“Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Movement”
John Archibald
Alfred A. Knopf
304 pp.
$28.00 (Hardcover)
Pulitzer Prize–Winning Alabama Journalist Writes Family Memoir
Alabamians have come to know journalist John Archibald as an outspoken, bold liberal commentator for “The Birmingham News” and AL.com. His columns won him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2018.
In this exploration of family and history, Archibald goes on a quest, after his father’s death, to understand his dad’s life as a minister, especially as it relates to the era of The Civil Rights Movement.
In some respects, we are reminded of Diane McWhorter’s “Carry Me Home,” in which she fears her father may have been more active against civil rights than she had known.
Archibald’s father and grandfather were both Methodist ministers—good, hard-working and devout Methodist ministers who did a lot of good in this world. No one quarrels with that.
It might have been a temptation in discussing them to veer towards hagiography.
Archibald emphatically avoids that!
In 1963, the year of John’s birth, The Movement came to town; Bull Connor was in charge, dogs and fire hoses were unleashed, hundreds of people were hurt, children filled the jails.
Dr. King was arrested and composed his famous letter in which he expresses his grave disappointment in local liberals and especially local clergy. They were men of good will, granted, but their silent goodwill was not nearly enough. At certain moments in history, one must speak out and take action, not remain “silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”
Against the anguish of King’s letter, Archibald studies his father’s sermons from that era, and finds them sadly wanting. While horrific events unfolded in the early sixties, black homes dynamited, the 16th St. Baptist church bombed, murders in Marion and the atrocities at Selma, Rev. Archibald’s sermons make no references to all that.
He continues to preach “love and devotion, and the need for Jesus and study.”
Archibald says, “…it breaks my heart.” “It’s killing me. Why have a pulpit if you will not use your voice in all the ways you can?”
As he moves through the chronology of violent events and compares those dates to the subjects of his father’s sermons, Archibald’s pain is intense, palpable, in fact can seem excessive, expressed occasionally and regrettably in language that cannot be used on radio or newspapers.
Over time, the sermons become slightly more topical, especially if read as parables.
And the Rev. does a lot better on gay rights and gay marriage, especially after John’s brother Murray comes out.
Aside from the overly cautious sermons, Rev. Archibald seems to have been an exemplary person—devoted clergyman, scout leader, fine husband and wise, generous, understanding father. John’s childhood in several Alabama towns was idyllic, with summer Methodist camp, family vacations, loving siblings, a wonderful mother. His sin, as Archibald sees it, was “the sin of obliviousness, of self-absorption and privilege.”
It may be presumptuous to judge Archibald’s pain, but I think he is too hard on his dad. Before the arc of the story eases towards balance and Rev. Archibald’s many virtues, this reader became irritated with Archibald’s outrage. The Rev. was not a civil rights hero, but those were perilous days. Dr. King was justified in his disappointment, but preachers who spoke too soon or too pointedly would lose their pulpits, their opportunity to speak. Archibald acknowledges that “it is harsh to judge a man in another place, another age.” Still, he says, he “allowed [himself] to hope for better, to expect better.”
When children misbehave, their parents might ask them, “What if everybody behaved like that?”
In the case of the Rev. Robert Archibald, if everyone had been as virtuous and loving as he, it would have been a much better world.
Don Noble’s newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors.
