Leaving Birmingham: Notes of a Native Son

by Paul Hemphill

Birmingham's history of racial violence and bigotry is the centerpiece of this intense and affecting memoir about family, society, and politics in a city still haunted by its notorious past.

In 1963, Birmingham was the scene of some of the worst racial violence of the civil rights era. Police commissioner "Bull" Connor loosed dogs and turned fire hoses on black demonstrators; four young girls at Sunday school were killed when a bomb exploded in a black church; and Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his famous letter from the Birmingham jail, defending his activism to fellow ministers. Birmingham native Paul Hemphill, disillusioned with his hometown, had left home to pursue a journalistic career, so he witnessed these historic events with the rest of the world through newspaper and television reports. "That grim old steel town," he writes, "was the most blatantly segregated city of its size in the United States of America, and most of us regarded it with the same morbid fascination that causes us to slow down and gawk at a bloody wreck on the highway." Thirty years later, Hemphill returned to Birmingham to explore the depths of change that had taken place in the decades since the violence. In this powerful memoir, he interweaves his own autobiography with the history of the city and the stories of two very different Birmingham a wealthy white matron and the pastor of the city's largest black church. As he struggles to come to terms with his own conflicting feelings toward his father's attitudes, Hemphill finds ironic justice in the integration of his childhood neighborhood and a visit with the black family who moved into his family's former home.

Genres: History, Biography, Memoir, Journalism

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Paul James Hemphill was an American journalist and author who wrote extensively about often-overlooked topics in the Southern United States such as country music, evangelism, football, stock car racing and the blue collar people he met on his journeys around the South.

Reviews

[Elizabeth Sulzby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Hemphill's Leaving Birmingham was recommended to me by historian and professor Bill Nicholas from Birmingham-Southern College. Every bit of this book is full of Birmingham history, even when native son Paul Hemphill is away from Birmingham. This book also has many other people's stories, particularly Rev. Rutland, a flaming wonderful Liberal Methodist Minister, long before the dog days of Bull Connor. In fact, Rutland was Connor's minister at Woodlawn Methodist and chewed him out regularly. He stood up to him on bloody Mother's Day when Connor refused to send police to the bus station to meet the Freedom Riders, in spite of knowing one of their buses had been burned in Anniston, Alabama. Connor gave the rednecks and KKK 15 minutes of beating time with the Freedom Riders before he let his police step in. His famous excuse was that "it was Mother's Day" and the boys were all at home with their mothers. I was on the street the second day of the Children's March when Connor had his police sic the police dogs on young children and teenagers and set them flying with the force of the water cannons. It was horrible. Hemphill also tells much of the story of Birmingham-Southern College, known as "That Hotbed of Liberals" and how liberals were attacked. His description of industry town Birmingham fits that told to me by my father, whose relatives were among the first real estate company in the city and whose uncle established and published in the Alabama Historical Association. Birmingham was not a "southern" town, in the sense of having been Antebellum, Plantation centered; instead, it was built upon the coal and iron ore and the mills that hired the poor white and black citizens, in their segregated parts of town; and the mill owners and other moneyed interests who lived "Over the Mountain," as in Red Mountain where the ore can still be seen in the slash cut by the highway leading by the statue of ironwrangler and god Vulcan. This book has stories of dating, boyhood games and fights, father-son love and rivalry. Most of all it brings to life the radical rascism and segregation that Birmingham clung to while giving Atlanta the rights to become an integrated and thriving city over the years.

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was extremely interesting to me, being a native of Birmingham several generations behind the civil rights movement. It was a good read till I got to the end, then he got all choppy, like he didn't know how to end it and just threw in the last bits of information he had to make it look like he finished, but he never really did.
Anyway, I'm extremely dissapointed in my schooling on the history that went on right here where I grew up. We learned VERY little about the civil rights struggles and practically nothing in detail. I'm grateful for the book for that, but otherwise the author seemed way too bitter about the Over-the-Mountain communities. I understand the problems "white flight" has caused for downtown B'ham, but to make out the OTM communities as white communities is wrong. Some of them are more so than others, but Hoover itself has become a melting pot of races. Living there for 2 years recently, I was the ONLY white person in my apartment building. I can't fathom THAT much change has happened since this book was published 15 years ago. But maybe I'm wrong. And maybe, being a graduate of Vestavia, I see things a lot different than the author.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was living in New York City and was a little homesick. I liked reading about places I was familiar with. And, I agree with the author that Birmingham needs a shot in the arm. It still does. I met the author about a year ago and he is super nice.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a native of Birmingham I found this book both interesting and full of memories.

[Kim Sasso]

(For all Hemphill)
I stumbled across Paul Hemphill in the tiny Franklin Ga library back in 2012. The first thing I read was a collection of his newspaper columns. Some of the columns were older than I was, and more than a few were about sports (hardly my favorite subject!)

Something about this work just called to me - no doubt in part because he was a Birrmingham boy, and a contemporary of my Birmingham-bred mother and Alabama born baseball coach father.

At any rate, I fell in literary love and read whatever other books the library had. At some later point I hunted down copies of his books on Nashville and Hank Williams.

Looking him up online I see there are quite a few I have not read yet, including one about trucking that I've simply got to read since I've been a trucker myself these past few years.

I wonder now if my favorite southern essayist, Rick Bragg, was influenced by Hemphill. Perhaps I should have a reading marathon and "invite" them both.

All "Read" Hemphill are circa 2012
* not marking all the books read, because the Goodreads entries appear to be copied from ebay listings*
Posted 2026

[Mark Ritter · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re not from Birmingham or have lived here for a bit to know the history, not suggested. However, if you are, it’s a very good read. More of a biography than I’d thought or would’ve hoped but the honesty and detail and personal perspective of race relations is very compelling. It was written in 1993 but, unfortunately, is still appropriate almost 30 years later.

[Jerry Grillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably should have won a Pulitzer. An honest memoir from an enlightened son of the South, who also was one hell of a writer.

[Tessa Foreman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an interesting look at what it have must have been like to grow up in a white working class family in Birmingham in the 1950-1960's era. Reading about the author's struggle to understand the racism that took hold of that city and in his own family and the revolution that took place in his own mind as he realized how very wrong it all was, made for a fascinating read. What a struggle it was to continue to love and respect his father, who in all others ways seemed to be a good man, while the man held such a hatred of minorities. Though my own father was not as overtly racist as the author's, he was indeed a racist, and this was a struggle that I too have dealt with over the years. I applaud the author for writing such an honest book, showing both the city and his family as they were, without excuses or justification. In my quest to read and learn about the history of racism in this county, this was another excellent book that I am glad I had the opportunity to read.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about Birmingham,the steel industry and the Civil Rights struggle.