by Paul Theroux
Most towns are justifiably proud of their sports teams—a winning team always improves the mood of a place—but the Saturday crowd in Tuscaloosa, the processions of cars flying battle flags, the whooping and the costumes (and every seat in the enormous stadium spoken for) convinced me that this in-group mattered in a much more complex way than in other places I’d been. Its nearest equivalent in terms of tattoos, finery, and chanting was a traditional ceremony enacted by a defiant people who had once been colonized, asserting their tribal identity.
In Alabama football, fan loyalty bolstered self-esteem, not just of students but of almost the entire state. This group behavior is explained in “social identity theory,” an encompassing proposal of the British psychologist Henri Tajfel, who described the sympathies and reactions of persons choosing to attach themselves to a social class or a family or a club—or a football team—and become a member of an in-group. The groups to which people belong are, Tajfel writes, “an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.”
The sports fan is an example of someone engaged in group membership, for whom association and affiliation matter so greatly you could say it gives him or her a purpose in life. You develop a group membership by identifying yourself with a team and participating in “in-group favoritism.” Such membership builds self-confidence and self-worth; you’re invested in cheering for the team and raising its status. You’re more than a passive member; you’re an active booster, helping to make the team bigger and stronger. And it’s good for your esteem, too. In Tajfel’s view, “In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong.”
To say that when your team wins you feel you’re a champion is a pretty straightforward definition of the appeal of fandom. People often laugh self-consciously when they talk about their loyalty to a team, their pride in its success, but in Alabama, where fandom fervor is multiplied a thousandfold, no one laughs. There’s nothing funny about chanting “Roll Tide, roll!”—the devotion is dead serious, and at times (so it seemed to me) defiant, hostile, verging on the pathological.
The power figure on any team is the coach. In Alabama folklore it is Paul Bryant, nicknamed “Bear” because as a youth in Arkansas he reputedly accepted the challenge of wrestling a captive, muzzled bear (and was mauled).
The three biggest funerals in Alabama history define the state’s contending loyalties, I was told: George Wallace’s, Martin Luther King’s, and Bear Bryant’s.
As a coach, Bear Bryant was a towering figure, statistically the most successful in the history of college football, who guided Alabama for twenty-five years and whose beaky profile and funny checkered snap-brim hat are emblems. His name is emblazoned on Tuscaloosa streets and buildings and on the vast stadium. Charismatic, noted for his heavy drinking and his toughness (he played on a broken leg in a college game in Tennessee), he was renowned as a motivator. He avoided recruiting black players for years, but in 1971 he brought in his first one, Wilbur Jackson, offering him a football scholarship. Thereafter the team became a career path for black athletes and a rallying point for the races.
Among his achievements, Bryant won six national championships for Alabama. But the present coach, Nick Saban, in just four seasons has won three national championships, and his contract runs until 2018. Saban, who is beloved for his victories and his rapport with players, presently earns $6.9 million a season, the highest-paid college football coach in the nation.
It is natural for a nonbeliever to cluck about the money, but college sports is a business—colleges need this national attention as a way of creating a cash flow. Donors, alumni, and booster clubs provide money to augment salaries; ticket sales are a strong source of revenue. And there is the licensed merchandise. Much of the logo paraphernalia is traditional—the numerous styles of caps, T-shirts, banners, and flags. But a great deal of it is culturally Alabama-specific: Crimson Tide trailer hitch covers, valve stem caps, a sexy lady’s satin garter with lace picked out in “Roll Tide,” baby slippers, garden chairs, “pillow pets,” “child’s hero capes,” wall-sized “man cave flags,” Crimson Tide car chargers, dog jerseys, puzzle cubes, games, watches, clothes, luggage, garden gnomes, table lamps, bedding, drinking glasses, gas grill covers, golf gear, car accessories, toothbrushes, and vinyl boat fenders, each carrying the Roll Tide logo or an enlarged and unambiguous A.
All this contributes to substantial football-related revenue, which in 2012 was $124 million, and $45 million of that was profit. Added to this is the improved status of the university itself, resulting in increased enrollment, higher teachers’ salaries, and an expanded campus. Alabama’s eminence as a university of football champions attracts nonresident students: more than half the students are from out of state, paying three times the in-state tuition.
The financial return is indisputable. The benefit in self-esteem is harder to gauge, but it is palpable. And perhaps it is predictable—the simple feel-good inevitability of identifying with the team and the elaborate costuming and imagery to go along with that identification—that it amounts to a complete lifestyle. This sort of social behavior has its counterpart in the enclosed in-groups of the world, especially the folk cultures, epitomized by the glorious and assertive “sing-sing” you’d see in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea: the Goroka Show, the convergence of Asaro Mudmen and jungle-dwelling warriors fitted out with pig tusks and nose bones, with its extravagant finery, headdresses, weapons, beads, feathers, face painting, jitterbugging, spear shaking, mock charges, drumming, and hollering.
Reflecting on the Crimson Tide, I ceased to think of it as football at all, except in a superficial way; it seemed much more like another Southern reaction to a feeling of defeat, with some of the half-buried emotion I’d noticed at gun shows. In a state that is so hard-pressed, with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, with its history of racial conflict, and with so little to boast about yet wishing to matter, it is natural that a winning team—a national champion—would attract people in need of meaning and self-esteem in their lives, and would become the basis of a classic in-group, The Tide was robust proof of social identity theory.
Sister Cynthia
“Please sign in,” said the woman in the bright yellow dress, and then she looked closer at me and gave me the warmest smile. “I know you. You’re Mr. Paul.”
“How do you know that, sister?”
“You was at our service yesterday.”
That was true. I was the sinner sitting among the publicans, well behind the Philistines, in a back pew. I was not normally a churchgoer, but what made a Sunday in the South complete was a church service, a gun show, or a football game.
“How kin Ah he’p you?”
“I’m here to see Miss Burton.”
“I’ll tell her you’re here. Please sign the visitors’ book.”
Next to the names in the visitors’ book, in a column headed Reason for Visit, I saw “Food” and “Clothes” and “Water” and “Light bill”—people seeking help in desperate inky scrawls. I signed my name and wrote, “Miss Cynthia Burton.”
She greeted me a moment later, an imposing but wounded-looking woman of about sixty, walking unsteadily but determinedly on bad knees, supporting herself with a walker. She was the executive director of Community Service Programs of West Alabama. Moving slowly, shoving the walker ahead of her, she showed me to a large room with bare walls where a bare table dominated the space.
We began by talking about the football game that had enlivened the Tuscaloosa weekend.
“It’s all football here—football mad, football disease,” she said. “I understand that football is an economic engine, but absolutely everything is built around it. There’s far more important things in life than winning a football championship.”
“I think it’s about more than football,” I said, but resisted explaining how I felt it created a social identity.
“Some o
f the athletes profit from it,” she said. “From a coach’s attention especially. Because of the lack of a male head of household, we’ve lost two generations. Drugs—your mother’s got two jobs and she’s dog-tired. You see that someone makes money selling drugs, so you do it and you become addicted. A lot of these kids need a coach.” Then she smiled and asked, “How did you find me?”
I said that a mutual friend had given me her name when I’d mentioned that I was planning to travel in the South. Cynthia Burton was involved in community development, he’d said, and added, “She knows everyone.”
“Your receptionist recognized me,” I said. “That made my day. She’d seen me at her church service at Cornerstone Baptist.”
“That’s nice, but I’m a Catholic,” Miss Burton said. She was settling herself, making notations in a thick appointment book. “It’s kind of an interesting story why I’m a Catholic.”
“Please tell me.”
“I was born in Gadsden,” she said. “My parents were poor but very hardworking people. And decent people. My father worked for Goodyear Tire Company. My mother was a nurse. She had little education, but she got experience from the hospital, and learned nursing on the job.”
Miss Burton sighed and hitched herself forward, and seeing that I was writing in a notebook, she tapped her finger near the notebook and spoke emphatically.
“My mother didn’t want me to go to segregated schools, as she had to, so she and my father saved their money to find me a better school. They asked around, what to do. The local nuns, Daughters of the Holy Ghost, suggested that she send me north, to Connecticut, to attend Putnam Catholic Academy. This was 1961. Segregation.”
She let this sink in. I said, “Your parents sound amazing.”
“Listen, my parents were so far-thinking for their generation. My father only got to the fourth grade, my mother to the sixth grade. But they wanted the best for their kids and they were willing to make sacrifices. My high school, Gadsden High, was not integrated until 1968.”
And I thought: Four foot-dragging years after the Civil Rights Act.
“They got their money together and I went up north to Putnam. I was the only black student at the academy. But there were five black families in the town of Putnam. They adopted me, sort of. They looked after me. It was not a normal education. Those little rich girls taught me. One day, in assembly, the top ten students were shown to the others. I was one of them—I was second, very proud.”
Miss Burton began to chuckle softly, remembering, and she tapped her finger again near my notebook.
“The mother of the girl who came third called the nuns and challenged my grades. I was very upset. I called my mother. She said, ‘Stand your ground—I can’t come up there, so you’ll have to do it. But remember to work and study. Cynthia, you must always be ahead of that girl.’ And I did study, and stayed on top.”
“This sounds like an exclusive private school,” I said. “How did you get along with the girls?”
“Very well. Those girls were so rich. They were picked up in Rolls-Royces and Bentleys to take them home. And they were very nice and friendly to me, nothing they wouldn’t do for me. I was the only black student. I was like a pet to them! They invited me to their homes—huge homes, mansions. I recall the time we went to Philadelphia. Five of us girls went in the limousine. We were all hungry when we got there, and the girl whose home it was called to the kitchen for food. ‘Got something for us?’ We went down, by and by, and there were three servants making our meal.”
“Were you tempted to stay in the North? Lots of Southerners find more opportunities there.”
“I loved the North,” she said. “I became a Catholic there. I went to Loyola in Chicago, but I had to come back to Alabama. My mother needed me. And more than that, I felt I was blessed with so much that I had to share. I decided to be impactful with a large group of people. I’ve been with this agency for nine years. We have an $18 million budget for eight counties—maybe a million people. Most are federal funds, some are grants. We have five hundred units—affordable housing, both rentals and home ownership. And we help people in other ways.”
“How is it working?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of social conservatism here. I am a firm believer in self-sufficiency. Some people need help more than others, but people also need to help themselves.”
“How does your agency help?”
“With housing, home ownership, rentals, all sorts of ways,” she said. “Want to hear a strange thing? Some of our people have large holdings—lots of acreage. They don’t want to subdivide. They’re land rich and property poor. It’s not unusual for someone with a large amount of land to live in a shack and go to food pantries and get energy assistance.”
“You see them?”
“We get them here,” she said, her voice rising. “They might come for food. Or help with their heat or electricity bill. That allocation is Low-Income Heating Energy Assistance, what we call LIHEAP. You need to be income-eligible. They get assistance for the heating-cooling cycle. There’s also a weatherization program, for sealing the house. The largest parcel I know is about two hundred acres, and the people are poor. Not a lot of people in that situation, but some.”
“Poor, with lots of land?”
“Yes, sir. They won’t sell their land. In the African-American community the goal is to own rather than be owned. And because farming has become an organized business, it’s hard for these people to compete. Some grow cash crops. But some grow corn or vegetables—peppers, cabbages, squash—and hay. They keep cattle. The land is passed on through the generations. Or they might just leave it there, lying idle, choosing not to grow food.”
Or, because the land had been handed down in the family, it devolved into fractionated ownership (to use the legal term), with so many names on the deed the land was unsalable. So-called Indian land suffers the same consequences; in six generations a parcel might be owned or shared by more than two hundred people.
“It’s an odd dilemma, like you say.”
“So many folks here are behind the eight ball.”
“I’d like to meet some.”
“I’ll put you in touch with them,” she said. “And with people who are trying to improve things.”
The Cornerstone Full Gospel Baptist Church
“The church has always been the centerpiece of the rural South,” Bishop Palmer said. He was someone Sister Cynthia said I ought to see. “I’m from Birmingham, but I went to school here at Stillman College, historically black, but now it has some white students.”
He was a big man, impressively built, barrel-chested, white-haired, with a white beard trimmed into a Vandyke, a power figure, a patriarch with kindly eyes and a booming laugh. That was when he was in his pinstripe suit, before I saw him in his purple bishop’s robes; at his lectern, tapping the text with his bear paw of an authoritative hand, he looked like an Old Testament prophet.
We drove in his car to Stillman and around the walled-off campus, weaving among the tidy buildings and the sports fields.
“There’s one. There’s another.”
White students, hurrying past. Bishop Palmer smoothed his beard against his great jaw and tapped his chin. His features made his profile judge-like, and I was thinking how some men, physically, look born to lead.
“You have the perfect name for a preacher. Earnest Palmer.”
“A man of faith, carrying a palm,” he said.
“I think of a palmer as a pilgrim, bringing a palm from the Holy Land. Like the line in Chaucer.”
He slowed the car and glanced over at me.
I said, “Canterbury Tales. ‘Palmers for to seken straunge strondes.’”
He smiled as people sometimes do when hearing an unintelligible language brazenly spoken, or a dog with an odd bark.
“‘To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes,’ I recited. “Palmers—pilgrims searching.”
He laughed. It seemed like news. He drove out of the campus and cha
nged the subject. “When I was here we had a sit-in at Ed’s, a restaurant over there. Up that street. They wouldn’t let blacks eat there. Man, those white boys beat us up.”
“Was it worse here than in other places?”
“Tuscaloosa was the headquarters of the Alabama Klan,” he said. “The leader, Robert Shelton, had an office on Union Boulevard. He was also a printer. While I was a student, I went there to get some things printed once. My friends said, ‘You went where?’”
Robert Shelton, judged “a truly evil man,” also a factory worker and tire dealer and the Imperial Wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan when Earnest Palmer was a student at Stillman, eventually was bankrupted and put out of business by a lawsuit that arose from a Klan lynching in Mobile. Shelton died of a heart attack in 2003 at the age of seventy-three.
Meeting Bishop Palmer made me want to visit his church, and so I did the following Sunday. That was the morning I met Lucille, who drove ahead of me to the church to show me the way. Lucille, who had said to me sweetly, “Be blessed.”