December 15, 2020
We’ve written our way through one helluva year. Every story, every writer, every photographer we’ve worked with through 2020 has helped to shape The Bitter Southerner, expand our readership, and tell an essential piece of this complex place we call the South. Thank you.
We hope these stories will impart gratitude for the things worth holding onto, the courage to discard the rotten things, and the strength to build better days ahead. (This is a paraphrase of Alice Walker’s response to Flannery O’Connor’s racism which Amy Alznauer wrote about in June. And yeah, we know, technically that link pushes us to 21. If you’ve been following us all year, you can probably think of even more stories you want to add to this list — and that’s a good thing!)
Story & Photographs by Chelsey Mae Johnson
The writing and photography in Chelsey Mae Johnson’s unexpected smash hit about the little-known and deeply-loved steamed sandwiches of East Tennessee present a perfect blend of nostalgia and realism, longing and disgust (ever read about sandwiches that taste like body odor?). If you missed this one, we suggest you unwrap and savor its steamy goodness right away.
Faye would nod toward us as the door clanged and holler out, “Hey girls. How’s your momma ’n’ ’em?”
“Momma says hi,” we’d say, barely looking up on our way to the candy aisle. We’d hand over a ten at the counter and head back up the hill with a heavy plastic bag smelling like fries, Styrofoam boxes squeaking with each step, a secret slab of Laffy Taffy tucked into the back pocket of my sister’s cutoffs. Occasionally my mom or aunt would spring for a burger — occasionally my mom’s friends made the trip out to our house just for that burger — but my sister and I never deviated: There was always a hoagie in that bag. Always ham and Swiss, on dark bread, mayo only. Always steamed.
Published January 15
Story by Beth Shelburne
Beth Shelburne wrote about a disquieting tour through the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the largest maximum-security prison in the nation. Her article illuminates, in excruciating detail, the history and experience of life within a prison the size of Manhattan.
“Two cents an hour is outrageous,” he says. “It takes three months of savings to buy a loaf of bread. But again, we made mistakes.” He shrugs and the room is still.
Published January 21
Over the years, Michael Adno has written several knock-out stories for us about his home state of Florida. In this one, he surveyed the Myakka River Valley and brought back the voices of people who are fighting against encroaching development. The Cavin Brothers’ photography of cattle in the mist will transport you to a Florida that seems more like the Wild West than the Sunshine State.
“My way of life is a slow way of life,” Ayech explained. “Tins cans, a string. That’s the way I’d put it.” She found purpose in her garden, in communion with what was around her, and at the periodic hootenannies down at the schoolhouse. She cautioned that the ways of life so intricately tied to these acres would not be compatible with the ways of life folks seek in a hamlet-style development. The commonplace use of guns to kill hogs, fire to manage the prairie, or the lack of light were things she felt they wouldn’t accept. The sound of her roosters announcing the first arcs of light or the sound cows make when they go to breed seemed incompatible with culs-de-sac.
Published January 28
By Sayaka Matsuoka
In February, Sayaka Matsuoka wrote a profile of Charles Bess for the Triad City Beat (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point, North Carolina) and she asked if we could give it a larger audience. Bess worked at Woolworth’s lunch counter in February 1960 during the Greensboro sit-ins and has a story that the whole world needs to know. We are honored that we could share it on the 60th anniversary of that historic moment in the civil rights movement.
“Here’s the thing,” Bess says. “They didn’t move. Nobody could understand that. They were just teenagers. It really took the younger guys to get it to boost off because at the time, the older people were afraid to do that. The older folks were set in their own ways. These four guys, they were not hungry for just food, they were hungry for a change.”
Published February 11
Story by Jonathan Olivier | Photographs by Rory Doyle
With music, stories, audio recordings, and subheads in English, Louisiana French, and Kouri-Vini Jonathan Olivier wove together a tapestry of the people of his home region of south Louisiana, “as diverse as a bowl of gumbo.” In a region where it was once forbidden to speak French, he tells a story of resilience, community, and reclamation.
Published March 10
Words & Photos by Terra Fondriest
Terra Fondriest’s intimate photographs and essay about the relationships she’s formed with the land and people of her adopted home in Arkansas helped provide a visual rest and sense of expansiveness as many of us were confined in our mobility and longing for wide open spaces.
This Ozark Life project is a lot of things for me: a way to get to know the people around us, a way to record this time and place from my perspective for the history books, and a way to pursue a personal challenge. But, perhaps the reason that motivates me the most is connecting the Ozark culture to the life I used to live in the Chicago suburbs. By seeing moments that are totally normal in the Ozarks, moments that make me smile, and realizing how quirky those would look to a person living outside this area, I can relate our mountain world to other people.
Published March 24
Photographs by Jamie Harmon | Story by Jesse Davis
Jesse Davis, a staff writer for the Memphis Flyer, was so enamored with the work of photographer Jamie Harmon, who took to the streets and asked his neighbors to stand for portraits of life under lockdown, that he wrote an essay which, paired with Harmon’s photography, summed up so much from this year and needed to be seen well beyond Memphis.
Perhaps this pandemic and our response to it will, like a fever burning off infection, help a nation infatuated with the ideal of rugged individualism accept that the world is interconnected, and only growing more so. After the cloud of coronavirus passes, whether we return with gusto to hugs and handshakes, or grasp a new greeting, there is hope that, however we greet each other, it will be with the warmth of family.
Published April 14
Story by Caleb Johnson | Photographs by Irina Zhorov
Caleb Johnson and Irina Zhorov delivered this profile of (now) 91-year-old scientist and retired Harvard professor E.O. Wilson who started gathering insects during his Alabama childhood. It’s a rare story of hope and honesty about our rapidly changing planet and our role in protecting it.
Scientists conceive of time differently than us layfolk. Millenia rather than days, centuries as opposed to minutes. E.O. Wilson is no exception. He assures me it isn’t too late to avoid an Age of Loneliness. He is also known for popularizing the term biophilia, or the innate pleasure we take in the presence of other organisms.
Published April 21
By Jim Barger Jr.
Before he was murdered in February, Ahmaud Arbery was a Sapelo descendant, loved by his family and friends, a teammate, and a man who ran for the joy of it. Jim Barger, Jr.’s essay illuminated not only Arbery’s life, his roots in the Georgia coast, and the people that knew and loved him but also the need for collective accountability to dismantle the structures that led to his murder.
“I started saying ‘I run with Maud’ because I know I don’t have the endurance to run this race by myself. People thought I was saying I was running for Ahmaud, but that’s not it. Ahmaud was running with me. I say, ‘I run with Maud,’ because I’m tapping into his spirit and his endurance to help me outrun this anger, this injustice, and to finish this race; because we have a long way to go before our children are safe. They have murdered our kids before. Now, they have murdered Ahmaud.” He pauses, searching for the breath that escapes him. “And you know as well as I do that they will murder again.” — Arbery’s high school football coach, Jason Vaughn.
Published May 14
Story by Nikesha Elise Williams
From 1935 up to the early 1960s, American Beach was a “place for recreation and relaxation, without humiliation” for Black people. From Anta Madjiguène Peya Fall Ndiaye (renamed Anna Kingsley) born into a royal family in Senegal in 1793, to the uncounted souls drowned in the Atlantic’s watery grave, to Florida’s first Black millionaire Abraham Lincoln Lewis, and environmental activist MaVynee Osun Elizabeth Betsch, and more, Nikesha Elise Williams tells the stories of the people who made, and are working to preserve, American Beach.
The story of American Beach is an American story, and like all American stories, its beginning — whether acknowledged or not — is slavery.
Published May 19
Story & Photographs by Jordan Blumetti
“Sheriff Mike Chitwood needs a new knee.” That first sentence of Jordan Blumetti’s profile of a Volusia County sheriff working to transform policing from the inside out rang with terrifying irony on the morning of May 26 when we published this story. The world was reeling from the collective horror of George Floyd’s public lynching under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer the evening before. Chitwood’s knee hurt from riding his bicycle so much (choosing that over the increasing trend toward militarized vehicles in policing). His work to call out corruption and challenge old boy networks offers some hope for a different kind of policing.
Published May 26
Story by Josina Guess | Video & Photographs by Darnell Wilburn
When Jericho Brown won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in May, it was a burst of good news in a terrible spring of 2020. Josina Guess wrote about his life and poetry and asked questions about the intersections of violence, disease, and racism. Be sure to watch Darnell Wilburn’s exquisite recording of Brown reciting “Foreday in the Morning.”
“People are interested in making parallels to the ways in which these illnesses, these viruses, these diseases have made it clear who in our culture and who in our society is most vulnerable and who the society leaves vulnerable. I would actually prefer that we look at things not as a parallel, that we look at things as a continuum and that we understand that; whether it is by bullet, or by disease, or when I think about the murder of Troy Davis, by execution. People use diseases in order to somehow further the cause that they already have. And it's a cause of hatred. You know, there are many ways to commit violence, and you know, only one of them is our fist, right? It's par for the course. I wish I could say I was surprised. I'm shocked, but not surprised.” — Jericho Brown
Published June 2
By Cynthia Tucker
In January, when John Lewis was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, we asked Cynthia Tucker if she would start writing about his life so that we could have a remembrance of him ready for when the time came. She turned in a draft in February that we set aside, thankful that he was still with us. In early June, she asked if she could revise it to include the uprisings across the country and Lewis’s voice into that movement.
His undying hope for America lies not in any sense of its imminent perfection but rather in his conviction that the ‘beloved community’ will one day come to fruition only if those who are committed to justice and equality keep on keeping on, one step at a time, no matter how hot the sun, no matter how back-breaking the work, no matter how brutal the forces on the other side. That’s his legacy, and it is a fitting response to these Trump-addled times.
What was intended to be a remembrance was revised and published in the present-tense in mid-June. Lewis died one month later, on July 17. We are glad we could give Lewis his flowers while he was living and that his spirit and wisdom are guiding us still, in these present and future times.
Published June 16
Essay by Hannah L. Drake
In July, Hannah L. Drake wrote about the fight for justice for Breonna Taylor and her own experience of life in Louisville, Kentucky.
Louisville has been my home for the past 22 years. It is where I have raised my daughter, Brianna. I have dedicated my work to speaking to the people of Kentucky about race and equity. I have shaken hands with the Governor, dined with some of the richest people in the city in their homes, and have spoken at almost every major venue in this city. I have written articles in the local paper, and I was selected as one of the Best of the Best in the city for poetry. I was selected as a Daughter of Greatness by the Ali Center. Still, none of that mattered. It is in Louisville that I found myself teargassed on a downtown street just for screaming, “Say her name, Breonna Taylor!” It is in Louisville that I found myself running to safety from police, who were decked in full riot gear.
It is in Louisville that I found myself behind a police line trying to get them to understand why we are screaming for justice in the street. It is in Louisville where I cried as others celebrated when Breonna’s Law was passed, banning no-knock warrants within the city. I cried because I knew it came at the loss of a young, Black woman. It is in Louisville that I was reminded as a Black woman, I will always be screaming to be heard.
However, I refuse to be silent. This city, this state, and this nation have silenced Black women long enough.
Published July 7
By Michael Dickinson
As the collective commitment to dismantle white supremacy gained ground this summer, and as monuments to racialized violence began coming down, Richmond residents and Virginia Commonwealth University history professors, Michael Dickinson and Gregory Smithers, wrote into history as it was unfolding in their city.
See, as someone of African descent and as a historian, I understood that in the shadow of these monuments of slaveholders and proslavery advocates, I was not meant to feel comfortable, for they were meant to serve as reminders that I did not belong — that I was meant to follow not lead — that my presence was tolerated but not particularly welcome — that I did not belong. — Michael Dickinson
Look at Lee’s empty pedestal and know that history isn’t some dead letter. The past has structured our present, but it doesn’t need to determine our collective futures. This was the message Jacki Thompson Rand shared with me. A historian at the University of Iowa and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Rand said, “The United States rose on the bodies of Indigenous and Black peoples. Both peoples are due justice.” Richmond is a microcosm of that history; we now have an opportunity to honor those histories through our public commemorations and political actions. — Gregory Smithers
Published June 23
By Kevin Kehrberg & Jeffrey A. Keith
Last winter, when folk music enthusiasts Kevin Kehrberg and Jeffrey A. Keith, professors of music and history, respectively, at Warren Wilson College told us about this story of greed, racism, and a musical cover-up, we were impressed with their years of research, intimate knowledge of the place, and deep sensitivity to the traumatic subject matter. We gave them Aug. 4 as a publication date to allow all the time they needed to write the story well. With drone footage, meticulous detail, and masterful storytelling, the true and heartbreaking story of Swannanoa Tunnel was fully told.
Little did we know that Buncombe County, North Carolina, the place where the horrors of this story took place, would be voting on reparations the day the story published.
Upon listening to the voice of her Grandpapa Love, Ruby Adams had said, “Somebody had the intent for this to be discovered at some point. I really do believe that this was not just coincidental. I think it was really, specifically, done on purpose that someone, someday, would discover what these people went through.” She commented on the song’s beauty and function before driving home her point. “They stuck together until the very last end. And I really believe that that may be a message that they were really trying to leave.”
Published August 4
Story & Photographs by Chelsey Mae Johnson
In the fall of 2019, as part of a project of the In These Mountains: Central Appalachian Folk Arts and Culture initiative and supported in part by South Arts, Chelsey Mae Johnson learned about the old craft of cooking down sorghum molasses in the mountains of North Carolina. You can almost hear the bees buzzing through her writing, photography, and short videos of the process.
Watch as the cane stalks grow taller than your hounds, then your horses. Watch your bees help this patch through June, July, August. Rob the honey. Whelp the puppies. Bring in the scuppernongs for jelly; and when the apples start to come, watch the seed heads. As long as they sway green atop the cane, your attention is welcome elsewhere. When they start to flush garnet, put out the call to your friends and neighbors. Once they’ve dried to a burnished oxblood, you’ve got a few long weekends ahead of you.
Published September 22
Story by Kelundra Smith | Photographs by Imani Khayyam
Just as “Lovecraft Country” (recently named by NPR’s Eric Deggans as the best TV show of 2020) was flowing through the airwaves, Kelundra Smith spoke with Aunjanue Ellis (who plays Hippolyta Freeman in “Lovecraft”) about her life and work as an actress and activist. Ellis couldn’t do it without naming the women who shaped her: Myrtis Taylor (her grandmother,) Jacqueline Taylor (her mother,) along with Fannie Lou Hamer, and all the other women who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Imani Khayyam took spellbinding photos of Ellis in the cow pastures and streets of her hometown of McComb, Mississippi.
Published October 27
Story by Shane Mitchell | Photographs by Rinne Allen
Shane Mitchell has done deep narrative journalism about quintessential southern crops for The Bitter Southerner for some time now (Go ahead and slip Okra, Tomatoes, Rice, Grits, Boiled Peanuts into your pocket.) In the sixth installment of her series, she followed the sweet and painful story of sugar and the farmers, like Maurice Bailey on Sapelo Island, working to redeem it:
“When did you decide this was your calling?”
He looked up at the dark sky.
“You know, your ancestors appoint you to do this stuff. I was always taught you do your part in life. You got to do your part, and you won't have any regrets at the end of your life.”
Published November 24
Story & Photographs by Tom Lee
Tom Lee’s article about his (pre-novel coronavirus) travels through Central Appalachia looked at the convergence of poverty, the growing prison industry, and innovation and found glimmers of hope. A good way to round out 2020 and lead us into the year ahead!
And how do I know that? Because I heard the calls, and I saw the response: breaking down walls that divide us, clearing smoke from the fires we have started, reconstructing from our imaginations the myths that have failed nearly everyone in these hills for decades. If you can imagine a community, you can create a community, and if you create a community, it, too, will send out its own call.