Opinion: Defending Memphis requires faith in the place
For a city reeling from trauma, “Nothing is normal. Nothing is right. You’re not yourselves and really, neither is anyone around you. Maybe not anyone in all of Memphis.”
Phillip Tutor: The Bibb Graves quandary at JSU
Bibb Graves was a Klansman, and his name adorns Jacksonville State University’s most prominent building, and there’s no running from that uncomfortable truth. It is what it is. But it’s complicated. Morally, historically, pragmatically.
Phillip Tutor: Sandra Sudduth’s quest for justice for all in Jacksonville
Jacksonville means the world to Sandra Sudduth, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t love her back. But Jacksonville’s festering issue -- the fate of the Confederate monument towering above the city’s public square — isn’t mere politics to her. Its relocation would say what the city thus far hasn’t.
Phillip Tutor: Lucy Bryan, a little girl so ‘full of life’
The sun would rise and light would peek through the windowpanes and a squall of blonde hair and attitude would christen the day with all the grace of a bullhorn. Resistance was futile. Lucy Bryan, a 3-year-old force of nature, had places to be and people to see.
Phillip Tutor: From welder to police chief in Anniston
When he was 23, back before flecks of gray decorated his beard and his yearning to be a cop proved irresistible, Nick Bowles welded doors in a shop in Atlanta. The pay wasn’t bad. Better than the foundry jobs and factory jobs and construction jobs he’d already tried. “Poor Southern jobs,” he calls them.
Phillip Tutor: Black Annistonians and the City Council
Fifty-one years ago, an Anniston dentist who had tried to become the city’s police commissioner — and failed — gave politics another go. Whether persistent or stubborn, he this time sought a City Council seat. Gordon Rodgers Jr., though, was Black.
Phillip Tutor: Anniston’s Ward 4 election is over, finally
I live in Anniston’s Ward 4. And I am ashamed.
Phillip Tutor: The true meaning behind Jacksonville’s monument
A few years before the Confederacy’s birth, a census-taker named W.P. Amorine traveled the backroads of Benton County and counted its people. His total: 20,010. Of those, 4,078 were enslaved.
Phillip Tutor: The ticking clock on Alabama’s Confederate memorials
The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act was supposed to shield the state’s forest of Confederate monuments from the damnable people who want them excised from public spaces.
Phillip Tutor: An Anniston man’s quest to feed the needy
Dan Sawyer cooks a mean smoked meatloaf. How do I know? He says it’s good, and I’m not sure there’s a reason to argue with him.
Phillip Tutor: Why is Partridge speaking out? Because he must
Bill Partridge, the Oxford police chief, has seen the video. Of course he’s seen the video. Everyone’s seen it.
Phillip Tutor: The pandemic’s pall over Easter Sunday
Come Sunday morning, the Rev. Roland Brown won’t ascend the pulpit or sit in his office or greet people at the door of the sanctuary, the hallowed place to which Christians flock for words of comfort and strength. He won’t even drive to his church.
Phillip Tutor: RMC patient shows Alabama what’s possible
McKenzee Webster gave us hope. She didn’t walk out of Regional Medical Center last Friday, she didn’t tell us what is possible. She showed us.
Phillip Tutor: A chaplain’s role during a pandemic
Jim Wilson talks with the slow, pastoral comfort you’d expect from a hospital chaplain. His voice is soothing, like a summer shower. You’re wise to listen when he speaks, and on this he’s adamant: “Our whole community has been disrupted by this.”
Phillip Tutor: Compassion vs. public safety at the CDP
And so, it’s done. In an astonishing 24 hours that featured a phone call to President Trump in Air Force One, Anniston went from being a coronavirus patient destination to one of two American cities to emphatically say, “No, they’re not coming here.”
Phillip Tutor: Death, funerals and compassion during the pandemic
The cruelty of this global pandemic is so profound, so inhumanely sinister, that its touch isn’t limited to those it kills. It’s even cruel to the families of those who die from something other than COVID-19. Consider how Jon Smith spent Tuesday.
Phillip Tutor: An Alabama nurse’s unlikely path to New York
Ethan Suttle is a sturdy guy with a bushy beard and a life story decorated with all things Alabama. He’s from St. Clair County. He graduated from the University of Alabama. He ended up in east Alabama years ago because “a woman dragged me up to Gadsden.”
Phillip Tutor: A pandemic’s ‘worst-case scenario’ for abuse victims
The victims. They’re always on Susan Shipman’s mind. The victims of sexual assault, of domestic violence. Those who often are voiceless, whose options are few.
Phillip Tutor: Far from home, waiting for the pandemic to end
Camaron Harry hails from Durban, the South African port city blessed with pristine beaches that sits tight on the Indian Ocean. It’s 9,000 miles from Calhoun County — roughly four times the distance between Los Angeles and New York City. His family is quarantined there during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Harry isn’t.
Phillip Tutor: From Anniston to Brooklyn, amid a pandemic
Emily Keys treks across the East River at the end of her 24-hour shifts from Brooklyn to her Manhattan apartment. Rooftop melodies played on a trumpet greet her. “It’s amazing,” she says. “I look forward to it every night.”
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