Legendary civil rights attorney Fred Gray has received accolades from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, American Bar Association, and the NAACP, among many others. Now he is honored with a play that brings the history related to the integration of the Tuskegee High School, with which he was much involved, to dramatic life. Written and directed by Dr. Tessa Carr on the faculty at Auburn University and presented by the Mosaic Theatre Company, The Integration of Tuskegee High School tells the story of Attorney Gray’s role in the pivotal 1963 desegregation lawsuit.

Civil rights attorney Fred Gray and London Carlisle, the actor who plays Gray in The Integration of Tuskegee High School.

The play was the inspiration of Dr. Mark Wilson at Auburn’s Carolyn Marshall Draughon Center, who believed that a series of interviews with students and community leaders who had lived through school desegregation would be a good basis for a dramatic work. Dr. Carr, Artistic Director of the Mosaic Theatre Company, was equally inspired in the writing of it. In her research she says she was struck by the extraordinary difference in the experiences of Caucasian and African American students involved in the events. It was her aim, she told Auburn University’s Perspectives “to put their voices in conversation — voices that had never had the opportunity to be in conversation before.”

The play was first performed in 2014. The new production includes the voice of Attorney Gray as a guiding narrator. After the premiere, Dr. Mark Wilson told The Plainsman it was so powerful he was left speechless. He noted that the performance would be available for online viewing.

Attorney Gray attended a special invitation-only performance on April 16, where he met London Carlisle, the actor playing himself. In an interview with the Opelika-Auburn News, Gray wryly remarked, “The stage presentation was a good enactment of quite a bit of what you just didn’t see in every day life.” After the performance, Attorney Gray told the Plainsman, “We still have a lot of problems. We need to work on them and not take 50 more years to solve them.”

Fred Gray’s memoir, Bus Ride to Justice: Changing the System by the System, The Life and Works of Fred Gray, is available from NewSouth Books or your favorite bookstore.

Alabama lost one of its most distinguished historians with the death of Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton. NewSouth Books was proud to have published the final memoir of this pioneering journalist and educator, Teddy’s Child: Growing Up in the Anxious Southern Gentry Between the Great Wars. Dr. Hamilton’s life was as colorful and inspiring as any history she taught. Distinguished historian Leah Rawls Atkins remembered the influential professor in a piece for Alabama NewsCenter, calling Dr. Hamilton one of the “finest teachers and role models for young women interested in studying history.”

Dr. Atkins lists the remarkable details of Hamilton’s career: Associated Press correspondent in Washington, D.C. during World War II, Birmingham News reporter, history professor at Birmingham-Southern, the University of Montevallo, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Alabama, author of numerous books of history and memoir. She focuses on Hamilton’s legacy as a pioneer — the second woman to earn a PhD in history from the University of Alabama — and a historian who presented a unique take on Alabama history in her innovative text Alabama: A History, which recounts the stories of sociological groups who most impacted the state.

Dr. Atkins notes: “Hamilton changed the way history was taught in Alabama. . . . She advocated for the equality of women in history, and capped her career directing a departmental faculty at UAB that was roughly half male and half female — more closely matching the true ratio of men and women in the population. Young women in Alabama in 2016 may not realize who influenced the greater professional equality they now enjoy. Virginia Van deer Hamilton played a large role in that history.”

A fitting tribute to a remarkable woman. We mourn her passing but celebrate her legacy.

Teddy’s Child is available from NewSouth Books.

Our good friend and esteemed author Frye Gaillard has just won the Eugene Current-Garcia Distinguished Scholar Award, which was presented at the Alabama Writers Symposium, held annually in Monroeville. The award recognizes “scholarly reflection and writing on literary topics.” Nominations for the award are made by recognized scholars in the field and reflect the respect of the winner’s peers in the academic community.

This award is the latest for Frye, one of the most respected journalist-historians working in the Southeast today. His previous honors include the Lillian Smith Award for non-fiction, the Clarence Cason Award for non-fiction, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year Award.

From left: Alisha Linam, Director of the Alabama Center for Literary Arts; Roger Chandler, President of Alabama Southern Community College; Al Head, Executive Director of the Alabama State Council on the Arts; Dr. Edward O. Wilson, 2016 Harper Lee Award Winner; Frye Gaillard, 2016 Eugene Current-Garcia Award Winner; Armand DeKeyser, Executive Director of the Alabama Humanities Foundation; and Jeanie Thompson, Executive Director of the Alabama Writers Forum.

Frye continues a limited tour presenting about his recently released book, Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family’s Civil War Letters — a powerful work that is a personal inquiry into how the Civil War has shaped our Southern identity. He is one of NewSouth’s most in-demand speakers. A writer in residence at the University of South Alabama, Frye is the author of more than twenty books, including The Books That Mattered: A Reader’s Memoir and Watermelon Wine, both published by NewSouth, and Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America.

Look for Frye’s first book for middle-schoolers, Go South to Freedom, coming this fall from NewSouth Books. The book retells a story he heard from an elderly friend, the great-grandson of slaves, that has never been published before.

Congratulations, Frye, and continued publishing success!

Journey to the Wilderness, The Books That Mattered, and Watermelon Wine are all available from NewSouth Books or your favorite bookstore.