When Paul Kix set out to write You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham that Changed America, one of his goals — in spite of the text’s lengthy title — was to ensure the book moves at a fast pace.
By god, does this book move.
You Have to Be Prepared to Die is a text that comes from Kix, a Hubbard-born author who also penned The Saboteur and had his 2017 feature story “The Accidental Getaway Driver” adapted as a film. The book seeks to recount the 10 weeks of protesting that took place in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and be a definitive recounting of those events.
As Kix himself posited, “[What happened in Birmingham] sets in motion the Civil Rights Act of ’64 … [and] a new life for this country.”
A passing familiarity with the events of Birmingham might conjure images of dogs attacking protesters, fire hoses violently scouring fleeing Black people and Martin Luther King Jr. reflecting from behind bars.
Not only does Kix blaze through theses and other happenings from the Birmingham campaign — the recruitment of child protestors, the moral malleability of Wyatt Walker, the refusal of racist mayor Bull Connor to leave office despite not being reelected — it manages to feel as though no key detail is overlooked.
Even when the book does slow down (as it does briefly toward the center as it catches the reader up on the philosophical trajectories of King and James Bevel) that pace is welcomed after the slew of complications that preceded it. It also helps the readers understand the reasoning of these figures as events unfold.
Perhaps the most praiseworthy aspect of the text is how easy it is to imagine readers coming away with a favorite among the principal cast. I found myself constantly fascinated by Kix’s depiction of an optics-obsessed Wyatt Walker always aiming to escalate the spectacle of protests for the sake of revolution.
But I can just as easily see someone inclined toward the decision-paralyzed depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. bearing the weight of expectation and notoriety. Or the young, ambitious James Bevel, who seems to clearly detect the path forward despite the hesitancy of his seniors. Or the prideful Fred Shuttleworth, the Birmingham pastor and civil rights leader with more skin in the game than any of the other main characters.
While the book does follow the events of those 10 weeks roughly chronologically, Kix skillfully uses his medium to backfill necessary details in stray paragraphs that offer informative asides that manage to never remove the reader from the scene at hand.
The book is a masterclass in nonfiction writing. It emphasizes without embellishing, informs without lagging and prods one to wonder how these horrors could possibly conclude, despite the fact this history informs the nature of our nation today.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s August 2023 issue.