Unloose my heart : a personal reckoning with the twisted roots of my southern family tree / Marcia Edwina Herman-Giddens.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herman-Giddens, Marcia Edwina, 1941- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Birmingham (Ala.)--Social life and customs--20th century.

Birmingham (Ala.).

Birmingham (Ala.)--Race relations--History--20th century.

Herman-Giddens, Marcia Edwina, 1941-.

Herman-Giddens, Marcia Edwina.

Women, White--Alabama--Birmingham--Biography.

Women, White.

Civil rights movements--Alabama--Birmingham--History--20th century.

Civil rights movements.

Slaveholders--Southern States--Biography.

Slaveholders.

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white) ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2023]

Summary:

"A deeply personal memoir that unearths a family history of racism, slaveholding, and trauma as well as love and sparks of delight. Marcia Herman's family moved to Birmingham in 1946, when she was five years old, and settled in the steel-making city dense with smog and a rigid apartheid system. Marcia, a shy only child, struggled to fit in and understand this world, shadowed as it was by her mother's proud antebellum heritage. In 1966, weary of Alabama's toxic culture, Marcia and her young family left Birmingham and built a life in North Carolina. Later in life, Herman-Giddens resumed a search to find out what she did not know about her family history. Unloose My Heart interweaves the story of her youth and coming of age in Birmingham during the Civil Rights Movement together with this quest to understand exactly who and what her maternal ancestors were and her obligations as a white woman within a broader sense of American family. More than a memoir set against the backdrop of Jim Crow and the civil rights struggle, this is the work of a woman of conscience writing in the twenty-first century. Haunted by the past, Unloose My Heart is a journey of exploration and discovery, full of angst, sorrow, and yearning. Unearthing her forebears' centuries-long embrace of plantation slavery, Herman-Giddens dug deeply to parse the arrogance and cruelty necessary to be a slaveholder and the trauma and fear that ripple out in its wake. All this forced her to scrutinize the impact of this legacy in her life, as well as her debt to the enslaved people who suffered and were exploited at her ancestors' hands. But she also discovers lost connections, new cousins and friends, unexpected joys, and, eventually, a measure of peace in the process. With heartbreak, moments of grace, and an enduring sense of love, Unloose My Heart shines a light in the darkness and provides a model for a heartfelt reckoning with American history"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Early childhood

A hybrid self

Moving to Birmingham

Searching for Jesse Robinson

The McAlpins explained

Summers north

Summers south

Harmony Hall, the Richardsons, and turpentine

Coming of age

The Brooke Hill School for Girls and Ramsay High School

College and marriage, 1960

"Bombingham"

Back to Birmingham, 1961

Birmingham, 1962

Birmingham explodes, 1963

Birmingham, Tuskegee Institute, and Project CAUSE, 1964

Tuskegee again and the Concerned White Citizens March, 1965

Burrowing into cotton

Leaving Birmingham, 1966

At the end

Afterword: shame, hope, and discoveries.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-254) and index.

ISBN:

0-8173-9431-1

OCLC:

1357012818