Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the Scripps-Howard Ernie Pyle Award for radio. The Alabama Public Radio news room consists of news director Pat Duggins, two anchor/reporters, and our robust student internship program, where a minimum of eight University of Alabama students are drilled on writing broadcast quality copy under real life deadline pressure. Despite our modest resources, the APR team has been recognized with one hundred and fourteen awards for excellence in journalism. One third of these awards are at the national or international level. We’d like to submit these features as APR’s entry for the Ernie Pyle award.
On September 8, 2018, police in Mobile, Alabama erected steel barricades around the Ben May Public Library. The goal was to separate two vocal groups of protesters as the library hosted its first drag queen story hour. Conservative Christians and members of the local Tea Party Action Committee complained that the event would indoctrinate youngsters into an alternative lifestyle. Critics also claimed San Francisco’s gay community was trying to use the story hour to establish a “beach head” in the southern U.S. Protesters chanted “Jesus saves sodomites” while members of Mobile’s LGBTQ community held signs with slogans including “Jesus had two dads.” In the middle of the debate was Mobile resident Wade Brasfield, who agreed to appear as his drag persona of “Khloe Kash” for the story hour event. He recalled his boyhood in Tuscaloosa where classmates and teachers were intolerant of his effeminate manner. Brasfield’s choice of a story to read was “Stella Brings The Family” about a little girl with two dads. His hope was to communicate to the young audience that it’s okay to be different.
Next, there are people whose careers grew in the shadow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. Then, there’s Nelson Malden. The Montgomery barber was going about his job in 1955, when a new customer came in. The man said, during his haircut, that he was the new pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Malden worshipped. That new customer was Martin Luther King, junior. The title “Make it like a butterfly” refers to how King liked Malden to trim his trademark mustache. Their relationship gave the veteran barber a chance to witness history, from the first day of the Montgomery bus boycott, to afternoons where King would occupy a seat in the waiting room at the barber shop, and hand write his speeches. Malden also remembers hearing the news, between customers, of King’s assassination.
And finally, Dr. King’s crusade began in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott, and it almost ended in March of 1968 in the rural town of Greensboro two weeks before he was struck down in Memphis. The Ku Klux Klan learned King was speaking in the town of Eutaw and sent an armed hit squad to kill him. The civil rights leader hid overnight in a safe house owned by a childhood friend of his wife, Coretta Scott King. APR listeners heard from Theresa Burroughs about that long night and her less-than-favorable first impression of MLK when Coretta Scott introduced her fiancée to her friend. “He wasn’t impressive at all,” recalled Burroughs. “Not what I expected.”
SCRIPT-- Drag Queen Story Hour
Alabama Public Radio
Anchor Intro: The cities of Mobile and New Orleans now have more in common than Mardi Gras and Jazz. The public libraries in both towns now offer a unique twist on story hour for children. APR’s Pat Duggins headed to the port city for its inaugural event. He brings us the voices of protesters on both sides of the issue of inclusion for Mobile’s LGBTQ community. This story was covered as a collaboration between Alabama Public Radio and the University of Alabama's Center for Public Television, where Duggins worked alongside a student video team.
“Jesus saves liars! Jesus saves sodomites! Jesus saves child molesters!”
By all appearances, this isn't your average Saturday at Mobile's Ben May Public Library. Police today are setting barricades to separate two groups of protesters. You’re hearing from an unofficial spokesman on one side. People on the other side of the argument prefer to let their signs do the talking…
“My sign says there’s room for everyone under the reading rainbow,” says Elizabeth Denton. “Well, one of them says Jesus had two dads, which I guess is self-explanatory," says Leeann Taylor. “Children should live, laugh, love, and learn. They should not judge, hate, and be suppressed,” says Zachary Meers.
“For us, it’s just a few miles away from where I’m sitting in this studio, there’s a library that’s hosting this events,” says Pat Robertson. The issue that drew these protesters to Mobile’s public library had previously raised the ire of the televangelist. ”It’s called Drag Queen Story Hour. Give me a break.”
“You don’t have to agree with it. But, you don’t have to be…rude,” says Wade Brasfield. He lives about a mile and a half from the library and today’s commotion. He didn’t cause the ruckus but he is in the middle of it… “We can be family friendly. I mean, just because I do a drag show in a bar one night, doesn’t mean I can’t teach an art class to kids the next day.” Brasfield is getting ready to read during Mobile’s first ever Drag Queen Story Hour… “We just want to read stories to children," he says. "We just want to be sparkly and fun, and give them something to ooh and ahh at, and read them some stories and, everybody have a great time.”
And, in full drag.
In Brasfield’s case that means his stage persona of Khloe Kash… “Anytime you go to an event like this, you arrive ready. You never know what’s going to happen…”
“Hello everyone, and thank you for coming!” says Rainbow Mobile Executive Director Bryan Fuenmayor before a crowd of supporters at the library. “This is so awesome, I am so happy you all came here!” The LGBTQ support group arranged today’s Drag Queen Story Hour. Fuenmayor says the library agreed to host the event because, he asked… “We’ve done events here in the past. We’ve had a writers’ club, and a movie night. All it took was submitting an application and we got a response back, and that was it…” “I think it’s incredible, it’s very encouraging," Fuenmayor told the crowd. "I was not expecting this many folks. But, yeah, I’m glad everyone’s here, all this positivity, and happiness, it’s incredible.”
“This isn’t about the gay issue, okay?” says Lou Campomenosi. He's is with the opposition protesters, many of whom carried bibles along with their signs. The former Marine is an organizer of Mobile’s Common Sense Tea Party Movement. ‘ “Just the long and the short of it, is that we just think this is an age inappropriate reading to be doing for kids three to eight years old. If I wanted to bring a Playboy bunny to do a reading of Fifty Shades of Gray, do you think for a second that they’d let us do that? I don’t think so.”
“It was something I personally had never seen before, so I jumped at it," says Wade Brasfield. "I’ll read stories to kids, like sure.” Back at Wade Brasfield’s home, he says beyond the wig, the dress, and the make-up…it’s the children’s stories and their make believe settings that can teach life lessons that’s the point… “That being self-love, acceptance, equality," says Brasfield. "You know, there are so many things…” Take the Dr. Seuss classic “the Sneeches."
"Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars. The Plain-Belly Sneetches-Had none upon thars,“ reads eight year old Indie Briscoe of Birmingham. “Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small. You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.” Writer Theodor Seuss Geisel (that’s Dr. Seuss”) wrote this book in 1961 as the civil rights movement reached its height. It’s a made-up story about discrimination between Sneeches with stars on their bellies and those who didn’t … “But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches. With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort, we’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”
“Didn’t they all, at the end, take all their stars off,” asks Brasfield. And, just weren’t normal at that point? Like, didn’t everybody go to the party?”
In fact, that’s how it ends. Brasfield says, unlike the Sneeches, he didn’t go to the party a lot while growing up in his hometown of Tuscaloosa. He was gay and many of his schoolmates and teachers were intolerant. Brasfield says that makes stories of inclusion especially meaningful to him… “I don’t care where you’re from, or who you are, what your background is. Who are you? When everybody is gone, and there’s nothing to distract you. Who are you, then?”
“Make no mistake, that this is an indoctrination of children into an alternative lifestyle,” says Common Cause organizer Pete Riehm. Show time at the library is drawing near, and Riehm is firing up opponents of Drag Queen Story Hour. He’s not preacher, but his comments have the feel of a sermon. “San Francisco’s LGBT community is looking to establish a beach head in the Deep South…”
And, it’s not just among critics of today’s event where emotions sound raw… “The reason I got involved in this is because I have LGBTQ kids,” says Kimberly Wright-Knowles. She isn’t with Rainbow Mobile, but she did help organize sign toting supporters that now almost encircle the outside of the library. Wright-Knowles says everyone’s not here just to support the story hour. “As a momma bear, when I see people saying hateful things about my children, because they’re my children, I’m not going to tolerate it anymore.”
“I am ready! We’re ready to have a great time today!” says Wade Brasfield as he arrives at the library in an iridescent blue dress and a wig streaked in blue. And, he’s has company…
“Hello, I’m Champagne Monroe!”
Over two hundred children showed up for today’s reading, so Rainbow Mobile asked Champagne Monroe to join Brasfield in drag for a second round of storytelling. Brasfield as Khloe Kash is the lead off… “You guys excited?” asks Brasfield to the cheers of the audience. His first book is titled “Stella Brings The Family,” about a little girl with two dads… “The big day arrived. Daddy, Papa, Nona, Uncle Bruno, Aunt Gloria, and Cousin Lucy went with Stella to school,” read Brasfield. “She had so many guests, she hoped it would be okay…” Today’s Drag Queen Story Hour ended with no arrests and no problems. Now, that Mobile's first event is in the books, Brasfield says he's hearing suggestions of having the same kind of story hour in his hometown of Tuscaloosa. He says he'll think about it, but he's not sure how it would go...
“The end,” finished Brasfield.
SCRIPT-- "Make it like a butterfly..."
This Wednesday marks fifty years since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. All month long, the APR news team is examining Dr. King’s work in Alabama and his impact here. The civil rights leader inspired his supporters with the Montgomery bus boycott, his letter from the Birmingham Jail, and by leading voting rights marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. APR’s Pat Duggins reports on one witness to Dr. King’s earliest work in the civil rights movement, and the place where the two men met...
There are people whose work in the civil rights movement began at the side of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. For example, the Reverend Jesse Jackson visited the campus of the University of Alabama to speak to a student group. He was a member of King’s staff when the civil rights leader was assassinated fifty years ago.
Others got to know King in their own way…
“He was more concerned about his mustache than his haircut. He always liked his mustache to be up off the lip, like a butterfly. He would tell me, make it like a butterfly this time,” says Nelson Malden. He's eighty four years old, retired, and still lives in Montgomery. Malden made his living as a barber since he was fourteen. He sold the barber shop he and his brother ran years ago. But, that doesn’t keep him dropping by, and picking up a trimmer when he’s needed.
Malden recalls one day back in 1953, when a new customer walked in…
“When I finished cutting his hair, I gave him the mirror, and asked if he liked his haircut," he recalls. "And he told me ‘pretty good.’ And when you tell a barber ‘pretty good,’ that was an insult.”
That new customer was Martin Luther King, Junior.
“When I first started cutting his hair, I had no idea that I be cutting one of the more historical persons of the twenty century," says Malden.
King became a regular in Malden’s barber chair in 1953. Within two years, he was making waves in the civil rights movement, Dr. King helped organized the Montgomery Bus boycott following the arrest of Rosa Parks. She was jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white man.
“Oh yeah you could tell…" recalls Malden of the boycott. "Cause the first day the boycott started, we was in the barber shop, and one of the customers said ‘here come the bus.’”
Nelson Malden and his customers got a front row seat to a moment in civil rights history…
“And, we all ran to window, to see… there was a black man standing on the corner, across the street from the barber shop," he says. "All the customers jumped out of the chairs, and the barbers stopped cutting, and we all ran to the window to see whether the black man was going to get on the bus. We could see the bus pull up, the man was still standing there. And we all said ‘oh, lordy, we thought Joe Lewis knocked out Max Schmelling!”
Having a nationally known civil rights leader for a customer did include the occasional drawback. King was also head pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Malden worshipped. Malden says one night he and his boss at that time really wanted the fried chicken from a certain restaurant, so they ordered takeout from the side door. Blacks weren’t allowed in the front door.
“So, this particular Friday night we was standing on the sidewalk," recalled Malden. "And I looked up the street and I said 'hey, Warren, I said that looks like Reverend King’s car coming. And he said ‘sure, is.”’
That presented a problem because of a message King had just delivered from the pulpit at Dexter… “We should stop going to the backdoors of these white restaurants. He said you dehumanize yourself for doing that," says Malden. "He caught us at this white restaurant, going to the side door. We couldn’t go in the front door” Malden’s boss had just ordered, which left him with a tough decision to make… “He had to make up his mind on the split second on whether he’s going to go back and get the chicken and whether he was going to be embarrassed. So, he went back and got the chicken."
King watched the whole episode play out, and then slowly drove off. Malden says the next time King came in for a haircut, it was a little tense…
“So, when he got in the chair, and he said “how was the chicken?” I said ‘how did you know that was chicken?” He said ‘some of my members gave me some one time, and it sure was good.’ I said you better stop eating that white folk food, it’s gonna make you sick, He said ‘I see you pretty healthy.”
For close to a decade, King would be a regular at Malden’s shop and not just for a haircut. The civil rights icon would just sit off to the side by himself, to read or work on his latest speech or sermon. Scribbled thoughts that King didn’t like were wadded up and tossed into a nearby trash can. One of Malden’s big regrets is that he didn’t keep any of those notes…
“If I had sense enough at that time, knowing he would be that famous—If I kept some of them notes, I probably me able to buy me a Porsche," says Malden. Even after King left Montgomery in 1960, he would drop by for an occasional trim. His last haircut with Malden was a few months before his trip to Memphis on April 4, 1968… The news broke while Malden was giving Richmond Smiley a haircut. He was a deacon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, just a few blocks from the barber shop…
“I was cutting Richmond Smiley hair. And that afternoon, the telephone rang and Richmond’s wife asked is Richmond there? I told her he’s in the chair. So, tell him Reverend King’s been killed. And he leaned forward and about fell out of the chair. I grabbed his head and out a cold towel to it, and brought him back until he calmed down.”
Pictures of famous African Americans still hang on the wall of Malden Brothers Barber Shop. Malden says King’s assassination came as no surprise… “The last sermon he preached at Memphis, about he had been to the mountain top and looked over, so it didn’t shock me all that much that he had been killed… A picture of King remains on Malden’s barber shop wall, where he relied on one man to get his mustache just right.
SCRIPT-- "We kept him safe..."
This Wednesday marks fifty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. All month long, the Alabama Public Radio news team has been examining Dr. King’s work and impact here in Alabama. You met a photographer from Montgomery who chronicled the civil rights icon. APR guest reporter Ousmane Sagara of the West African nation of Mali reported on how his countrymen remember Dr. King. And, we examined how Alabama is one of only two states that celebrates the birthdays of Dr. King and Confederate General Robert E. Lee on the same day. Now, APR’s Pat Duggins visits the city of Greensboro where a little known standoff took place fifty years ago this week, just days before King was killed…
Students from Hale County High school are heading into a small shotgun style house. This home sits on a dirt road along Main Street in the town of Greensboro, about an hour south of Tuscaloosa. It’s a museum now, but back in the late 1960’s, it was a safe house for civil rights activists, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. The relationship between King, the safe house, and its owner didn’t get off on the right foot…
“He was not impressive at all. Not what I expected...you know," says Teresa Burroughs. She's eighty eight years old. Her home sits next door to the safe house museum. She owns both. Burroughs says Martin Luther King, Junior just wasn’t the kind of man she thought one of her best friends would marry…
"I just imagined her with a football player...probably six foot something, you know. Martin was not like that."
The friend Burroughs thought would marry a football player was named Coretta Scott. The future Mrs. King was born in the town Marion, about half hour east of Greensboro. As young ladies, Burroughs and Scott would talk about boys, and about the future. Burroughs says there was someone her friend said she wanted to grow up to be like… opera star Marion Anderson.
"She (Coretta Scott) had a beautiful voice… She used to say I’m going to another Marion Anderson. And I'm gonna tour the world...and sing. And you're gonna to read about me, cause I'm gonna be a star. That was the way she was talking. And, I said "alright."
"She gave up her dream, and took on his," she says.
Burroughs' impression of Martin Luther King, Junior got better, though. Once he did what many people say he did best…
"The fact is...that freedom is never given voluntarily by the oppressor..." said King to an audience in New England.
"The spirit seemed to enter his body and came out through his voice," recalled Burroughs. "And, something in it...moves you, moves a person. After we got to know each other better...he was alright."
King spoke before Union healthcare workers in New England in March of 1968. It wasn’t the only talk he gave that month. Ten days later he was in Eutaw, Alabama urging supporters to elect black candidates to Congress. Burroughs says after his talk, King headed straight to Greensboro to stay in the safe house.
"It was terrible night, it was an awful night," she remembered.
The reason was because the Ku Klux Klan heard King was in Alabama. An armed group of Klansmen spent the night looking for him in Greensboro…
"They would drive slowly by. And, you could see them inside the cars. And you could see the barrels of their guns. They had the lights on the inside of the cars, and they had the lights off on the outside. They knew he was in here. And, we kept him safe."
King left the next morning. For Teresa Burroughs and King’s supporters in Greensboro, the feeling the victory lasted just two weeks. She remembered hearing the news over the radio when King was assassinated in Memphis. That’s why she made the safe house into a museum. She wants people remember what happened here fifty years ago, her long after she’s gone.