The Reality of Alabama: A Guest Post by Alexis Okeowo

Peering into the inner world of one of the most misunderstood U.S. states, Alexis Okeowo paints a tapestry of perspectives on the history of Alabama and the home that it has offered her. Read on for an exclusive essay from Alexis on writing Blessings and Disasters.

As I write in my new book Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama, my home state loves nothing more than looking back and romanticizing the past — something it shares in common with the rest of the country these days. But I was genuinely surprised when, in 2020, the call to stop doing so was just as loud in Alabama as it was in New York, and several Confederate monuments were either taken down by the people, or by cities. Names of schools and streets were changed. Montgomery, my hometown, elected its first Black mayor around the same time. After the federal appeal of Roe v. Wade, Alabamians elected a pro-abortion female Democrat to the state legislature, flipping a Republican seat. Now, a conservative backlash has swept the country, yet that energy is still there, and I see the promise of Alabama in its varied peoples, whose visions of the region have pushed and pulled the place forward whether it was ready or not.

The reality of Alabama, of the Deep South, has never been just Black and white: it is also Indian and Latino. It is immigrant. All of those groups rightfully claim Alabama as home, a place they stayed in or came to for stability, family, and opportunity. Even as a native Alabamian, one who left but will always consider the state home, I learned so many things I never knew while researching and reporting this book. My main question was why people stayed in a place that so many others have written off, or left, or suffered in, or barely survived? I found that answer from different groups who have fought to stay there. From the tiny tribe of Creek who managed to stay in the state despite most of their brethren being forced onto the Trail of Tears, to the Latino migrants who now power Alabama’s agriculture industry. To my own parents, Nigerian immigrants who met as students at a historically black university in the 1970s, finding each other and friends while existing in the racial limbo of being Black but foreign during a turbulent time.

Outsiders still define Alabama by its past, too, but it’s to their and the state’s detriment. Capturing the potential — political and otherwise — of Alabama, and the South, will be impossible without recognizing its modern complexity. After all, it’s a place that produced me: a Black child of West African immigrants who has lived around the world and is proud and appreciative of my Southern beginnings.