50 years ago today, Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson took the photo above, of a civil rights protester being attacked by a police dog in Birmingham, Alabama. To go with it, here’s the edited version of the AP story from the incident, by AP reporter Don McKee. We’ve come a long way from this moment. Let’s not forget it. (via Facebook)
A law enforcement source says initial reports indicate that a five-year-old boy who was being held hostage in an underground bunker in Alabama for nearly a week has been released.
Authorities say 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes shot and killed a bus driver last week in Midland City and then abducted the boy.
Dykes is now dead, the source says, but the boy is in stable condition. An ambulance was seen leaving the area of the bunker.
We’re glad to hear that unidentified young man is safe, and will be keeping an eye on the situation as new details continue to emerge. Officials have not yet released Dykes’ cause of death, though its possible that such an announcement could take place during a press conference scheduled this afternoon.
The gunman stormed into the school bus Tuesday afternoon and demanded that the driver hand him a child.
The driver, 66-year-old Charles Poland Jr., was a gentle Bible-reading man who could not stand to discipline the children on his bus because it hurt his heart, the Dothan Eagle newspaper reported.
When he refused the demand, police said, the gunman shot him several times as 22 horrified children scrambled for cover.
But the man was able to grab the boy and drag him to his underground bunker.
And the standoff began.
Jimmy Lee Dykes, the 65-year-old man who reportedly took the boy hostage, is said to be a survivalist with anti-government views. He reportedly spent months building the tunnel on his property and was due in court over a property dispute earlier in the week. (WTF dude?)
Travis Waldron at ThinkProgress explains Brent Musburger, Katherine Webb, and football’s culture toward women:
Painting Webb as merely a perk of the job, as nothing more than the Alabama beauty queen dating the quarterback of the Crimson Tide, only enables that culture. It’s a culture…
In light of an aggressively uncompetitive BCS title game last night, broadcaster Brent Musberger’s digression on Katherine Webb, reigning Miss Alabama and girlfriend of quarterback AJ McCarron, became the focus of much attention — Musberger joked that kids should start throwing the football around, because “you quarterbacks, you get all the good lookin’ women.” Waldron argues his awkward fawn over Webb shouldn’t necessarily be laughed off, because the core of what he said — that football players get to date attractive women — is part and parcel of a football culture towards females with very destructive implications. This is a pertinent topic to at least one of the two teams playing last night — The Nation’s Dave Zirin decried a college football culture of entitlement to female attention in a pre-game article yesterday, about a largely unpublicized rape allegation against a Notre Dame player, and his accuser’s subsequent suicide.
This dad, a massive University of Alabama fan, got a great gift from his kids … a hat modeled after legendary Crimson Tide coach Bear Bryant’s. But it was what was under the hat — a ticket to the BCS championship game between the Tide and Notre Dame — that truly was worth a huge freakout. Reaction? Priceless. (ht Hypervocal)
Today is the last daily issue for a number of newspapers in Louisiana and Alabama, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune. (The change was announced a few months ago.) The Birmingham News got in this little symbolic note in its date. End of story.
(ht Romenesko)
» A large storm stays together: While not nearly as strong as Hurricane Katrina, the storm is nonetheless dropping a ton of rain — up to 20 inches in some places — and due to its large size, National Hurricane Center director Rick Knabb says that the storm is “not going to fall apart real quick.” Local officials are assessing rescue efforts needed for those stuck in flooded homes.
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I am urging everyone to take precautions now, monitor weather warnings, and be prepared for whatever Isaac may bring.Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley • In a statement regarding Tropical Storm Isaac, which, almost exactly seven years to the day, is following a very similar path to Hurricane Katrina, starting relatively weakly around Florida and hitting the Gulf Coast states, where it may strengthen. Bentley has evacuated low-lying and coastal areas in his state. Other regions are also considering evacuation plans, including New Orleans, which was very badly struck by Hurricane Katrina. Mayor Mitch Landrieu says that the city, if it needs it, says that it is better-prepared to handle a major hurricane this time around.
James Davis says he was only fulfilling the wishes of his wife when he buried Patsy Ruth Davis in the front yard of their Alabama log home in 2009, but ever since then, he’s found himself in an ongoing legal battle over keeping her there. ”Good Lord, they’ve raised pigs in their yard, there’s horses out the road here in a corral in the city limits, they’ve got other gravesites here all over the place,” he said. “And there shouldn’t have been a problem.” A court ruled against Davis, but the ruling is on hold until the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals can decide the case. (photo by Jay Reeves/AP)
One of the papers that’s shrinking, the Mobile, Alabama Press-Register, had an, um, unusual take on the paper losing four of its daily editions. Our pal Charles Apple took a little time to poke fun at the crazy amount of spin happening in this headline.
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The bloodshed gets worse: On the heels of news that the New Orleans Times-Picayune would be moving away from a daily edition is news that three metro papers in Alabama would be getting the same treatment. Each of these newspapers is owned by Newhouse, a chain with newspapers across the country. Not a very good day for newspapers in general, folks. (thanks @MegsLeigh)
HuffPo won a Pulitzer! And so did Politico! 2011 may become a watershed year for online journalism, as for-profit online news organizations finally took a bite out of the news industry’s most prestigious prize. The Huffington Post, known as the kings of aggregation, won for a fairly traditional piece for them — reporter David Wood’s ten-part story discussing the struggles of returning veterans. (Wood is shown above, trying to open up a Nattie Light, which clearly is the only beer HuffPo had on hand to celebrate his feat.) Politico, on the other hand, won for Matt Wuerker’s mad editorial cartooning skillz. The wins tell the journalism world what many already knew — the folks on the Web are at the same level as traditional newspapers. Anyway, here’s a round-up of a few newspaper winners of note:
The true issue is whether we can acknowledge the sovereignty of all mighty God over the affairs of our state and our law. That I will not back down from. I will always acknowledge the sovereignty of God and I think we must.Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore • Explaining why he will not attempt to place another monument to the Ten Commandments at the state judicial building. Moore finds himself in a position to reclaim his former job as Alabama’s Chief Justice this November, after winning more than 50 percent of the vote during a Republican primary on Tuesday. If he is able to defeat his Democratic challenger, attorney and former gubernatorial candidate Harry Lyon, in November, Moore will replace incumbent Chief Justice Chuck Malone, the man who replaced him as Chief Justice after he was found guilty of a state ethics violation in 2003. source (via • follow)
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