Description:
Americans coming of age in the 1960s faced a society in flux: attitudes about sex, race, and politics were radically changing; revolution was in the air and the nation seemed fractured, unable to find a common cause to unite its fragmented people. Author Deborah E. McDowell grew up near Birmingham, Alabama, the crucible of the civil rights movement, and the remarkable Leaving Pipe Shop is a memoir of those years. What distinguishes Pipe Shop from similar books is McDowell's emphasis on the everyday lives of ordinary people inhabiting that time and place. Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and George Wallace make only cameo appearances in this account; the main players on McDowell's stage are the members of her family, her church, and her neighborhood. "Pipe Shop" refers to the black working-class neighborhood in Bessemer (just outside of Birmingham) where Deborah McDowell grew up. Her book begins with her return to Pipe Shop to investigate her father's death, part of the class-action lawsuit filed by victims of asbestos poisoning against the steel mill where he once worked. McDowell's trip home elicits plenty of memories--how her neighbors reacted to bus boycotts and boycotts of white-owned businesses, going to hear Martin Luther King speak, and the murder of her own activist pastor. Leaving Pipe Shop is an evocative portrait of one African American community's struggle to cope with the changes that swept through a nation.
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