Bloody Tuesday: The Untold Story of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa

Giggie (history, Univ. of Alabama; After Redemption) spearheads oral history projects documenting segregation. His latest book examines what happened on June 9, 1964, in Tuscaloosa, AL. That’s when police, KKK members, and deputized citizens violently attacked more than 600 people who were inside First African Baptist Church. The latter group was preparing to protest a new courthouse that featured segregated facilities. The Reverend Linton of Howard & Linton Barbershop, who offered shelter that day, now recounts the horrors he witnessed. He encouraged Giggie to tell the story; this book is the result. The courthouse eventually integrated, but the community remained traumatized and called that day Bloody Tuesday. It became one of the most violent scenes in the entire civil rights movement. But racist violence in Tuscaloosa wasn’t limited to one day; it remained an ingrained institution, with Black people living under oppression and an imposed loss of opportunities, education, and life.