The Wickedest City in America with Tammy Ingram
I am very pleased to welcome Dr. Tammy Ingram to the show! Tammy is a historian who publishes on southern politics, crime, and punishment. She received her PhD from Yale University and is currently an associate professor in History; Urban Studies; Women’s & Gender Studies; and Crime, Law, & Society at the College of Charleston. She has also held positions as the Kirk Visiting Professor at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Gilder Lehrman Center and the Department of History at Yale University.
Her first book, Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the American South (UNC Press, 2014) received awards from the Georgia Historical Society, the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council, and the Business History Conference. Today we’ll be discussing her forthcoming book from Harvard University Press: The Wickedest City in America: The Violent Reign of Organized Crime in the Jim Crow South.
Okay - so this is a story about my home state (Alabama) in the mid-twentieth century and I had no idea about any of it. So I promise…reading through Tammys work on the subject was, shall we say, illuminated to be sure. I hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation as much as I did. We discuss:
Why this is such an obscure story
What completed Tammy to research and write this story and how we as historians tend to stumble into our subjects
The opening scenes depicting the 1954 murder of Albert Patterson, who had just been elected to the Democratic primary for Alabama Attorney General
Jim Crow segregation…and how it informs this study
The proximity of Fort Benning, desegregation of the military, and the Jim Crow South
The political culture of local government and state rights…and organized crime (this is really really interesting stuff here…)
How the local citizenry looked the other way
Some of the more shocking details (I’m not giving up the deets - you have to listen)
The so-called “cleanup narrative” and the problem with erasing history
The legacy of the cleanup and the failure to resolve radicalized ideas about crime
John Patterson and law and order
Popular culture - this story has been optioned by the television biz (yay).
Have a listen…
When the book and eventually the television show comes out I will be posting like crazy…and I am sure you will want check them both. Until then, just listen and learn. Be sure to follow Tammy on Twitter and we can keep the conversation going on social media. AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.
With compliments,
Keith
Murder in Phenix City!!