Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, “The Courthouse Ring,” describes George Sims’ biography of Big Jim Folsom as entitled The Little Man’s Best Friend, while in fact the title is The Little Man’s Big Friend. Gladwell also inaccurately assumes that, with respect to race-based issues, the cultures and histories of Alabama’s 67 counties are the same. Not true.

Wilcox County has a long history of brutal violence inflicted upon African-Americans over much of its history including during the Civil Rights Movement. But 90 miles away Greene County had almost no violence during the Civil Rights Movement.

Accordingly, the story told by Nell Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird about the Jewish Sam Levy staring down the Klan in front of his house is entirely believable. Indeed, the story was likely based on an event which took place in Monroeville as told to her by Nell’s lawyer father who was the model for Atticus Finch. The fact that Leo Frank was lynched in 1915 in Marietta, Georgia, has nothing to do with Monroe County, Alabama.

In my early days traveling as a civil rights lawyer throughout Alabama, I quickly learned that there are major linguistic, accent, political and cultural differences literally county by county, including continguous ones.

All the same, your point about the need for more Southern voices in the national media is spot on.

Looks like you have Word Press. You can add the feed to a widget. Look at Robby Scott Hill’s blog.redlinedocs.com

Not sure I can tell you exactly how to add it in a blog comment. Maybe Robby can via e-mail.

The feed link is just: blog.locustfork.net/feed

When you hit that page, it will give you a longer, actual url to use. It works for me on my iGoogle RSS reader page, but some folks have said in the past they can’t figure it out.

Glad some people in the South, even in Locust Fork, Alabama, are messing around figuring these things out : )

As I wrote back in December, it will be a decade before Alabama catches up with Yew York in terms of technology, race relations and progressive politics.

But that don’t mean we have to take it from a New Yorker when they write fallacious stuff about our writers and governors : )

Speaking of governors, there’s some interesting e-mail floating around about the Siegelman case. I need to blog about it, but haven’t decided what to say yet…

Busy weekend already : (

As always, love the site.

Is there a button that I can copy to add it to my blog http://www.welovequilting.com/blog

I live in Locust Fork and love this online paper.. Any new news on Gov Siegelman?

thx CHRIS