Dirty Boots: Irregular Attempts at Critical Thinking and Border Crossing offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on the culture, politics, and general milieu of the 21st century.

Though I have no personal ties there, Tuskegee, Alabama is a particularly interesting place to me. I’ve been there enough to know my way around pretty well but don’t really know anyone who lives there. Perhaps it’s the fact that its quiet presence in everyday Alabama belies a significance that is sorely under-appreciated.

Tuskegee, which is the seat of Macon County, has just under 9,000 people living there today. Like many small Southern towns, its population is decreasing, and blight shows evidence of its past vibrancy. More than 12,000 people lived there in 1990, but the population has dropped by more than 25% in that last thirty years. Demographically, the city has a black-majority of about 90%, a majority that has grown in modern times. (In 1960, the “non-white” population of Macon County was 83.5%.) Macon County is also the state’s thirteenth lowest-earning county, according to an al.com story from October 2023, with a median household income that is “31.9% below state average, 45.5% below national average.” Among al.com’s statistics is this startling figure: one-fifth of households bring in $15,000 or less per year, which ranks Macon County 158th nationally. (There are 3,143 counties in the US, so Macon is in the lowest 5% for this category.)

Looking at Tuskegee historically rather than demographically or economically, this locale has also provided the setting for a handful of events that have deeply affected our nation. Of course, Tuskegee University is a prime factor in that. Founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Institute-now-University has long augmented this small rural community on the eastern end of the Alabama Black Belt with an outsized proportion of educated and politically astute professionals. Among them was Charles Gomillion whose voting-rights lawsuit changed American politics in 1960. Then, in 1964, the school desegregation case Lee v. Macon County Board of Education changed public education in Alabama forever. This area was also the home base of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, yet on a darker note, the 1972 exposure of the decades-long Tuskegee Syphilis Study shined a light on how a federal government program had mistreated and dehumanized African-American men.  If it were possible to tally up the importance of just Booker T. Washington, the Tuskegee Airmen, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, it would be obvious what this out-of-the-way place means to America.

So, looking deeper into its demographic backstory seems worthy, and that exploration tells us about something more complicated. According to the 1950 census, Tuskegee’s population grew by 73.7% between 1940 and 1950 (from 3,937 to 6,840) while Macon County as a whole grew by 11% (from 27,654 to 30,696). This was the period of World War II, when Moten Field became the home of the Tuskegee Airmen. A decade later, the 1960 Census shows Macon County with a 12.6% decrease in population to 26,717, a number below the 1940 figure— probably caused by the end of the military’s large-scale mobilization. Yet, the 1970 census elucidates a different situation in Tuskegee. From 1950 to 1960, the city grew by 8% (to 7,240) then experienced a big surge between 1960 and 1970, growing by 52% to just over 11,000. Meanwhile, the county’s rural population declined. From 1970 to 1980, that trend continued as the city’s population grew by 21%, while the rural population in the county went down by another 3%. To bookend to this series of decennial statistics, Tuskegee’s population peaked at over 12,000 in the 1990 census, but has experienced net losses since. Considering eight decades instead of just four, we see that the population of Tuskegee tripled between 1940 and 1990— from about 4,000 to over 12,000. Today the figure is 8,800, which is midway between those two. What we are seeing may not be a place that is declining so much as a place that is deflating.

Within that modern history, several other events, factors, and people are remarkable albeit lesser-known. One among them was the attempted abolishment of Macon County in 1957. It seems that, when black political power was increasing as the movement picked up speed, one solution among white leaders was to dissipate voter strength by eliminating Macon County to scatter its land (and its black voters) among adjacent counties. Later, in the early to mid-1960s, the decline in white supremacist power was showcased within a series of articles in The New Yorker, when writer Bernard Taper visited Tuskegee amid the deepest turmoil of the movement. Here, Taper gave readers a street-level view of how a way of life was crumbling under the weight of social and political change. After the movement, there was the political career of Thomas Reed, who was elected to the state legislature in 1970, thus becoming one of the first black elected officials in Alabama since Reconstruction. In 1988, Reed got people’s attention when he attempted to climb the state capitol dome to remove the Confederate flag himself. Last but certainly not least, there is the saga of the Victoryland in the tiny community of Shorter. Though gambling is generally illegal in Alabama, this dog track and casino opened in 1983, operating with a special license, but was a constant source of controversy into the 2020s. Considering that anyone who worked or played there did so voluntarily, the most glaring problem with its repeated and mostly temporary closures was the negative effect on funding that it provided for Macon County’s cash-strapped schools.

Among all of these changes, though, the legacy of Booker T. Washington remains. Wikipedia lists sixteen schools currently operating in the US that are named for him, and I can’t imagine how many middle and high school teachers around the nation assign his autobiography Up from Slavery each year. The HBCU that he founded operates today behind a heavy fence that separates much of the campus from the blight outside of it. Just over 2,000 undergraduates and about 500 grad students are enrolled these days. Just as Washington himself did, three-quarters come from out of state. There is also the local Booker T. Washington High School, which people call “BTW Tuskegee” since there’s one in Montgomery, too. Recently, my son’s baseball team was playing their team, and the game was held at the university’s . . . you guessed it: Washington Field— except this time, the namesake was Booker T.’s brother James! (He started the university’s baseball team in 1892.)

Heading to that ball game, I left I-85 and took Highway 49, then turned toward town on the slightly hilly, generally nondescript route, which is lined by small homes and cow fields. For some reason, one of the maps apps marked the baseball field as being in the middle of the campus, so I (and several other parents in their cars) ended up taking an accidental tour of the campus via its hilly and winding streets. I asked for directions from two students who were looking at their smart phones in the back of a pickup with its hood lifted. They helped me to find my way back to the security gate, where the now-disgruntled guard who had waved me in casually seemed more concerned about my presence. The baseball field was across the road, he told me, and moreover, he couldn’t imagine why I had been led onto campus. After leaving his gate, I missed my left turn to go to the field and had to loop back around in the parking lot of . . . you guessed it: Booker T. Washington’s historic home, The Oaks.

Two of the best things about small towns in Alabama’s Black Belt are that important history is around every corner and that the people rally together to make the best of what they have. A change of venue for the baseball game – caused by a rain-soaked field at the high school – meant that BTW Tuskegee’s players had to find rides across town, and their coach was striding up and down the hill with a clipboard, trying to gather his scattered players as they arrived one-by-one. Another of the team’s coaches was a woman, who we were told was a school administrator. More vocal than the male coach, she yelled at their pitcher, “Bend your back and throw strikes!” and at their first baseman, “Why are you standing behind the runner!?” It is unusual to see a woman coaching a boys’ baseball team, but it was clear that her determined presence brought strength and support. The teams were slated for a double header that afternoon but only played one, because the university’s field had no lights.

What also drew my attention to Tuskegee this spring is the new Apple TV mini-series Masters of the Air. These periodic portrayals of those famed fighters draw viewers to the screen every couple of years. According to IMDb, there have been more than a dozen movies and documentaries about the Tuskegee Airmen, most made in the 21st century. Among them are a 1995 TV movie that stars Laurence Fishburne and 2012’s Red Wings. I hope that a few among Apple TV’s viewers will take a little extra time with the history after enjoying the handsome actors and the special effects. Certainly, the Airmen are symbols of great achievement and are role models for many, as is Booker T. Washington, but the context for their greatness is worthy of attention, too. Folks can watch the movies and name the buildings and read the books that keep these stories alive, but I hope that people will not forget that Tuskegee is a real place, nor that it should benefit more substantially from its heritage. This small town, which is struggling today, has given our nation educators, freedom fighters, and other examples of facing hardship with resilience. Speaking only for myself, I’d like to see the city and its people get more in return than lip service.