What's Up?
Pulitzer-winning columnist, podcaster, author, speaker, teacher, storyteller, wannabe playwright, general ass, but not by today’s standards.
Make the world more just. Shake a few gates.
Life & Work
Bio:
John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from and in Alabama.
He is a columnist for the Birmingham News (Huntsville Times and Mobile Press Register) and AL.com.
Publications:
SHAKING THE GATES OF HELL: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution
NPR’s Books We Love, 2021: A meaningful read that got me thinking about my own family’s legacy.
Library Journal: VERDICT: A powerful reflection on the influences of family and community and the ability to act justly in tumultuous times. Biography readers, especially
those interested in reconciling the past, will be captivated by Archibald's honest, conversational style.
Memphis Commercial Appeal: If you've ever listened to a racist or homophobic joke and not spoken up to disagree, "Shaking the Gates of Hell" should be compulsory reading. It's a compelling reminder of the good we could do if we were more courageous.
New York Review of Books: An affecting blend of memoir and history, “Shaking the Gates of Hell” offers an unflinching account of a family in a tumultuous time.
Publisher’s Weekly starred review: What makes this retelling exceptional is the poetic voice of the author as he reflects on the Montgomery bus boycott, the bloody campaigns in Selma and Birmingham, lynchings, and the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. … This personal interrogation is a moving testament to the power of reexamining one’s past.
The Washington Post: Archibald’s personal recollections vividly demonstrate the conflicts experienced by people rooted in traditional values during a period of rapid social change, when a liberal interpretation of those values offends their conservative community…Archibald’s honest account of one family’s journey through the civil rights and gay rights revolutions makes it clear that there are no easy decisions — or answers — when grappling with issues of faith and social justice.
Southern Booksellers Review: John Archibald is an incredible writer who lures you in with stories about fishing and family gatherings, but by the end he has us all asking ourselves, why do we not also say more, do more?
The Alabama Take: John Archibald in recent memoir “Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution” wields a magical, managerial command of tone. It’s an excellent text…Archibald fills each moment — all significant — with love; he handles each in delicate measure, which in less deft hands, would’ve come off as saccharine, or worse, apologetic.
Methodist Bishop Will Willimon: I believe that few of us preachers, particularly those in the Southeast, especially those who are Methodists, will be able to evade John Archibald’s book. In his scathing, often sarcastic criticism of our church and its clergy, there is a sense in which John may have a higher theology of preaching than we, as well as a deeper love for the church.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).