive university president, a steadfast administration, and secret negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department, the White House, and Alabama’s stubborn governor. In the months directly following Governor Wallace’s infamous stand, Tuscaloosa became home to a leader of a very different kind: twenty-eight-year-old African American reverend T. Y. Rogers, an up-and-comer in the civil rights movement, as well as the protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. After taking a post at Tuscaloosa’s First African Baptist Church, Rogers began laying the groundwork for the city’s own civil rights movement. In the summer of 1964, the struggle for equality in Tuscaloosa resulted in the integration of the city’s public facilities, a march on the county courthouse, a bloody battle between police and protesters, confrontations with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a bus boycott, and the near-accidental-lynching of movie star Jack Palance. Relying heavily on new firsthand accounts and personal interviews, newspapers, previously classified documents, and archival research, Hollars’s in-depth reporting reveals the courage and conviction of a town, its university, and the people who call it home.

An account of the events surrounding court-ordered desegregation which focuses on the historic stand of Governor George Wallace in the school doorway, the death of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers, and President Kennedy's policies which changed the Democratic Party for thirty years.

From the daughter of one of America's most virulent segregationists, a memoir that reckons with her father George Wallace's legacy of hate--and illuminates her journey towards redemption. Peggy Wallace Kennedy has been widely hailed as the “symbol of racial reconciliation” (Washington Post). In the summer of 1963, though, she was just a young girl watching her father stand in a schoolhouse door as he tried to block two African-American students from entering the University of Alabama. This man, former governor of Alabama and presidential candidate George Wallace, was notorious for his hateful rhetoric and his political stunts. But he was also a larger-than-life father to young Peggy, who was taught to smile, sit straight, and not speak up as her father took to the political stage. At the end of his life, Wallace came to renounce his views, although he could never attempt to fully repair the damage he caused. But Peggy, after her own political awakening, dedicated her life to spreading the new Wallace message--one of peace and compassion. In this powerful new memoir, Peggy looks back on the politics of her youth and attempts to reconcile her adored father with the man who coined the phrase “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.” Timely and timeless, The Broken Road speaks to change, atonement, activism, and racial reconciliation.

Combining biography with regional and national history, Dan T. Carter chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of George Wallace, a populist who abandoned his ideals to become a national symbol of racism, and later begged for forgiveness. In The Politics of Rage, Carter argues persuasively that the four-time Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate helped to establish the conservative political movement that put Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1980 and gave Newt Gingrich and the Republicans control of Congress in 1994. In this second edition, Carter updates Wallace’s story with a look at the politician’s death and the nation’s reaction to it and gives a summary of his own sense of the legacy of “the most important loser in twentieth-century American politics.”

In the tradition of A Civil Action—this true story of a North Carolina outdoorsman who teams up with his Appalachian neighbors to save treasured land from being destroyed will “make you want to head for the mountains” (Raleigh News & Observer). LIVING ALONE IN HIS WOODED MOUNTAIN RETREAT, Jay Leutze gets a call from a whip-smart fourteen-year-old, Ashley Cook, and her aunt, Ollie Cox, who say a local mining company is intent on tearing down Belview Mountain, the towering peak above their house. Ashley and her family, who live in a little spot known locally as Dog Town, are “mountain people,” with a way of life and speech unique to their home high in the Appalachians. They suspect the mining company is violating North Carolina’s mining law, and they want Jay, a nonpracticing attorney, to stop the destruction of the mountain. Jay, a devoted naturalist and fisherman, quickly decides to join their cause. So begins the epic quest of “the Dog Town Bunch,” a battle that involves fiery public hearings, clandestine surveillance of the mine operator’s highly questionable activities, ferocious pressure on public officials, and high-stakes legal brinksmanship in the North Carolina court system. Jay helps assemble a talented group of environmental lawyers to contend with the well-funded attorneys protecting the mining company’s plan to dynamite Belview Mountain, which happens to sit next to the famous Appalachian Trail, the 2,184- mile national park that stretches from Maine to Georgia. As the mining company continues to level the forest and erect the gigantic crushing plant on the site, Jay’s group searches frantically for a way to stop an act of environmental desecration that will destroy a fragile wild place and mar the Appalachian Trail forever.

In this heartfelt tale about enduring hope amid the suffering of the Great Depression, Sean Dietrich—also known as Sean of the South—weaves together a tale featuring a cast of characters ranging from a child preacher, a teenage healer, and two migrant workers who give everything they have for their chosen family. When fifteen-year-old Marigold becomes pregnant during the Great Depression, she is rejected by her family and forced to fend for herself. She is arrested while trying to steal food and loses her baby in the forest, turning her whole world upside down. She’s even more distraught upon discovering she has an inexplicable power to heal, making her a sought-after local legend. Meanwhile, middle-aged migrant workers Vern and Paul discover a violet-eyed baby abandoned in the woods and take it upon themselves to care for her. The men continue their search for work and soon pair up with a poverty-stricken widow, plus her two children, and the misfit family begins taking care of each other. As survival brings this chosen family together, a young boy finds himself without a friend to his name as the dust storms rage across Kansas. Fourteen-year-old Coot, a child preacher, is on the run from his abusive tent-revival pastor father with thousands of stolen dollars—and the only thing he’s sure of is that Mobile, Alabama, is his destination. In a sweeping saga with a looming second world war, these stories intertwine in surprising ways, reminding us that when the dust clears, we can still see the stars. Stand-alone Southern historical fiction set during the Great Depression Book length: approximately 98,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs Also by Sean Dietrich: The Incredible Winston Browne