Below are books which are by Selmians, about Selma, or otherwise feature Selma – -divided by categories, and linked to my reviews of them at ReadingFreely. If you know of a Selma book not featured here, let me know!
Fiction:
Selma: A Novel of the Civil War, Val McGee.
The Other Side of the Bridge, Timothy H. Paul.
Architecture:
A Field Guide to Selma’s Architectural Legacy, Susan Besser
Histories:
Selma: A Bicentennial History, Alston Fitts. The most accessible and current history of Selma available. Dr. Fitts frequently contributed to the paper, shedding light on little-known Selma figures like Jeremiah Haralson, one of Selma’s early black politicians, and attacking myths.
Selma 1965: The March that Changed the South, Chuck Fager. For me, the definitive history of the Selma Movement.
Yesterday: Memories of Selma, C.C. Grayson. Grayson moved to Selma as a boy after the War, and lived through its rebounding from Yankee arson to become a leading city in the state. In the 1940s he began to submit pieces to the paper sharing his early memories.
Selmians of Note
Selma’s Mayor: Lessons Learned from the Queen City’s Native Son, Jenney Egertson
Personal Memoirs:
The Other Side of Selma, R.B. “Dickie” Williams. Williams was a young man from Monroeville who lived in Selma in the very early 1960s, working as a pharmacist at Swift Drugs. This book was the first title to stir my interest in learning about Selma as a place, a community. I was especially intrigued by his stories of the Hotel Albert, and have continued to research that hotel over the years.
Reporter, Al Benn. A Yankee transplant to the Queen City, Al found himself in Selma after informing his bosses at UPI that he wanted to go “where the action was”. In the 1960s, that meant the South. Reporter collects Al’s stories from his newspaper days, a great number of which were set in Selma. Al wrote for the Montgomery Advertiser nearly to his death in October 2023.
Ordinary, Average Guy: Memoirs of a Trailer Park Refugee, Michael Hankins. A memoir about growing up as an Air Force brat living in a series of trailers. There’s a strong Selma connection when Hankins covers his time living in Craig Trailer Park in ’59 – 62.
Odd Egg Editor, Kathryn Tucker Windham. A collection of newspaper pieces Windham did in her early days across Alabama, but with some Selma highlights.
Queen City Stories 