Frye Gaillard

Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker and award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflect in a powerful series of essays on the role of the South in America’s long descent into its present political predicament. In 1974 the great Southern author John Egerton published his pioneering work, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America, reflecting on the double-edged reality of the South becoming more like the rest of the country and vice versa. Tucker and Gaillard dive even deeper into that reality from the time that Egerton published his book until the present. They see the dark side—the morphing of the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan into the Republican Party of today. They explore the roots of the racial backlash against President Obama; the specter of family separation on our southern border, with its echoes of similar separations in the era of slavery; as well as the rise of the Christian right, the demonstrations in Charlottesville, the death of George Floyd, and the attack on our nation’s capital—all of which, they argue, have roots that trace their way to the South. But Tucker and Gaillard see another side too—a legacy rooted in the civil rights years that has given us political leaders like John Lewis, Jimmy Carter, Raphael Warnock, and Stacey Abrams. The authors raise the ironic possibility that the South, regarded by some as the heart of the country’s systemic racism, might lead the way on the path to redemption. Tucker and Gaillard bring a multiracial perspective and years of political reporting to bear on a critical moment in American history, a time of racial reckoning and of democracy under siege.

Frye Gaillard did not set out to write this book. One day as he was thumbing through a cardboard box of his essays, columns, and profiles, he simply realized that he had done it. Each article told the story of a person standing against social injustice or exploring the pain and ambiguity of the human condition. By blending interviews and stories of well-known figures like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sidney Poitier, Vine Deloria, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Jane Goodall with lesser-known heroes like Rabbi Abraham Heschel (who marched from Selma to Montgomery), Regina Benjamin (a Black doctor who was integral to the grassroots efforts of Katrina recovery), Kathy Mattea (who wrote powerful songs about coal mining and its real effects on the people of Appalachia), and Elyn Saks (who pioneered modern mental illness treatments while dealing with her own schizophrenia), Gaillard celebrates the people who have tried to make things better. While many of Gaillard’s subjects succeeded in what they were trying to do, others did not. Each story, however, contains a measure of inspiration. Against the backdrop of our turbulent time—our era of lesser angels on the rise—Gaillard asks, where would the rest of us be without them?

With illustrator KaArie Gillis, authors Marti Rosner and Frye Gaillard share with young readers one of the most inspirational stories in American philanthropy. In the early years of the 20th century, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck & Co., worked with educator Booker T. Washington and grassroots leaders across the South to build more than 5,000 schools for African American children. Graduates of these life-changing institutions include Maya Angelou, John Lewis, and Pulitzer Prize winners Eugene Robinson and Cynthia Tucker. After multiple interviews and extensive research, Rosner and Gaillard tell the story through the eager questions of Ezra, a curious little boy inspired by Rosner's own mixed race grandchildren. The result is an accessible, easy to read account - a history of hope in a difficult time that should not be forgotten.

With illustrator KaArie Gillis, authors Marti Rosner and Frye Gaillard share with young readers one of the most inspirational stories in American philanthropy. In the early years of the 20th century, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck & Co., worked with educator Booker T. Washington and grassroots leaders across the South to build more than 5,000 schools for African American children. Graduates of these life-changing institutions include Maya Angelou, John Lewis, and Pulitzer Prize winners Eugene Robinson and Cynthia Tucker. After multiple interviews and extensive research, Rosner and Gaillard tell the story through the eager questions of Ezra, a curious little boy inspired by Rosner's own mixed race grandchildren. The result is an accessible, easy to read account - a history of hope in a difficult time that should not be forgotten.

A “greatest hits” of archaeological research that has transformed knowledge of human historySouthern Footprints celebrates more than fifty years of archaeological research along the Gulf Coast by the University of South Alabama and the Center for Archaeological Studies. Archaeologists Gregory A. Waselkov and Philip J. Carr, the former and current directors of the center, present the “greatest hits” that have transformed knowledge of human history on the Alabama and Mississippi Gulf Coast from the Ice Age until recently. Each archaeological site, from surface collections to premiere archaeological preserves, such as Old Mobile and Holy Gorund, offers clues to the past. The chapters in this collection are arranged chronologically and survey the history and archaeology of a wide range of significant sites, including the Gulf Shores canoe canal, Bottle Creek Mounds, Old Mobile, Fort Mims, Spanish Fort, Spring Hill College, and Mobile River Bridge. Waselkov and Carr take care to acknowledge in these stories populations who have been historically underdocumented, now recognizing the contributions of Native Americans and African Americans that have been uncovered through archaeology. The authors reveal the dire impacts of climate change, environmental disasters, development, and neglect—and convey their urgency to protect these areas of shared history—as a result of the meticulous excavation, analyzation, and preservation of artifacts from these sites. Color photographs showcase the archaeology as it unfolds, often with the help of dedicated volunteers. Southern Footprints will serve as an indispensable reference on the rich Gulf Coast heritage for all to appreciate.

Celebrates more than fifty years of archaeological research from the University of South Alabama.

“There are many different ways to remember the sixties,” Frye Gaillard writes, “and this is mine. There was in these years the sense of a steady unfolding of time, as if history were on a forced march, and the changes spread to every corner of our lives. As future generations debate the meaning of the decade, I hope to offer a sense of how it felt to have lived it. A Hard Rain is one writer’s reconstruction and remembrance of a transcendent era—one that, for better or worse, lives with us still.” With A Hard Rain Gaillard gives us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller’s eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times: civil rights, black power, women’s liberation, the war in Vietnam, and the protests movements against it. Gaillard also examines the cultural manifestations of change in the era—music, literature, art, religion, and science—and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Harper Lee, Mister Rogers, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Billy Graham, Thomas Merton, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Barry Goldwater, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Berrigan Brothers. As Gaillard remembers these influential people, he weaves together a compelling story about an iconic American decade of change, conflict, and progress.

Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker and award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflect in a powerful series of essays on the role of the South in America’s long descent into its present political predicament. In 1974 the great Southern author John Egerton published his pioneering work, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America, reflecting on the double-edged reality of the South becoming more like the rest of the country and vice versa. Tucker and Gaillard dive even deeper into that reality from the time that Egerton published his book until the present. They see the dark side—the morphing of the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan into the Republican Party of today. They explore the roots of the racial backlash against President Obama; the specter of family separation on our southern border, with its echoes of similar separations in the era of slavery; as well as the rise of the Christian right, the demonstrations in Charlottesville, the death of George Floyd, and the attack on our nation’s capital—all of which, they argue, have roots that trace their way to the South. But Tucker and Gaillard see another side too—a legacy rooted in the civil rights years that has given us political leaders like John Lewis, Jimmy Carter, Raphael Warnock, and Stacey Abrams. The authors raise the ironic possibility that the South, regarded by some as the heart of the country’s systemic racism, might lead the way on the path to redemption. Tucker and Gaillard bring a multiracial perspective and years of political reporting to bear on a critical moment in American history, a time of racial reckoning and of democracy under siege.

Beginning in the South Carolina Low Country with his Huguenot ancestors who fled religious persecution in Europe, journalist-historian Frye Gaillard traces his family through the troubled, oppressive history of the South. Gaillard, who came of age during the civil rights years, shares the painful legacy of a family sometimes on the wrong side of that history. He writes of Capt. Peter Gaillard, who fought in the Revolutionary War (on both sides), and became a prosperous planter and slave-owner. The author follows the family story through the major events of Southern history—the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the civil rights revolution—to show how a family’s identity was forged by privilege, hardship, and loss, and also by a moral reckoning that emerged slowly, inevitably over time. A powerful memoir that is sure to speak to the heart of every Southerner. Researched with Dr. Nancy Gaillard, educator and wife of the author.

In the most deeply personal writing of his long career, award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflects on the life and work of his wife Nancy, who died of leukemia in 2018. Partly the memoir of a vibrant marriage, Live As If... tells the story of Nancy's work as a public school teacher, principal, and professor during a time of education under siege. "It's a story of what can go right," Gaillard says.

In the most deeply personal writing of his long career, award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflects on the life and work of his wife Nancy, who died of leukemia in 2018. Partly the memoir of a vibrant marriage, Live As If... tells the story of Nancy's work as a public school teacher, principal, and professor during a time of education under siege. "It's a story of what can go right," Gaillard says.

In 1870 Benjamin Turner, who spent the first 40 years of his life as a slave, was elected to the U.S. Congress. He was the first African American from Alabama to earn that distinction. In a recreation of Turner's own words, based on speeches and other writings that Turner left behind, co-authors Marti S. Rosner and Frye Gaillard have crafted the story of a remarkable man who taught himself to read when he was young and began a lifetime quest for education and freedom. As a candidate for Congress, and then as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Turner rejected the idea of punishing his white neighbors who fought for the Confederacy—and thus for the continuation of slavery—believing they had suffered enough. At the same time, he supported the right to vote for former slaves, opposed a cotton tax that he thought was hurtful to small and especially black farmers, supported racially mixed schools, and argued that land should be set aside for former slaves so they could build a new life for themselves. In this bicentennial season for the state of Alabama, the authors celebrate the life of a man who rejected bitterness even as he pursued his own dreams. His is a story of determination and strength, the story of an American hero from the town of Selma, Alabama, who worked to make the world a better place for people of all races and backgrounds.

“There are many different ways to remember the sixties,” Frye Gaillard writes, “and this is mine. There was in these years the sense of a steady unfolding of time, as if history were on a forced march, and the changes spread to every corner of our lives. As future generations debate the meaning of the decade, I hope to offer a sense of how it felt to have lived it. A Hard Rain is one writer’s reconstruction and remembrance of a transcendent era—one that, for better or worse, lives with us still.” With A Hard Rain Gaillard gives us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller’s eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times: civil rights, black power, women’s liberation, the war in Vietnam, and the protests movements against it. Gaillard also examines the cultural manifestations of change in the era—music, literature, art, religion, and science—and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Harper Lee, Mister Rogers, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Billy Graham, Thomas Merton, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Barry Goldwater, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Berrigan Brothers. As Gaillard remembers these influential people, he weaves together a compelling story about an iconic American decade of change, conflict, and progress.

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword Indies Best Book Award — Juvenile FictionWinner of the Jefferson Cup Honor Book AwardFinalist for the Housatonic Book AwardMore than twenty years ago, Robert Croshon, an elderly friend of Frye Gaillard's, told him the story of Croshon's ancestor, Gilbert Fields, an African-born slave in Georgia who led his family on a daring flight to freedom. Fields and his family ran away intending to travel north, but clouds obscured the stars and when morning came Fields discovered they had been running south instead. They had no choice but to seek sanctuary with the Seminole Indians of Florida and later a community of free blacks in Mobile.With Croshon's blessing, Gaillard has expanded this oral history into a novel for young readers, weaving the story of Gilbert Fields through the nearly forgotten history of the Seminoles and their alliance with runaway slaves. As Gaillard's narrative makes clear, the Seminole Wars of the 1830s, in which Indians fought side by side with former slaves, represents the largest slave uprising in American history. Gaillard also puts a human face on the story of free blacks before the Civil War and the lives they painfully built for themselves in Mobile. Hauntingly illustrated by artist Anne Kent Rush, Go South to Freedom is a gripping story for readers of any age.

On the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War, award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflects on the war—and the way we remember it—through letters written by his family, including his great-great grandfather and his two sons, both of whom were Confederate officers. As Gaillard explains in his introductory essay, he came of age in a Southern generation that viewed the war as a glorious lost cause. But as he read through letters collected by members of his family, he confronted a far more sobering truth.“Oh, this terrible war,” wrote his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Gaillard. “Who can measure the troubles—the affliction—it has brought upon us all?”To this real-time anguish in voices from the past, Gaillard offers a personal remembrance of the shadow of war and its place in the haunted identity of the South. “My own generation,” he writes, “was, perhaps, the last that was raised on stories of gallantry and courage . . . Oddly, mine was also the one of the first generations to view the Civil War through the lens of civil rights—to see . . . connections and flaws in Southern history that earlier generations couldn’t bear to face.”

With a combination of song lyrics and reflective essays, Alabama author Frye Gaillard and recording artist Kathryn Scheldt pay tribute to the literary legacy of Alabama songwriters. Included here are reflections on the works of Hank Williams, Emmylou Harris, and W. C. Handy, among many others. Scheldt and Gaillard share Emmylou's view that the Americana music coming out of Alabama has been "the literature of the people." In addition to writing about this tradition, these two authors are part of it. In these pages and on an accompanying CD are songs co-written by Scheldt and Gaillard.

Frye Gaillard’s first encounters with books were disappointing. As a child he never cared much for fairy tales – “stories of cannibalism and mayhem in which giants and witches, tigers and wolves did their best to eat small children.” But at the age of nine, he discovered Johnny Tremain, a children’s novel of the Revolutionary War, which began a lifetime love affair with books, recounted here as a reader’s tribute to the writings that enriched and altered his life. In a series of carefully crafted, often deeply personal essays, Gaillard blends memoir, history and critical analysis to explore the works of Harper Lee, Anne Frank, James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, John Steinbeck, and many others. As this heartfelt reminiscence makes clear, the books that chose Frye Gaillard shaped him like an extended family. Reading The Books that Mattered: A Reader’s Memoir will make you study your own shelves to find clues into your own literary heart.

Prophet from Plains covers Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter's major achievements and setbacks in light of what has been at once his greatest asset and his greatest flaw: his stubborn, faith-driven integrity. Carter's remarkable postpresidency is still in the making; however, he has already redefined the role for all who follow him.Frye Gaillard, who wrote extensively about Carter at the Charlotte Observer, was among the first to take the Carter postpresidency seriously and to challenge many accepted conclusions about Carter's term in office. Carter was not an irresolute president, says Gaillard, but rather one so certain of his own rectitude that he misjudged the importance of "selling" himself to America. Ranging across the highs and lows of the Carter presidency, Gaillard covers the energy crisis, the Iran hostage situation, the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal and other treaties, and the new diplomatic emphasis on human rights.Carter's established priorities did not change once he was out of office, but he was far more effective outside the strictures of presidential politics. Gaillard's coverage of this period includes Carter's friendship with Gerald R. Ford, his work through the Carter Center on disease control and election monitoring, and his association with Habitat for Humanity.Prophet from Plains locates Carter in the tradition of Old Testament prophets who took uncompromising stands for peace and justice. Resisting the role of an above-the-fray elder statesman, Carter has thrust himself into international controversies in ways that some find meddlesome and others heroic.