Diane McWhorter. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 701 pp. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-684-80747-8. Reviewed by Derek Catsam Published on H-South (November, 2002) "Bombingham" Revisited does not reach the heights these books scaled de‐ This is a book with epic designs. Winner of spite their shortcomings. the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, widely lav‐ McWhorter is a native Birminghamian, and ished with praise in reviews, a New York Times that fact is salient to her story both in its unravel‐ bestseller, Diane McWhorter's 701-page tome, ing and in its content. Her prodigal daughter's sta‐ Carry Me Home, is equal parts work of history, in‐ tus gives McWhorter an insider's perspective, but vestigative journalism, and memoir. This very this viewpoint can also be grating in its solipsism. epicness, this scale, this ambition, provides the Her family still lives in Birmingham, and as we book both its greatest strengths, of which there soon see, they play a role in this story, albeit per‐ are many, and its greatest weaknesses, which are haps not as important a role as she thinks they do. also noteworthy. Its grandeur alone will earn it a She now resides in New York where she is a jour‐ place amidst the civil rights literature of this era, nalist and freelancer who contributes regularly to especially among general readers who like their USA Today and the New York Times and whose history to be gripping, grand, purple and some‐ work has appeared in numerous magazines and times a bit overwrought. Given that the original newspapers. This is her frst book, and as frst manuscript was three times the length of the fn‐ books go, one can't help but admire her reach ished product, one both wonders what ended up even if it often exceeds her grasp. in the dustbin and appreciates the judicious touch Broadly speaking, this is the story of race rela‐ of her editor. Other reviewers have mentioned J. tions in the American city where race relations Anthony Lucas and Taylor Branch as models for were most contentious. Her telling stretches from this book, and those examples seem ftting, as the end of the 1930s through to 1963, when Birm‐ they too were similarly ambitious and in impor‐ ingham took center stage in the revolving back‐ tant ways fawed. Carry Me Home nonetheless drop of locales that had provided the setting for the most dramatic events in the struggle for racial H-Net Reviews equality. Her epilogue takes the story from 1963 that should have been excised. Readers interested through the 1990s. Because of the recent resolu‐ in a more successful attempt to weave a personal tions to the Birmingham church bombing case story into larger civil rights events should take a that provides McWhorter with her preface, her look at Mary Winstead's newly published Back to study of Birmingham's troubled past, a past that Mississippi.[2] earned the city the sobriquet "America's Johannes‐ McWhorter has been lauded for her writing burg," seems especially timely. style, and she writes well. Except for when she Despite what some reviewers might want to doesn't. As the book progresses, she develops a believe and have tried to convey, much of this particularly noisome habit. Every few para‐ narrative is not entirely fresh. From an historian's graphs, she inserts section breaks. In a long book viewpoint, Glenn Eskew's But For Birmingham such as this one, periodic breaks are important, as has not only told this story, but has done so with they can allow for transitions within a chapter an analytic and contextual depth that McWhorter, that tries to cover a range of themes and ideas for all her verbiage, can not match. Similarly, an‐ and plotlines. Many of McWhorter's section other recent book, Andrew Manis's A Fire You breaks do not do this. Instead, they seem to take Can't Put Out, has explored Reverend Fred Shut‐ the place of transitional sentences and segues. tlesworth's estimable role in Birmingham with Chapter 20, which is fourteen pages long, contains sympathy and depth. S. Jonathan Bass's Blessed a dozen such breaks. The ten pages in chapter 26 Are the Peacemakers has recently provided us contain an average of a section break a page. This with the most insightful treatment of Martin is too much--and these chapters are representa‐ Luther King's letter from the Birmingham jail.[1] tive, with some being even more excessive. It is Others have admirably addressed other impor‐ hard to tell if these are places where she hastily tant aspects of Birmingham's and Alabama's past cut her colossal original manuscript, if she is un‐ that McWhorter reiterates without adding a great willing or unable to write transitional paragraphs, deal. But because of its comprehensiveness, even or if she does not trust her audience to be able to when Carry Me Home represents old wine in new draw out the themes she is exploring. None of skins, it comes from a fruitful vine. these possibilities is especially appealing. By far the least useful element of the book is Furthermore, for all of the grandness of scale McWhorter's inclusion of her family's story as of Carry Me Home, it sometimes gets bogged what she calls a "metaphor" for Birmingham's his‐ down in detail. Historians constantly hear about tory. Birmingham does not need metaphors. It the telling use of little observations that pepper certainly does not need gratuitous and self-indul‐ the works of journalists. And it is true that many gent reflections on the author's past to illustrate historians could afford to learn from nonfiction why that past matters, why Birmingham was or writers who publish for readers outside of the was not, as her subtitle indicates, "the climactic academy and their use of anecdote and scene set‐ battle of the civil rights revolution." The Birming‐ ting. But there is something to be said for econo‐ ham story is bigger than any of its main partici‐ my of language. All details are not equally valu‐ pants, never mind being bigger than a family able, and when McWhorter mines every quota‐ whose connections to the events of the age were tion, describes every facial trait, blurts out every peripheral at most. Just as a man running a ancillary fact, it becomes difficult to discern what marathon has no need for a treadmill, the Birm‐ is important as opposed to what is merely inter‐ ingham story hardly has need for an overarching esting. metaphor. This is an ill-considered affectation 2 H-Net Reviews These qualms aside, and they are not insub‐ not try to keep race front and center, but since stantial, especially given the gushing response her focus is so clearly on white Birmingham and this book received in much of the popular press, its Byzantine inner workings, we sometimes lose McWhorter does contribute a great deal. She has sight of what social historians might call the agen‐ told (or re-told) a story that weaves together a cy of black characters. McWhorter admires the number of the important themes of the civil rights civil rights workers, and she clearly believes that movement, viewing them through the lens of Fred Shuttlesworth and the other locals struggling Birmingham's history as well as its political and to make a go of a movement for social justice in social environment. The standard cast of charac‐ perhaps the least receptive city in America for ters appears as do literally hundreds of others. such a movement are heroes, but they still seem Fred Shuttlesworth and Jim Bevel, Bull Connor to revolve around the constellation of white Birm‐ and George Wallace and John Patterson, the ingham throughout the book rather than the oth‐ Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. (whom er way around. In a sense this would be fne-- McWhorter seems to try to go out of her way to white supremacy, white resistance, white politics slight at every opportunity, apparently to try to in the Jim Crow South, these are all fertile regions debunk a mythology that many historians have for exploration and much remains to be done on been addressing for several years now) and Gary them. But this is not the book that McWhorter or Thomas Rowe, the Klansman and FBI informant. Simon & Schuster have presented her as having And appropriately, as it marks the climax and in written. There is thus a dissonance here that is many ways the raison d'etre of her book, we meet unsatisfying for those of us who know the story the four victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist she tells, and who were looking for more (though Church bombing, Addie Mae Collins, Denise Mc‐ in some ways, perhaps, also less). Nair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, as An example of this comes with her sections well as "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss and Bobby on the Freedom Rides. In some ways, her han‐ Frank Cherry, two of the Klansmen responsible dling of this epochal movement, which still and for that atrocity from which the segregationists of inexplicably has not received full historical treat‐ Birmingham would never fully recover their fef‐ ment, embodies her strengths and weaknesses.[3] dom. McWhorter begins the book with the story Her detail is marvelous, if excessive. Future schol‐ of the church bombing and ends it with some fne ars of the Freedom Rides will have to consider investigative work bringing the perpetrators of closely her work on the events in Birmingham.