You won’t find a better journalist, chronicler of the Deep South or all-around fine-principled person than Randall Williams. Imagine Atticus Finch with a typewriter instead of a law degree. His new Substack “experiment,” as he calls it, is fascinating reading.
Substack is an online platform for writers to publish and distribute their work through email newsletters. The historian and political writer Heather Cox Richardson posts one of her Letters from an American almost daily on Substack. It’s also the home of author Salman Rushdie’s Sea of Stories.
But lesser-known writers also publish on the platform to make their voices heard.
It’s great to see my friend Randall using Substack to share some of his reporting and writing from the past 50 years.
It’s a remarkable collection.
I know. I used to work with him. His writing stacks up with the best … nothing “sub” about it!
For a sample, click here to read his July 16, 2025, Substack entry, No More Bottles for ‘Red‘: A Death Observed in a Birmingham Train Yard. One of the earliest pieces of his career, it was published in the Birmingham News in 1972.
A finer example of budding journalistic talent you will not find.
I love the introduction Randall penned for the piece’s reprint in Substack, where he recalls discovering his love of journalism when he worked for the student newspaper in his college days:
“I liked it all. I liked talking to people and weaving their quotes into paragraphs that told their story probably better and more concisely than they had told it to you. And if you informed or explained or entertained or intrigued or all the above, that was the point. I also like the societal role of journalism, to write the first drafts of history, to hold power accountable, to do the small-d democratic job of the fourth estate.”
Man, I wish I had written that paragraph!
It’s an honor to have been part of one of those “small-d democratic” teams with Randall at the afternoon newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1970s. Our desks were right next to each other. I remember well the day–and the twinge of envy–when one of his essays about growing up in Alabama was published in the New York Times. He was only one year older than I, but he was a role model. Still is.
And I am grateful that our friendship continues to this day.
Enjoy Randall’s Substack read.
You can subscribe here for free.
We look forward to Randall’s forthcoming book, Looking for the Heart of Dixie, in which pieces from his Substack series will eventually be compiled.
The volume will stand alongside the other books he has authored and edited, including A Fast Walk through a Long History: A Summary of the American Civil Rights Struggle from 1619 in Jamestown to 1965 in Selma. His Witness in Montgomery: A Contemporary Account of the 1983 ‘Todd Road Incident,’ yet another story of white police officer overreach, was published earlier this year.
You might also find The 90-Second Autobiography of Horace Randall Williams interesting. I venture to say that a more engaging one-page bio has never been written.
Recounting his birth into a Chambers County, Alabama, family of dirt farmers and cotton mill hands, on through his work as director of the Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and later as owner of a book publishing company that was acquired in 2022 by the University of Georgia Press, it’s a witty and self-deprecating bio, with the streamlined style and clarity that only decades of writing experience can produce.
For example:
“I was born (1951) and mostly raised in Chambers County, Alabama, a place which also produced Joe Louis, one of our country’s greatest black athletes, and Cotton Tom Heflin, one of our greatest racist demagogues. You figure it.”
Randall has had an interesting life, indeed. But wait … there’s more.
He’s a bookseller, too.
No trip to Montgomery is complete without a visit to The NewSouth Bookstore, founded by Randall and his partner, Suzanne LaRosa.
It’s one of the most active, vibrant indie bookstores around. A wonderful place.
With guest authors, readings and a jam-packed calendar of community events, it’s doing a bang-up job for our small-d democracy, too. And it welcomed me warmly for an August 2024 event to celebrate the publication of my book.
The NewSouth Bookstore is located a short drive from The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, The Legacy Museum, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and the Rosa Parks Museum. If you haven’t visited, I hope you will stop in one day.
And please say hi to Suzanne and Randall while you’re there. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say they are the heart and soul of the New South.
Note: The above photos are from The NewSouth Bookstore’s website. The photo at the top of the blog is one I took at the book event last August for The Way from Me to Us.
Mike Coleman 