Tag Archive for: Birmingham

Behind the Magic Curtain – by T. K. Thorne

/in /by

 

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

Four men who loved the city of Birmingham, Alabama asked me to write a
book. I look back on that day when I met them in the high-rise office
of a prominent attorney. They were all strangers, decades older. They
had lived through “pivotal nation-changing days.”
Three of them had been in the thick of happenings.  

As I sat at the polished hardwood table, I thought possibly they assumed
I was a scholar of civil rights because I had recently written a book
about the investigation of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that
killed four young black girls in Birmingham in 1963 (Last Chance for Justice),
but to my surprise, the gentleman who invited me to that meeting said
he had done so because of a totally different book, a historical novel
set thousands of years in the past in ancient Turkey (Noah’s Wife).
I had to ask him why he thought that qualified me. He said, “If you
could write a book about Noah’s wife and make me believe that was what
really happened, then you can tell the true stories of what happened
here.” 

To say I was reticent was an understatement. What they were asking me to
do seemed a huge commitment, and so much had been documented about the
era, what could I possibly add? Then one of the men sent me his notes
about a day in 1962 when he pushed through the double glass doors of The Birmingham News, weary from an all-night stakeout with police, and
his eccentric, powerful boss shouted for him to join him for breakfast.
What was said at that breakfast changed a young reporter’s life and
affected the tangled web of history.  

I was hooked.

After the better part of a decade, it is done. Regretfully, three of the fine gentlemen who trusted me to write this did not live to see it. I only hope I have been true to their vision.

 

 

What folks are saying:

Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days is a remarkable look at a historic city enmeshed in racial tensions, revealing untold or forgotten stories of secret deals, law enforcement intrigue, and courage alongside pivotal events that would sweep change across the nation.

T. K. Thorne has hit another home run with Behind the Magic Curtain. For five and a half decades we have read accounts of the civil rights era in Birmingham and Selma written by those with a particular ax to grind. Thorne is an excellent reporter, recognizing the nuances that “outsiders” or opinionated writers could not see or chose to overlook. Her reading and especially her interviews over the past several years have been remarkable, allowing her to give far more accurate details than we have seen before. For those who want to know the secrets of what really went on behind the “magic curtain” in those pivotal nation-changing days, days that brought the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill in 1965, this is an important book to read.
—Douglas M. Carpenter, Retired Episcopal minister and son of Alabama’s Episcopal Bishop, C. C. J. Carpenter.

In Behind the Magic Curtain, T. K. Thorne introduces us to
those who operated behind the scenes in the civil rights movement in
Alabama, shedding light on the individual moral complexities of these
participants—some firebrands, some reluctant players, and some predators
who worked for their own gain. This journalistic exploration of a
complicated time in Alabama’s social history will sit comfortably on the
shelf next to histories by Dianne McWhorter, Glenn Eskew, and Taylor
Branch. — Anthony Grooms, author of Bombingham and The Vain Conversation

Deeply engaging, Behind the Magic Curtain tells a forgotten part of the Birmingham story, prompting many “real time memories” for me. The lively and descriptive writing brought the characters and settings to life, while diving into the white community’s role in all its complexities. This is a treasure trove of stories about activities and perspectives not well known to the general public. In particular, journalist Tom Lankford’s sleuthing and the machinations of the Birmingham Police Department, along with the risk-averse role of the local newspapers, and a full blown portrait of the inscrutable Birmingham News VIP, Vincent Townsend, make for a fascinating read.
—Odessa Woolfolk, educator, community activist, and founding president of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

“T.K. writes like a seasoned news editor, meticulously hunting down facts and laying out the context in a colorful, intriguing way. Behind the Magic Curtain documents many untold stories and faithfully relates my own personal, unforgettable memories of a time of racial transition in Birmingham.”
—Tom Lankford, journalist for The Birmingham News

 “Novelist and former Birmingham Police Captain T.K. Thorne demonstrates
there was more to Birmingham of the Civil Rights Era than Bull Connor,
Klansmen, and African-American protestors.  Behind that “Magic Curtain,”
an ethnically diverse group from downtown to the surrounding bedroom
communities of ministers, priests, rabbis, newspaper reporters, and
housewives comprised a community belying monikers like ‘Bomingham’ and
‘Murder Capital of America,’ and fighting for justice in the Magic
City.”
—Earl Tilford, author of Turning the Tide: The University of Alabama in the 1960s

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T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com


Ten Words in April

/in /by

  

      Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

April is my birthday month. We’re not going to talk about exactly which one. It’s been a hectic month that included working with my editor on my new police witch book, House of Rose. April also is the month for Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in between working on my book, I had the privilege of playing a small role in helping to host “Violins of Hope” in my city of Birmingham, Alabama. It was a unique and amazing experience.

Amnon Weinstein, a violin maker in Israel came to Birmingham this month with his family for a week of concerts and educational programs. Like his father, Weinstein dedicated his life to making and repairing violins. As a child, Amnon never heard his parents speak much about the Holocaust. The trauma of losing hundreds of their extended family was too overwhelming to give it voice, but one day after Amnon’s father had died, a woman came into his shop with a violin that had been through the Holocaust. When he opened it, there were ashes inside. The woman explained that it’s owner had been forced to play it inside a concentration camp while prisoners were marched to their deaths.


Shaken, Ammon looked with new eyes at the numerous violins that had been brought to his father in Israel after WWII because people didn’t want anything that was made in Germany or associated with that country, and he decided those violins had voices that needed to speak and stories that needed to be told.  Some of the instruments, he learned, had kept people alive during the Holocaust, others brought the beauty of music into a dark place and time, and so, they were not just violins of tragedy but violins of hope.

Many Jews in Eastern Europe played the violin, as reflected in the movie Fiddler on the Roof. It is said that the violin is the closest instrument to the human voice and also that it is the easiest instrument to pickup and run with. Professional musicians, called klezmers, traveled from village to village playing for weddings and other events. Amnon and his family came to Birmingham, a city with its own story of violence and repression of a people who loved music. 


In April—the season of azalea, dogwood and redwood blooms—the restored violins were displayed and played by students and professional musicians. Youth who had been studying the Holocaust heard Amnon speak and the violins sing. Their voices honored those before, those who who had held them and loved them and drew beautiful music from them, those who had lived and those who had died. I expected to be touched by the music of the violins, and I was, but it was the words that gave shape to the music’s power—that explained the unexplainable.  

Amnon’s wife, Assiel Weinstein, spoke at the commemoration of Yom Ha Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Though she did not play the violin, with ten words, Assi changed my understanding of the meaning of Israel. Assi’s father had been a partisan in Eastern Europe during the war, one of the famous Bielski brothers who escaped to the surrounding forest and waged guerrilla warfare against the Germans who were murdering the Jews of the villages and taking them away to death camps. At the same time, the Bielski brothers established a refugee camp deep in the woods, harboring those fleeing the Nazis, many of whom were old, weak and sick. Assi’s father, who was in charge of food and raiding parties said, “Let the Russian partisans do the fighting. It is more important to save one old Jewish woman than to kill ten Germans.” Hungry, sick, clinging to survival through harsh winters, the group became a community and kept their humanity. The movie Defiance was based on this historical event. 

Toward the end of the war, in August of 1943, the Germans gathered soldiers to surround the forest, determined to flush out the partisans, the Bielski brothers and their camp of refugees.  Inexorably, they closed in. There was no escape. “All the people wanted to run in different directions,” but Tuvia Bielski, their leader said, “No we stay together. If we die, then we will die fighting, but we’ll do it together.”

Miraculously, two Jews, a forester and a peddler told the brothers that they knew a path through the swamp to an island. Hundreds of men, women and children followed them, as their ancestors had followed Moses, through the swamp to a small island where they hunkered down in absolute silence, waiting while the Nazis came closer and closer. For hours, they were still and quiet, even the children. Assi’s mother was among those who huddled, terrified, on the island, listening to the sounds of shouted orders and bullets flying overhead as the Germans searched all around them, certain they would be discovered and killed at any moment. But they weren’t. At the war’s end, 1,200 Jews walked out of that forest.

After the war, Assi’s mother insisted on immigrating to Israel. She told her daughter, “I came to Israel because I will never run again.” 

I knew, of course, that people fled to Israel for safety, but those words were not those of a woman seeking shelter, but a place to fight from and to fight for. She would take her stand there. And with those ten words, I realized that is what Israel is, not a safe haven to hide, but a place to make a stand and a home for Jews, so they never have to run again. 



Click here for a 1.5 minute video of Amnon and Violins of Hope





T.K. has written two award-winning
historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, filling in the untold
backstories of extraordinary unnamed women—the wives of Noah and Lot—in two of
the world’s most famous sagas. The New
York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list featured her first
non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, which details the investigators’
behind-the-scenes stories of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing case. Her next
project is HOUSE OF ROSE, the first of a trilogy in the paranormal-crime genre.
She loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. T.K. writes
at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, Alabama, often with two dogs and a cat
vying for her lap. She blogs about “What Moves Me” on her website, TKThorne.com.  Join her private newsletter email list and
receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”