I recently had the privilege of talking with Professor David Beito after the Tuscaloosa, Alabama Motorhome Diaries Meetup, hosted by our mutual friend Alina and Patrick Coryell. Professor Beito teaches history at the University of Alabama and is the author of several great books that focuses on civil rights and voluntary society:
- From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
- Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During the Great Depression
- Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power
He also co-edited The Voluntary City which provides a exhaustive overview of what a voluntary society would look like once governments are no longer allowed to exsist.
He is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and is associated with the Institute for Humane Studies. As chairman of the Alabama State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Professor Beito has heard of cities using their force to remove poor black families from their homes to make way for development. One of those stories was of Jimmy McCall who Professor Beito wrote about for the Tuscaloosa News:
What is happening in the cradle of the modern civil rights movement? Jimmy McCall would like to know. ‘It was more my dream house,’ he laments, ‘and the city tore it down … It reminds me of how they used to mistreat black people in the Old South.’ In 1955, Rosa Parks took on the whole system of Jim Crow by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus. Today, McCall is waging a lonely battle against the same city government for another civil right: the freedom to build a home on his own land.
David Beito put the Motorhome Diaires in contact with Mr. McCall who was kind enough to tell us his story below:
For more, check out David Beito’s profile on Wikipedia and read his blog posts at the History New Network. He has also writen for Reason here and here.