Reforming Alabama: Law and Order and Civil Rights

Alan Grady and Frye Gaillard appear together to discuss their books about Alabama history published by the University of Alabama Press. Mr. Grady is the author of When Good Men Do Nothing: The Assassination of Albert Patterson. On June 18, 1954, former state senator Albert Patterson, the Democratic Party’s nominee for state attorney general, was shot to death as he left his law office in Phoenix City, Alabama. Mr. Patterson had made the cleanup of prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging in Phoenix City his primary campaign promise. Mr. Grady calls this the “trial of the century” for Alabama. Frye Gaillard’s book Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America is about pivotal civil rights events occurring in Alabama including the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail written by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. After discussing their books, the authors took questions from members o close