My Alabama Story: Coming of age in 1960s Alabama

Waiting to enter a movie theater to see "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, Simon sees a cute Black girl standing in a separate line that leads to the balcony, the "colored" section. A friend tells him, "You're in the South. Stick with your own kind.” Simon doesn't.It's the steamy summer of 1963. Simon Klein has moved with his family, Jews from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Pickettville, Alabama, where his father has taken a job at a nearby Army base. Heis as mystified of the South as Southerners are of a JewWhile gathering information for a story he is writing for his school paper, Simon meets and becomes friends with Cecilia Goodwin, the Black girl. They have much in common. While sitting together on her porch swing—a Southern tradition—they talk about the Civil Rights movement, literature, the looming Vietnam War, and, of course, football. Eventually, they realize that they are romantically drawn to each other. They know, however, that they must keep their relationship a secret. That is until they are both provoked to put their romance on public display, to Simon's mother's delight, but to the angry epithets of others. This is the year that Governor George Wallace declared, “Segregation forever!”Told by Simon many years later, this coming-of-age Southern novel foretells the growing Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and America's deepening involvement in the Vietnam War, all while Simon's parents' marriage falls apart. Simon, once a bit naive, learns about small-town Alabama corruption, nepotism, and the xenophobia of patriarchs of the Confederacy. Even so, Alabama remains a state that he looks back on with fond memories, as it was a time when his experiences--and falling in love--changed him forever.Excerpt:The first time I saw Cecilia was outside the Legrange Theater in Pickettville. I had gone to watch the matinee of the first James Bond movie,Dr. No, with my only friend at the time, Tony Kouris, who was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but whose family had move