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History Makers - TPR's In Focus - May 19, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from the Wiregrass Archives at Troy University's Dothan Campus,
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  identifying and preserving historical documents and photographs for research related to the
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  Wiregrass region. More information at troy.edu slash wiregrass archives.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. Dr. Jim Vickrey is a retired
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  college president, professor, and attorney who has met many notable history makers. He joins
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  us in the Storyline book series to share memories of several civil rights leaders and evangelist
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  Billy Graham. Dr. Vickrey's memoir is Awakenings to Racism in Alabama, the education of a native
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  son and the lessons he and his peers learned resisting Jim Crow. Dr. Vickrey, welcome back.
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  Thank you, Carolyn. It's good to be back. It's been a long time.
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  Dr. Vickrey, the title of your memoir is Awakenings to Racism in Alabama. How did
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  your awakening come about? The awakening literally happened in my case, Carolyn,
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  on March 11, 1965, when I was doing graduate work at Auburn. I was listening to the radio
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  when the music I was listening to working on my thesis on the Ku Klux Klan was suddenly
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  interrupted with news that the Reverend James Reeb, Unitarian minister from Boston,
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  had died from a beating that he had received in Selma during the Selma protests that year.
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  Since I was thinking about becoming a Methodist minister, and he was a fairly young guy,
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  I was just thunderstruck with the fact that Racists in Selma had attacked him and a couple
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  of others that had killed him. And I decided on the spot that I just couldn't continue to be
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  a mere observer of the civil rights scene, but that I had to get involved and speak out.
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  I began to do that and have been doing it ever since that day in 1965.
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  Along the way, you have had the opportunity to meet a number of civil rights icons or people
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  who were active at that time. Let's talk about some of those, starting with Whitney Young.
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  Whitney Young was the first national civil rights leader that I met. He came to Auburn to speak in
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  the mid-60s, and I had the opportunity to talk with him backstage before he went on to lecture
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  at Auburn. I think he was the first such person to do that. I was so impressed talking with him,
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  with how he looked, how he sounded, how he handled himself, and what he said. That had a tremendous
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  influence on me. It was one of the many things that happened prior to my great awakening on
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  March the 11th of 1965 that all came together on that night. I went away pleased that such
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  persons as he were leading the civil rights movement, which was active and very lively at
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  that point in the mid-60s. I was thunderstruck two or three years later when he was accidentally
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  drowned visiting an African country. I remembered talking with him and what a soft-spoken person,
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  what an outstandingly articulate individual he was, that that had an effect on me that
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  also affected my life. You actually had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Martin Luther
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  King Jr. Can you go back to December of 67 and tell us how that happened? I had been teaching
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  a course at Auburn called Great American Speeches. I used the famous I Have a Dream speech in that
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  course in 1966 and had been trying to reach him to talk to him about that speech. It was announced
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  that he was coming back to Montgomery to speak on the 100th anniversary of his home church on
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  Dexter Avenue, about a block from the Capitol. I called the minister there and asked him if it'd
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  be okay if I came down. I went. I turned out to be the only white person in the congregation
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  covering the event. I was impressed to watch him perform live. I had only seen snippets of
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  his speeches through the years and was impressed with his slow buildup from a slow beginning until
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  he got into his sermon and built toward a climax that is what usually winds up on the news. The
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  same thing happened with the I Have a Dream speech. I wanted to see that for myself. I waited
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  around afterwards and met him and Coretta and his whole family and was so impressed with him and how
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  he received me, the only white guy there in the audience, and told him I was teaching his speech
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  in a course at Auburn. He looked at me funny like, I don't believe you're saying that.
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  But it was true. It certainly was one of the few such speeches being taught in speech courses
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  in the South. He impressed me with his interest in what I was doing and in how he handled himself.
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  I never forgot it and was particularly thunderstruck again when within five months,
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  he was murdered in Memphis. You've stated that Dr. King was the most impressive civil
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  rights leader you had ever met. Another figure you mentioned in your memoir is A.G. Gaston.
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  A.G. Gaston was a Birmingham millionaire and was often introduced in speeches and things as
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  the country's leading black millionaire. He owned insurance companies and funeral parlors and
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  motels in Birmingham. When I became president of the University of Montevallo in due course,
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  we became friends. He and his wife, Minnie, were just terrific to me. They came to the campus
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  a number of times. He supported scholarship in our College of Business and was just a marvelous
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  person, very quiet, very unassuming. But he got Dr. King and other people who were jailed in 1963
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  during the protests in Birmingham after the four little girls were killed at the 16th Street
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  Baptist Church. Dr. King, I don't think, wanted to be bailed out, but he was. That's when he wrote
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  the famous letter from the Birmingham jail. He had an honorary doctorate. Mr. Gaston funded
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  several hundred thousand dollars' worth of bail, as I recall, to get children out of jail,
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  which he was primarily interested in. But he also got everybody else out of jail.
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  He worked behind the scenes on committees and other things to try to improve the racial
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  environment in Birmingham, which he did. And I was honored to be and pleased to be
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  a friend of his, and I admired him tremendously. Tried to get his wife appointed to the Board of
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  Trustees of Montevallo, but Governor Wallace didn't do that when he later
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  appointed another black person to our board and was the first black person on the Montevallo board.
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  Dr. Vickery, back in the 1960s, evangelist Billy Graham visited a number of campuses,
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  and you witnessed his rallies. I did, actually, too, Carolyn. I first saw him
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  in Montgomery as a participant in a congregation, as it were, at Crampton Bowl here in Montgomery,
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  and impressed as I had been on television at the way they ran and those organized rallies and the
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  way he delivered his messages. He then came to Auburn, and before he spoke in what was then
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  Cliff Air Stadium, a luncheon was held. And since I had been the previous SGA president at Auburn,
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  the then current one, Bill Reniker invited me to come to this luncheon, which I was delighted to
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  do. I was in graduate school at that time at Auburn, and I met him. I had always wanted to
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  meet him. I'd heard him speak so many times, and as a speech teacher, I was interested in having
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  that personal experience I could talk about in my classes. And I must say, of all the people that
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  I've met over the years in various fields, he was perhaps the most impressive immediate person that
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  I ever met. He had Paul Newman blue eyes. He was tall, handsome, of course, with blonde wavy hair,
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  and was very personable. And I was quite impressed with him and so glad that I finally got to meet
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  him, and I felt privileged to be there. Thousands of people attended his rallies. How were they
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  organized? From the early 50s, his rallies were different in regard to one respect.
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  He insisted from the beginning of his ministry that his congregations be integrated. He did not
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  speak to segregated audiences, which was rather remarkable for a guy from the South. That was the
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  case at Crampton Bowl, and that was the case at Auburn. And I can't remember now if I told him
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  how pleased I was that he did that. That was something that was not happening all over the
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  country, and I was pleased to witness it. Dr. Vickery, thank you for sharing your memoir
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  and a close-up view of these history makers. Carolyn, it's always good to talk to you, and my book
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  notes that virtually every white person born and raised in the South has a veneer that covers
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  latent racism, including myself. I hope my book helps stimulate some people to think about those
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  thoughts. That was Dr. Jim Vickery, author of Awakenings to Racism in Alabama, the education
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  of a native son and the lessons he and his peers learned resisting Jim Crow. Thanks for joining us
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  for the Storyline Book Series on In Focus, which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.