Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America
Chanel Serra
Hodges University
ENG 1101
Professor Jeremy Pilarski
April 7, 2014
Abstract
The following report focuses on the literary work by author Frye Gaillard titled Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America, a book that outlines and presents a historical recounting of key events and anecdotal evidence of the Civil Rights Movement in the state of Alabama throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The book was published in 2004 by the University of Alabama Press in Tuscaloosa and extends to a full reading of 384 pages, inclusive of additional remarks, notes and other additional information. The book’s general price ranges from $32 to $40 for a new copy, depending on the selling source, and is cataloged with the following ISBN number: 978-0817313883.
In order to understand the claims and ideas presented by Gaillard, it is necessary to devote a brief discussion into the author’s experiential and academic background. Gaillard is a native of Mobile, Alabama (born in 1946) where he spent the majority of his youth before moving to Nashville, Tennessee, where he pursued an undergraduate degree in history at Vanderbilt University (Alabama Literary Landscape, 2009). According to the Office of Public Relations at the University of South Alabama, Gaillard’s experience as a writer was developed in the 1960s as a novice news reporter for several local newspapers. He was primarily interested and academically guided toward the issue and cause of civil rights that was unfolding at the time in the South. However, the substantial portion of his academic research on the Civil Rights Movement would not occur until the early 2000s, when he began compiling a variety of sources that would eventually comprise the backbone of Cradle of Freedom (Ekman, 2005). It is crucial to take into consideration Gaillard’s evolutionary progress as a writer,...