The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 (1995) is set in Flint, Michigan, in the
freezing winter of 1963.
The narrator is 10-year-old Kenneth Bernard Watson. His father, Daniel, is
35 years old and has lived in Flint all of his life. His mother, Wilona, is
originally from Alabama, and moved to Flint 15 years ago when she married
Daniel. Wilona is afraid of the cold. Kenny has a younger sister, Joetta (Joey),
and a 13-year-old brother, Byron (By).
Although Kenny was a ‘real handsome little boy’ he was nicknamed Cockeye
Kenny due to a lazy eye that ‘wanted to rest in the corner of my eye next to my
nose’ – but he was also nicknamed Egghead or Professor or Poindexter because he
could read perfectly.
The temperature is a lot warmer in Alabama where Grandma Sands lives alone
since Grandpa Sands died 20 years ago. In Alabama ‘life is slower, the people
are friendlier … and folks there know how to respect their parents.’ But it was
a place of ‘Colored Only’ signs.
After phoning Grandma Sands, the Watson family plan a trip south. Daniel
fixes up the car – a 1948 Plymouth called the Brown Bomber – with a new antenna
for the radio and new tyres.
One of the best passages in the book is the description of their addition
for their long trip: the height of technology in automotive sound, the top of
the line, the cream of the crop, the True-Tone AB-700 model, the Ultra-Glide
‘drive-around record player.’ With the latest
Vibro-Dynamic-Lateral-Anti-Inertial Dampening system to overcome the vibration
of car travel, and with symphonic and high-fidelity sound, the family took a
bundle of vinyl 45 records to listen to music in the car. Nat King Cole, Dinah
Washington, and songs such as Under the Boardwalk and Yakety Yak, Kenny thought
it was the most beautiful music he’d ever heard.
Halfway into the 210-page book, the family begin the journey of 784 miles
(1262 kilometres). On the television news they’d seen ‘the pictures of a bunch
of really mad white people … giving dirty finger signs to some little Negro
kids who were trying to go to school.’ Although his father explained the
situation to Kenny ‘like an adult’ he nevertheless had a 10-year view of what
that meant, and his parents’ real reason for travelling to Birmingham.
They arrive in Birmingham, Alabama, where it was ‘like an oven’ it was so
hot. The first thing Kenny did was to get into trouble – big trouble. But that
was not the worst event in Birmingham, Alabama, in September 1963.
The Young Adults novel by the Flint-born African-American author of
children’s books, and the author of Bud, Not Buddy (1999) is a brief,
easy-to-read book with a message. Flint, near Detroit in Michigan, under a
state of financial emergency, is currently in a public health crisis due to
lead poisoning in the local water supply. Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s was
at the heart of the civil rights movement, and is currently known as ‘the
diverse city.’ This novel is a moment in America’s history for both cities –
and the distance and differences between them.
MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:-
The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends
(2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan
Curse (2009).
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