Foster Dickson's Blog, page 68

SNL takes dead aim at Sweet Home Alabama

As a life-long Alabamian, I’m used to this. From articles in The Onion to the too-close-for-comfort farces in the Borowitz Report, Alabama’s culture and public figures are common targets. What flies here doesn’t even wings elsewhere.

So it didn’t surprise me that Saturday Night Live took dead aim at my home state last week— twice. Once in the opening . . .

. . . and later during the news segment. As a native Alabamian, it didn’t shock me that somebody banned a movie because it had a gay character in it, or that SNL grabbed that up for a snide commentary. It shocked me that we still have drive-in theaters! Who knew?

Filed under: Alabama, Generation X Tagged: Alabama, Beauty and the Beast, drive-in, Jeff Sessions, Saturday Night Live

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #161

Writing-inspired angst is a clear block to the imaginative sparkle we look for on the page. In order to move forward, it’s worth taking a moment to examine writing-identity formation.

from “I Am What I Am: A Prompt to Re-Imagine Writing Identity” by Marissa E. King and Karen Sheriff LeVan, published in Teachers & Writers Magazine in January 2017.

 

Filed under: Education, Teaching, Writing and Editing Tagged: anxiety, editing, High School, Teachers & Writers, teaching, teaching writing, writing

“To thine own self be true.”

In the first act of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” as Laertes is leaving the castle Elsinore to return to France, his father Polonius gives him a whole slew of advice – much of it good, like: keep your ears open and your mouth shut – and he punctuates the short speech with the now-famous lines,

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

I’d been re-reading “Hamlet” in order to teach it this semester, in lieu of teaching “Macbeth,” which is in our textbook, for an eighth time. I thought we’d mix it up a little bit.

“To thine own self be true,” he says. What does that mean? One of the wonderful things about reading Shakespeare, which some readers find more troublesome than wonderful, is that his phrases often have multiple meanings, and “Hamlet” is chock-full of those phrases. The key word here is “true,” which can mean two different things: accurate and correct, or benevolently faithful. To say that a statement is true is one thing, but to say that a lover is true is something else. Which does Shakespeare intend when he has Polonius tell his son to be “true” to himself? It might be both.

However, saying “To thine own self be true” is also not a license to selfishness. To be “true” to one’s self also implies a measure of morality and principles, which Polonius includes in his advice. His statement does not say: to thine own pleasure be true, nor To thine own desires be true. The self is a sum-total of our parts: identity (both public and private) of course, and psyche, but also preferences and desires, principles and beliefs, emotional baggage and defense mechanisms, and more.

Since I’ve finished my book on the Whitehurst Case, and am waiting to begin the editorial work on it, I’ve been reading more than usual, and this idea keeps coming up. Not too long ago, at the suggestion of a friend, I read Randall Jarrell’s The Bat-Poet, a children’s book published near end of his life. I mainly knew Randall Jarrell through his poetry and through his 1953 book of criticism, Poetry and The Age, the title work of which is one of my favorite long essays.

In the story, there is a bat who refuses to behave as other bats do: he likes the sunlight, he observes other animals, and he writes poetry. Of course, the other bats shun him and go on with their conformist ways. So the Bat-Poet proceeds to watch the animals and write his poems, now that he can see clearly in the daylight. His first subjects are ruminations on how it must feel to be those other animals – first a chipmunk, then a mockingbird – but he eventually tries to write about himself.  It takes a while, but he does turn the lens inward, and then he finds himself, his true nature, those aspects of his self that are conformist, those that are not, and those that are connected to the world around him. One 1964 reviewer wrote of the book’s ending:

Since it is the purpose of his poetry to tell them about themselves he cannot be separated from them forever or he would become unreal and shallow.

What the Bat-Poet experiences is something akin to Polonius’ advice to Laertes, and also to another notion that has been around for a long time, longer than Randall Jarrell, even longer than Shakespeare.

“Know thyself” is attributed to the ancient Greek writer Pausanius, who lived more than century before Jesus Christ. It may seem like a misnomer. Doesn’t everyone know himself? No, I don’t think that everyone does. I think that, in many cases, people who believe that they are acting on principle are actually acting on whimsy, on socialization, or on perceived self-interest. I also think that self-analysis is too painful for some people, who can’t handle the emotional repercussions of realizing how flawed they truly are, of how many people they have hurt, and of how deeply unprincipled and contradictory their behavior really is. The human mind relies heavily on both reason and emotion, and the unexamined life offers a range of opportunities for the latter to dominate decision-making.

Whether the message comes from Pausanius in the mid-2nd century BC, or from the character Polonius in the late 17th century, or from Randall Jarrell in the mid-20th century, the idea rings true, especially in an American democracy. If thoughtful principles, depth of interest, and sincere exploration guide your life, then your actions – however they may be regarded by others – will be more cohesive, and hopefully justifiable.

Using myself as an example, though my thinking leans to the political left, I’ve never resented a thoughtful conservative with solid support for his ideas.  In fact, I have great respect for ideas about fiscal conservatism insofar as their implementation doesn’t damage the lives of powerless people. And, to be frank, I have as much disdain for a counter-productive liberal as any Fox News commentator could muster. My principles aren’t about supporting a political team; they’re about being true to what I believe is right.

If more of us in 21st-century America knew ourselves, we wouldn’t be having these problems with divisiveness, because our diversity of beliefs would demand something better than the either-or system of choosing only between Democrats and Republicans, who create diametrically opposed platforms together, who caucus together, and who perpetuate a herd mentality that we citizens have begrudgingly adopted for some ridiculous reason. While we wish for an end to divisiveness, we participate in it freely.

Maybe it’s time we stopped letting the either-ors make the big decisions and started knowing ourselves well enough to be true to something other than just blue or red.

Filed under: North Carolina, Poetry, Reading, Tennessee, The South Tagged: Hamlet, Laertes, Pausanius, Randall Jarrell, The Bat-Poet

In the Arts @ MMFA, March 2

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Filed under: Alabama, Arts, Author Appearances Tagged: Education, In the Arts, MMFA, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, teenagers

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #160

I don’t know how to motivate kids, I don’t think. Some get motivated by what I do and some don’t. If I knew how to do it, I would motivate them all.

– statement made by Taft High School teacher Jerry Patt to NPR’s Ira Glass, published in the “1994” section of Listening to America: Twenty-Five Years in the Life of a Nation, as heard on National Public Radio, edited by Linda Wertheimer

Filed under: Education, Schools, Teaching, Writing and Editing Tagged: classroom management, editing, High School, motivation, teaching, writing

Falling short.

As Betsy DeVos settles into her new office at the Department of Education, she has some major issues to contend with, other than her complete lack of experience. Setting aside the apocalyptic narrative about American children falling behind other nations, and the boogeyman narrative about “bad teachers” who are causing the problems, DeVos will need a remedy for a seldom-discussed bleak reality: teacher shortages. Just a quick search of the term reveals news reports from this month about severe shortages in Florida, South Carolina, California, and Washington. In my home state of Alabama, a shortage of that magnitude may be coming. Last April, a guest editorial published by al.com explained that “the number of students entering teaching programs in Alabama colleges and universities had dropped 45 percent since 2008.”

The problem is morale. In the years since the passage of No Child Left Behind, in 2001, the obsession with testing has been a bane for classroom teachers, who are trying desperately to appease politicians and administrators who demand higher scores. In the years since, classroom teachers have had extra layers of pressure from accountability measures that threaten their job security if those scores don’t come up. And these new requirements came during and immediately after the Great Recession, which resulted in staff reductions, supply funding decreases, and benefits cuts. Finally, even more pressure has been put on by media portrayals about “failing” education systems – from NBC’s Education Nation segments to the film “Waiting for Superman” – and we’ve got an often-maligned career field that fewer people want to enter. (Last November, Alabama’s governor even said publicly that our education system “sucks,” which didn’t sit too well with teachers and, I’m sure, didn’t make anyone want to become one.)

Setting aside the political buzzwords for pretend solutions – school choice, vouchers, accountability – I see myriad issues that need to be addressed on the classroom level first. First, America’s school systems need to hire tens of thousands of teachers to reduce class sizes to levels that are optimal for learning. Once we’re all staffed up, teachers should be supplied with what we need to work effectively: facilities, supplies, resources, and technology. (We hear a lot about “America’s crumbling infrastructure”— just take a look at some of our public schools.) After that is done, teachers should be given time to work with students under those optimal conditions, before higher-ups really look hard at test scores again. If the daily working conditions for teachers improve, we’ll have more people willing to be, and remain, teachers.

Though morale is a big part of the problem, public relations-style programs that try to finesse people into becoming teachers won’t work. Those programs might convince some people to major in education in college and to seek jobs in the teaching field, but once they enter actual classrooms . . . they’ll see what their real working conditions are. Facing thirty years of it, many of those young teachers will move to other occupations. It can’t be smoke and mirrors achieved by PSAs. It has got to be a real, substantive change in the daily realities.

Last May, in a post called “Tiny Glimmers of Hope,” I referenced a then-recent proclamation by Gov. Bentley about “Grow Our Own,” a joint program of the Alabama Education association and Future Teachers of America to recruit young people to the teaching profession. The proclamation ends by saying that it:

encourages local boards of education and all educational organizations statewide to support these special programs through activities that demonstrate the true importance of the teaching profession and the opportunities they provide for students to achieve personal and professional success.

I agree 100% about the “true importance of the teaching profession.” We are told by politicians and administrators to value and to teach every child, and to consider that any of them could be the next Steve Jobs, the next Martin Luther King, Jr., or the next Maya Angelou. So, my question becomes, why would we put one of those future geniuses or leaders in an overcrowded classroom with inadequate resources and a frustrated instructor?

I’m not ignorant to the amount of political will that it would require to raise taxes and fund schools adequately. People don’t like tax increases, even for schools, especially people who don’t have school-age children, but sacrifices will be necessary if we want to improve our schools. And who is more worthy of our sacrifices than our children? Teachers know that, because we do it every day, and if we want more teachers, then some people who aren’t teachers are going to have make some sacrifices, too.

Filed under: Education, Local Issues, Schools, Teaching, The Deep South Tagged: Alabama, Education, Grow Our Own, teacher shortage, teaching

Alabamiana: Wedowee, 1994

[image error]Most of us know from our high school American history classes that the Brown v. Board decision of 1954 ordered an end to segregation in schools. The ruling effectively reversed the longstanding precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson, from 1891, which established the legal-though-unjust “separate but equal” rule. But, in the South, the process of accomplishing Brown‘s herculean edict would meander along through the rest of the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s. What could loosely be called integration occurred in the South mainly during the 1970s and 1980s, even though the tenuous balance was counteracted heavily by “white flight” from public schools and the creation of private schools and academies.

Forty years after Brown v. Board, though, some measure of “separate” still existed. My millennial students find it strange when I tell them that, back in 1980s and ’90s, some public schools in the South used to have two separate prom or homecoming courts: one white, one black. This now-odd arrangement was actually an effort at being conciliatory, and even progressive, about racially integrated schools: everyone had a chance. Having been in high school during that time, I remember it being accepted as such, by students and families and schools alike.

However, in 1994, in the small and otherwise insignificant Alabama town of Wedowee – the county seat of rural Randolph County, with a population that hovers around 800 – this kind of arrangement provided the backdrop for one scene to go horribly wrong. According to New York Times coverage from March 1994, Wedowee High School’s principal Hulond Humphries was well known for maintaining de facto segregation long past its prime:

Mr. Humphries has been principal of Randolph County High for 25 years but he has not exactly been a champion of integration. In a 1989 report by the Civil Rights Office of the U.S. Department of Education, he was criticized for maintaining disciplinary standards that resulted in “disparate treatment of black and white students,” and for allowing students to be transported in buses that were segregated by race.

And he had let his school’s juniors and seniors know, at an assembly in February 1994, that he intended to enforce a kind of segregation at the prom, too, saying “that if any students were planning to take dates of a different race to the prom, there would be no prom.”

Revonda Bowen, then a student at the school, took exception with the pronouncement. Bowen was of mixed race and wanted to know from Humphries who she was allowed to go with.

According to Ms. Bowen and several other students who attended the assembly, Mr. Humphries replied: “That’s a problem, Revonda. Your mom and daddy made a mistake, having a mixed-race child.” The students said he added that he was trying to prevent others from making the same mistake.

And right there, the proverbial stuff hit the fan. In 1994, forty years after Brown and thirty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a principal in an American high school effectively called a mixed-race student a “mistake” in front of everyone. Even the sensational tabloid rag People covered the story:

Humphries, 56, retracted his prom ultimatum the next day and issued a statement explaining his remarks as prompted by concern over “the risk of disorder” at the dance. But many Wedowee residents—especially African-Americans—demanded that the part-time hog farmer and father of two either step down or be fired. He was suspended with pay for two weeks, but then the school board reinstated him without a public hearing. That prompted some parents, including Revonda’s, to yank their children out of the high school and temporarily enroll them in “freedom schools” organized by two civil rights groups and held in two local African-American churches. Even so, Revonda and her boyfriend, Chris Brown, 19, went to the prom on April 23. The only mixed-race couple to show up, they were treated politely, she says, but were shocked when the crowd gave Humphries a loud ovation when he made his official entrance.

By late summer 1994, the tensions had grown to small-town enormity. In August, The New York Times was again reporting from Wedowee because someone had set fire to the high school. They weren’t 100% sure that the fire and Humphries’ remarks were linked, but it was likely, officials said. After those controversial remarks, there was also “a campaign by black parents to have Mr. Humphries removed.”

The Los Angeles Times was also reporting on the small Alabama town in mid-August, and had this say:

To see how drastically things have changed one needs only note the FBI agents guarding the home of a local mixed-race girl because of threats on her family. Or hear the state fire marshal declare that arsonists set the fire that gutted the local high school last Saturday. Or the former principal deny that he participated in the weekend beating of a black television news cameraman.

Less sensational but possibly more profound is the hint of deeper, societal change. At the heart of the controversy that has rocked Wedowee (pronounced we-DOW-wee) for the last six months is that quintessential Southern bugaboo, race-mixing, and one man’s alleged obsession with suppressing it.

By the spring of 1995, the story was gracing the pages of Rolling Stone and of the Los Angeles Times again. The Rolling Stone coverage, which is substantial in its scene-setting, tells us how the story panned out, after the fire:

This February – one year after RCHS principal Hulond Humphries was almost universally dismissed by the national press as a toothless anachronism, a throwback to a racist era long gone – Humphries was awarded the newly created job of consultant to the school board and put in charge of rebuilding the school. Lionized in some quarters for having vanquished the interfering “outsiders,” Humphries is even considering running for Randolph County schools superintendent next year. Some folks think he can win.

As stunned blacks keep a cold eye on the man they claim humiliated and abused black students for a quarter of a century, they confront a school board that has spent nearly $200,000 defending him. The Justice Department, apparently determined to oust Humphries last spring, has grown curiously compliant in the wake of last November’s elections. The FBI, meanwhile, is unwilling to identify a suspect in the arson case for fear it will spark a new spasm of anger. Or so the rumor goes.

The LA Times then relayed the news that no one wanted to hear: the son of local black minister was arrested by the FBI for setting fire to the high school. The young man’s father was one of the founders of those “freedom schools.” Later that fall, however, in October 1995, he was acquitted by a federal jury, though his father was still insistent that the charges had been based on retribution, not on any notions of justice.

As the ordeal in Wedowee faded into time, Hulond Humphries was far from vilified for his remarks and actions. In July 1997, Humphries was sworn in as Randolph County’s superintendent, much to the chagrin of local blacks and many national media outlets. He had run unopposed.

As for Revonda Bowen, the girl he called a “mistake” in front of her classmates, she tried to move on but still went through her own struggles, mostly of a more personal nature. She eventually wrote a book titled No Mistakes, No More Tears, which was published by AuthorHouse in 2005.

Living in Alabama, I remember this vitriolic controversy well, and I also remember wondering back then if Alabama would ever stop gleaning the national spotlight for questionable acts committed by people in leadership positions. (That was twenty-two years ago, and we’re still not done with those habits.) I also remember wondering why anyone cared what happened in Wedowee, Alabama. I didn’t, particularly. Though now I understand more thoroughly how these situations are a microcosm for something much larger. Martin Luther King, Jr. said famously, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and these events in a small Southern town and the vehement response to them were indicative of that idea.

As we near the end of Black History Month, this two-decade-old story from an Alabama small town reminds us that, when black people and white people are polarized, there are people stuck in the middle. The long-standing dichotomy  – call it “the color line” – doesn’t work, and hasn’t ever worked.

For any news coverage that highlighted those who supported segregation, and though we recognize Revonda Bowen as most obviously caught in the middle,  what about her friends, her boyfriend, and the teachers and students who wanted their integrated high school to be truly integrated? Bowen may have been the symbol, the bell-weather, the harbinger of race relations, but she was not the only one caught in the middle. And to be frank, when any leader forces us to choose sides, everyone loses when the demonizing begins.

Filed under: Alabama, Civil Rights, Generation X, Multiculturalism, Race, Schools, The Deep South Tagged: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, Alabama, hulond humphries, mixed, Race, Revonda Bowen, wedowee

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #159

Aristotle was banned by the Church, I think because he was so discouraging. Some sort of vital instinct, down under the superficial intolerance and stupidity, felt the menace of logic-chopping, of all this cutting up, rationalizing and dissecting of reality. Not but what a man can dig a lot of acute sense out of Aristotle if he pick out what suits him in a given case or a given moment.

Nothing is, without efficient cause. Rationalizing or rather trying to rationalize the prerational is poor fishing.

– from Chapter Four, “Totalitarian,” in Guide to Kulchur by Ezra Pound

Filed under: Critical Thinking, Teaching, Writing and Editing Tagged: Aristotle, Church, cultural criticism, editing, Ezra Pound, religion, teaching, writing

Southern Movie #20: “Sounder”

In honor of Black History Month, the Southern Movie this time is 1972’s “Sounder,” starring Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson as sharecroppers Nathan and Rebecca Morgan. The Morgans live and farm, with their three children, in Louisiana during the Great Depression. The movie is an adaptation of the Newbery-winning novel of the same name, written by William H. Armstrong, and though the title comes from the name of the family dog, his role in the film’s story is minimal. It is really about the family’s oldest son, David Lee Morgan, who we follow all the way through.

“Sounder” begins one evening at dusk, when father Nathan and son David Lee are heading off to hunt, with Sounder of course. After the brief credits roll, it is night, and Nathan and David Lee are after a raccoon. Sounder is running and braying, and they are trying to keep up. Although Sounder trees the raccoon, Nathan shoots and misses, and it gets away. The pair go hone empty-handed, and we soon find out through Nathan’s chagrin that it will mean another night of hunger for his family. However, giving up is not an option; as the two call it a night and head in the house, David Lee repeats back to his father what he has always been told: “You lose some of the time what you always go after, but you lose all the time what you don’t go after!”

The family is living in real poverty, so this lesson is particularly appropriate. The children are put to bed with little to eat, and after the house is quiet, Nathan sneaks out. We find out where he went when the sun comes up and there is food to eat, and the day begins happily for the family, though warily for Nathan’s wife Rebecca: Where did that food come from? 

The day continues happily as the family goes to a community baseball game, where Nathan is the star pitcher.The team wins, and on their way home, walking and laughing and singing with friend Ike (played by blues great Taj Mahal), life is good— that is, until they get home.

As the Morgans approach the edge of their place, Sounder bolts for the house, braying wildly! And we quickly find out why. There are three white men standing out front, amd one of them is the sheriff ( played by James Best, who was well known in the 1980s as zany ne’er-do-well Roscoe P. Coltrane in “The Dukes of Hazzard”). The men have come to take Nathan to jail for stealing food from a local store.

Now, Rebecca and David Lee must step up, since Nathan sits behind bars, awaiting trial. Rather than sitting around, Rebecca charges into the very store where Nathan stole the food and uses her last iota of credit to purchase the goods to bake him his favorite kind of cake! Though all involved recognize how badly the family needs the man of the house to operate their small farm, Nathan gets convicted and sent to a prison camp far from where the family lives— only they aren’t told where. It takes the help of friendly white lady, Mrs. Boatwright, who Rebecca does laundry for, to finagle her way past the stolid sheriff and into his file cabinet for information.

In their efforts not to let the sheriff know that they know where Nathan is being held, Rebecca sends David Lee to visit his father, rather than going herself. The crisis has meant that it is time for David Lee Morgan to man up and face the world by himself. He takes to the woods alone, heading in the direction of the prison camp.

On his way, David Lee meets the woman who will become his teacher. Never has David Lee known a black woman who lives alone in such a nice house and who owns books! But he cannot stay. He has to move on. Despite being enthralled with the idea of being free from the cyclical poverty that dominates his life, David must find his father.

Once he arrives the prison camp, David Lee tries to speak to the men through the fence, but they tell him that no one named Nathan Morgan is there. The boy is shocked: No, he has to be!  However, he is quickly shooed, first by the inmates then by a guard, and is forced to run away without seeing his father. David Lee’s difficult journey is fruitless.

Though it is David Lee’s journey back home that makes all the difference. He returns home a young man who has encountered new ideas, including what it means to be educated. David Lee already understood the realities of rural poverty, of hard work, and of family, but now he also understands opportunity.

Realizing that must forge ahead without Nathan, Rebecca and her children get to work on planting a crop, and we watch them do what anyone would have doubted was possible. In the Morgans’ world, there is no standing around, no pouting, no feeling sorry for one’s self. The work must get done, if there is to be a harvest at all.

As the end of the film approaches, after David Lee’s journey and after the hard work of raising the crop is complete, the Morgans see a man coming up the road, stumbling, barely moving like a man at all. As he nears, they realize it is Nathan! However, he is on crutches and barely able to support his own weight. In the prison where he was held, he injured his back, and now worthless as a laborer, he has been released early. The family is reunited, but everything has changed.

Now, Nathan is not the man he once was, and David Lee has had to become a man in his father’s absence. Nathan tries, when he returns, to participate in the work of the farm, but is just not able. And, though his family now needs him very much, David Lee gets a letter from the teacher who he met on his journey, encouraging him to come to school if he can. And though David Lee is initially resistant, preferring to stay on and help his family, Nathan understands what is at stake. His son must take this opportunity to go and learn, even though it means that he will have to move away.

For films centered on African American subjects, the early 1970s was the heyday of blaxploitation. TCM’s webpage for “Sounder” explains:

During a time when “Blaxploitation” films like Shaft (1971) and Superfly (1972) were gaining popularity, Sounder (1972) (named after the family dog in the film), was a breath of fresh air for those looking for a worthwhile movie going experience for the entire family.

“Sounder” is no less candid about racial injustice, but its treatment stands in real contrast to blaxploitation films. Where Shaft and Superfly  portrayed then-current characters whose lives were steeped in urbanity and crime, Nathan Morgan lives in a different time, displays a different kind of strength, and finds a different solace. He is a steady family man, married with children, of solid moral character, and whose labors are not enough to make ends meet. Nathan Morgan is definitely no Dolemite.

As a document of the American South, “Sounder” offered some hard truths about the region’s past for a post-Civil Rights audience to engage: Why does a hard-working man have trouble feeding his family? Why won’t the white sheriff tell a black family where their husband and father is incarcerated? Why is education so hard to attain for black children? These and other matters are put on display, simply and clearly, for general audiences. (The novel, Sounder, is, after all, for younger readers.) In this film, we see the near-hopeless oppression that Depression-era African Americans faced in the South, a place where they had to go into debt with local stores to eat, where they got no consideration from law enforcement or the courts, but where they nonetheless tried to lead decent lives that included love, family, fun, and work.

In David Lee Morgan, we see hope for African Americans in South, just as we sympathize with his real-world predicament. Though David Lee recognizes the value of education, he also recognizes that no school exists near his home. With his father crippled, he would have to abandon those who need him immediately in order to pursue a greater good whose benefits will come later in his life.

Sounder: The Anti-Blaxploitation Film

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Ritt#ref1196870

 

Filed under: Film/Movies, Louisiana, Social Justice, The Deep South Tagged: Cicely Tyson, film, Lousiana, movie, Paul Winfield, sharecropper, Sounder, Southern movie of the month

#WhitmanAlabama

Last Sunday, February 12, al.com’s Michelle Holmes wrote up “Whitman, Alabama,” which she describes in the open paragraph as: “a new American documentary series with a big goal: bridging the gap between people.” Take a look:

Filed under: Alabama, Poetry, The Deep South, Voting Tagged: Alabama, divisiveness, unity, video, walt whitman, Whitman