For years the legendary John Seigenthaler hosted A Word on Words on Nashville's public television station, WNPT. During the show's four-decade run (1972 to 2013), he interviewed some of the most interesting and most impor tant writers of our time. These in-depth exchanges revealed much about the writers who appeared on his show and gave a glimpse into their creative pro cesses. Seigenthaler was a deeply engaged reader and a generous interviewer, a true craftsman. Frye Gaillard and Pat Toomay have collected and transcribed some of the iconic interactions from the show. Featuring interviews with: Arna Bontemps * Marshall Chapman * Pat Conroy * Rodney Crowell * John Egerton * Jesse Hill Ford * Charles Fountain * William Price Fox * Kinky Friedman * Frye Gaillard * Nikki Giovanni * Doris Kearns Goodwin * David Halberstam * Waylon Jennings * John Lewis * David Maraniss * William Marshall * Jon Meacham * Ann Patchett * Alice Randall * Dori Sanders * John Seigenthaler Sr. * Marty Stuart * Pat Toomay

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 Trumpism. In 1974 the great Southern author John Egerton published his seminal 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 with its thinly disguised (if indeed it is disguised all all) embrace of white supremacy and the subversion of democratic ideals. They explore the "birtherism" of Donald Trump and 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 Stacy 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, colleagues and frequent collaborators at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, bring a multi-racial 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.

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword Indies Best Book Award — Juvenile Fiction Winner of the Jefferson Cup Honor Book Award Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award More 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.

An NPR Best Book of 2018 A 2021 Alabama Library Association Author Award Winner Frye Gaillard has given 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 against it. But he also examines the cultural manifestations of change — 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. ""There are many different ways to remember the sixties,"" 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.

For nearly forty years, Frye Gaillard has covered the American South as a journalist, historian and writer of memoir. With Music and Justice for All is a collection of Gaillard's most compelling work, one writer's odyssey though a time and place. There are stories here of the civil rights movement, a moral, social and political upheaval that changed the South in so many ways. Gaillard has captured the essence of that drama by giving it a face--telling the stories of the ordinary people, as well as the icons. In the course of these pages, the reader not only meets Dr. Martin Luther King, but also the lesser known heroes such Perry Wallace--the first African American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference and Thomas Gilmore, the first black sheriff in one of the toughest counties in the Alabama Black Belt, a man of non-violence, who refused, in deference to the fallen Dr. King, to carry a gun during the thirteen years he served as sheriff.

But Gaillard examines the South from other angles as well--the religious heritage, for example, that once led Flannery O'Connor to write about a "Christ-haunted" South. We meet Billy Graham, the greatest evangelist of his time, who admitted in the course of interviews with Gaillard that his ministry represented a "very narrow gift." There are profiles here of the Southern Baptist renegade Will Campbell and former President Jimmy Carter, whose commitment to his own understanding of Christianity has sometimes led him into controversy. Gaillard writes also about the revealing power of Southern music--how the great Johnny Cash, for example, became a force for reconciliation in America. In the final section of the book we meet some of the characters Gaillard has covered through the years, including John T. Scopes, whose final public appearance Gaillard wrote about as a young reporter in Nashville.

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.

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.

The ministry of the Rev. Stephen F. Dill was forged in the turbulent civil rights years when he stood for social justice and spoke against racial segregation. In this collection of sermons-many from his 20 years as pastor of Dauphin Way United Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama-Dill reflects on the implications of his faith for the lives of individuals and for the life of the world. Robin Wilson, one of Dill's successors at Dauphin Way, praises "the bold humility" of his message, and author Frye Gaillard, in the book's introduction, offers this description of Dill and his sermons: "Almost inevitably, the poetry of his preaching caught the quick of my imagination and quietly, inevitably made me think." Appropriately, the publication of The Poetry of Faith coincides with the 100th anniversary of Dauphin Way. But these challenging and reassuring sermons resonate far beyond those walls. As Methodist educator Gorman Houston put it, this is the Christian faith at its finest, for Stephen Dill has always been "one of those ministers ... able to see the church as it should be and not as it was."

This is a concise biography of the thirty-ninth president. ""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 post presidency is still in the making; however, he has already redefined the role for all who follow him. Carter was not an irresolute president, says Frye Gaillard, but rather one so certain of his own rectitude that he misjudged the importance of 'selling' himself to America. 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. ""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.

The Dream Long Deferred tells the fifty-year story of the landmark struggle for the desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the present state of the city's public school system. Gaillard, who covered school integration for the Charlotte Observer, updates his earlier 1988 and 1999 editions of this work to examine the difficult circumstances of the present day. Charlotte began voluntary desegregation in 1957, but the slow pace lead to lawsuits to demand immediate and complete integration. When the U.S. District Court in 1969, and subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, upheld that demand in the landmark Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Charlotte became the national test case for busing. Within five years, Charlotte was a model of successful integration. In 1999, a group of white citizens reopened the case to push for a return to neighborhood schools. A federal judge sided with them, finding that the plans initiated in the 1971 ruling were both unnecessary and unconstitutional because they were race-based. Today, Gaillard explains, Charlotte's schools are becoming segregated once more - this time along both economic and racial lines. In this new edition of ""The Dream Long Deferred"", Gaillard chronicles the span of Charlotte's five-decade struggle with race in education to remind us that the national dilemma of equal educational opportunity remains unsettled.