EP 1: Prologue

When journalist Lee Hawkins was growing up, his father, Leroy, would have nightmares about his childhood in Alabama. When Lee was in his 30s, he started to have his own nightmares about his childhood in Minnesota. These shared nightmares became a clue that set Lee on a decade-long genealogical journey. In this episode we meet Lee and his Dad, and through them, we discover the roots of What Happened in Alabama?, and reveal the stakes of daring to ask the question – and all the questions that followed.

Transcript

Lee Hawkins (host): We wanted to give a heads up that this episode includes talk of abuse and acts of violence. You can find resources on our website, WhatHappenedInAlabama.org. Listener discretion is advised.

In 2004, when I was 33 years old, my dad called me for the first time in a year. I remember it so well. It was a Saturday. It wasn’t long after his retirement party, which I missed, because we weren’t talking.

[phone ringing]

A year may not sound like that long to some of you, but you have to understand, my dad and I used to talk every day. He was my best friend.

We stopped talking because I asked my parents to go to therapy. I wanted them to confront some things from our past that had started haunting me as an adult, but they refused. And then a year later, Dad called. That one call turned into hundreds over several years. And what he told me, would change my life forever.

Lee Sr.: I really haven't shared any of this shit with anybody, you know. But what it - I'm sorry I'm goin’ back in that shit. But you know everybody's life isn't as peachy as people think.

My name is Lee Hawkins and this is What Happened In Alabama: The Prologue.

[music starts]

Before we go much further, I need to tell you how uncomfortable this makes me. I’m a journalist and a writer; and as journalists, we’re taught to tell other people’s stories — but this story, well, it’s all about me and my family. So that takes me out of my comfort zone, but I’ve learned over the years that sometimes the most powerful story you can tell is your own.

So let’s start at the beginning. Back home in Maplewood, Minnesota, where I grew up.

[game sounds]

Maplewood was that suburban American dream – the white fences, green lawns and ranch-style houses.

It was the 1980s, so my two sisters and I were always either playing outside or in the house listening to music. My favorite was the handheld Mattel Classic Football 2 game. I used to play that thing all day.

[game sounds]

We lived and went to school in a predominantly white neighborhood, but we also spent a lot of time in our Black community in Saint Paul, where our church was, and many family and friends lived. Having that balance was a real blessing.

A lot of the childhood joy I experienced as a kid was fueled by the time I spent with my Dad and my grandfathers. Playing drums and singing at music gigs. Going to the “Brotherhood Breakfast” – which was a pancake and waffles extravaganza that my church organized for Black fathers and their sons. We talked about everything from the Muhammad Ali-Larry Holmes fight to Prince’s latest hit.

[barbershop sounds]

Getting lined up at Mr. Harper’s Barbershop – basically one of the few places for a Black man to get a haircut in Saint Paul. And on Sunday we went to Mount Olivet Missionary Baptist Church.

[church music starts]

Lee Sr.: [singing] Who's on the lord's side?

That’s my dad, Lee Roy Hawkins Senior, singing at our church.

From the time I was a little kid, it was always me and him. Lee Senior and Lee Junior. Lee Roy and Lee Lee.

But there was something bubbling up under our picture perfect surface.

[foreboding music starts]

Sometimes, my dad would have nightmares. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to his screams. He’d wake the whole house. I’d hear my mom shouting, “Lee Roy, you’re having a dream! It’s okay, you’re having a dream!” She’d say it over and over and eventually he’d wake up and calm down.

Like most boys my age, I idolized my dad. I thought he was the most fearless person on Earth, and that he wasn’t afraid of anything. So hearing him scream out like that told me that whatever he was dreaming about had to be pretty fierce.

I knew better than to go in that room during those nightmares, but one morning, I somehow found the courage to finally ask him, “Dad, what were you dreaming about last night?” He hardly spoke. He just looked down at the floor and said, “Alabama, son. Alabama.”

My father was born in 1948 in a small town in Butler County, Alabama, during the height of Jim Crow. He rarely talked about it or what happened while he was there. But Alabama was always with us. It’s like he’d packed it into his suitcase when he moved to Minnesota. In his screams at night and in the things he didn’t say.

I couldn’t explain it back then, but it also showed up in how he punished us. Like this one time back in 1979 I was eight years old, and as usual, playing my video game.

[video game noises]

It was a Sunday. I remember because we’d just come home from church. My dad was in the kitchen putting mayonnaise on a bologna sandwich, and I was in the living room, when suddenly…. TOUCHDOWN!

[video game beeps]

I jumped up man, and I ran over to dad in the kitchen. And I told him, “Dad, dad, I scored a touchdown!”

[dark music starts]

Instead of congratulating me, he snatched the game from my hand. He threw it down on the ground, and then he picked me up and body slammed me to the linoleum floor. Hard.

And then he just started screaming, “Do it on the field! Do it on the field!”

Looking up at him from the floor, I was completely bewildered and confused. As an eight year old kid, I had no idea why he’d done that.

Like many Black kids we knew, we got the belt whenever we did something wrong. If I try to estimate it, I definitely got whipped with a belt over 100 times throughout my childhood and my teenage years. Both of my parents whipped me with inexplicable anger. You didn’t always know when their tempers would be triggered, but when they were, you couldn’t forget it.

There was a sense of fear of the outside world that hung over our household constantly. When we’d get punished, our parents would tell us that it was to protect us, to keep us from being killed, by the police, by white racists, or even someone from our own Black community. I could sense it in my Dad’s nightmares. But I didn’t think about it too much until I started to have my own nightmares as an adult.

The summer of 2003, I was a journalist in my early thirties, and I’d just landed a job at the Wall Street Journal covering General Motors from Detroit.

I had a new apartment, strong friendships and my loving family – my two sisters, my mom, my dad. They all lived in suburbs around the Twin Cities. My parents still lived in Maplewood. Like always, I talked nearly every day to my dad on the phone.

I was, in a lot of ways, fulfilling my dreams. But at night, something was happening. I’d fall asleep, and then, I was eight years old again, getting body slammed by my dad. I started having these dreams like multiple times a week. And each dream focused on that same attack.

I would wake up sweaty and disoriented, still thinking from the vantage point of that eight year old kid looking up at my dad’s face from the floor. Every time it took a few minutes for me to realize that I wasn't still that kid. That I was an adult. I was far away from Minnesota. And I was in my own home.

There was one particular night when I realized that the nightmares were seeping into my daily life. I was at a bar with my friends.

[bar sounds]

The bar was packed. We were standing around tall bar tables, and everyone was talking over everyone. It smelled like Grand Marnier. As my friends talked, all of a sudden their voices became distant.

I was standing next to a table, trying to laugh along with everybody, but my mind's eye was on that 8-year old version of me – that little boy who kept springing up in my dreams. I was admonishing myself. I kept thinking over and over about what I could have done to protect him.

And then, I leaned back, and suddenly, I was on fire. My shirt had caught the flame of a small candle that was burning on the tabletop. My friend Marcus jumped into action. He started putting out the flames on my arm with his hand while everyone else took a step back.

A little later, Marcus made a joke about it and we laughed, but I could tell my friends were baffled, wondering how could I be so out of it that I’d set my arm on a burning candle.

What in the world is going on with me? Why can’t I stop thinking about stuff that happened two decades ago?

That year got harder and harder for me. The endless replay of this past memory, the brain fog, the anxiety, the disorientation, and the anger. The weight of it all became overbearing. So much so that one night I was screaming at my father in the dream. When I woke, I knew I needed to confront my parents. Immediately. I reached for the phone.

[phone ringing]

I tried to catch my breath while it rang. When my mother answered, I shouted, "Put Dad on the phone!" My heart was pumping outside of my chest. My fists were clenched, and I felt like I could punch through the wall.

When he answered, I asked him if he remembered body slamming me to the floor when I was eight years old over a game I was playing. He just sat there listening to me breathing and said, “I don’t know. I did a lot of crazy things.” My mom started screaming into the phone, telling me I was being disrespectful.

I to