After a pioneering career with the Birmingham Police Department and retirement as a district captain, TK Thorne has grown to become a major Alabama writer across multiple genres.
She has two biblical / historical novels, “Angels at the Gate,” set in the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah, and “Noah’s Wife,” and a strange but successful mystery / fantasy novel, “House of the Rose,” which at the foot of the volcano.
Thorne published “Last Chance for Justice” in 2013, a study of the successful, if belated, trial of the assassins of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
This work “Behind the Magic Curtain” is another exploration these days. In his account of the Birmingham of the 1960s, which Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times described as “fragmented by the emotional dynamite of racism, reinforced by the whip, the razor, the pistol, the bomb, the torch, the club, the knife, the mob, the police and many branches of the state apparatus ”could also be seen as a continuation of“ Angels at the Gate ”.
In any case, Thorne has a solid premise. We all know a great deal about the major events of the civil rights era and know the major players – Bull Connor and the KKK on the one hand and the Revs. Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King Jr., on the other hand.
Thorne wants to shed some light on the many, many others who were involved. Diane McWhorter embarked on a similar project in her brilliant study Carry Me Home, but this book was permeated with a fear that McWhorter’s friends and family might have been in some way associated with the clan or other unsavory elements.
Thorne’s investigation here is much more positive. Many whites helped promote racial justice in small ways, and their names remain unknown.
Maybe they were afraid of retribution at the time, or they were just plain humble and shy and avoiding the limelight.
There is a well-known historical line in Magic Curtain: the attacks on Freedom Riders, the work to ensure fair treatment of downtown businesses, the many bombings to intimidate black leaders, royal marches and then the children’s marches, King in the Birmingham Prison who have favourited Dogs and Hoses, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
All the while, people kept meeting, mostly in secret, to find the best way to go. Many were brave and kindhearted people with nothing to gain and much to lose, most notably the lawyer Chuck Morgan.
Businesspeople, frustrated with the city’s inability to grow and prosper, as it did in Atlanta and elsewhere, saw integration as inevitable, though some were segregated at heart. Sidney Smyer, a real estate mogul, was best represented.
One of the heroes of the Jewish community was Abe Berkowitz, who saw integration not as a pragmatic issue but as a moral imperative. Several members of the Unitarian community deserve special praise.
Vincent Townsend, editor of the Birmingham News, understood the steps to justice that needed to be taken but couldn’t bear to give negative news about his beloved Birmingham the importance it deserved. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in “The Race Beat” make this sadly clear.
The story of Tom Lankford, a reporter for Birmingham News, plays a big role here and is ambiguous. Absolutely loyal to Townsend, at a time when wiretapping and hiding microphones were still legal, he collected information about the Klan, Bull Connor and the police, but also about civil rights activists.
His ethics, as Lankford himself admits, were grim.
As Thorne makes it honestly and painfully clear, this was not a black and white image, but 20 shades of gray.
Don Noble’s latest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors.
“Behind the magic curtain: secrets, spies and unsung white allies of the Civil Rights Days in Birmingham”
Author: TK Thorne
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Pages: 354
Price: $ 28.95 (Hardcover)
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