and there were, you know, westerner von braun was already there, a lot of people, a lot of engineers and scientists had descended on alabama, and the city, um, wanted to dissociate itself from the rabid, racist image of the rest of the state, and that helped them to negotiate this quietly. so, yeah. from the beginning i have memories of -- so my participants were civil -- parents were civil rights activists, and after the civil rights act passes and the voting rights, then they turned to politics. i grew up licking ndpa stamps, that was the party, the national democratic party -- i have memories, my father ran for governor against george wallace in 1970, and i just have these memories of my summers being taken all around the state, particularly the black belt of the state, those counties that were the center of the plantation economy during the antibell lumbar era, not surprisingly 100 years later where all the black votes were. and it felt like particularly during that election in 1970, it felt like i had been carried to every black church in the black belt, you know? and i watched