Journalist John Archibald discusses his new book at June chamber luncheon

John Archibald, a columnist at al.com and The Birmingham News, received national attention when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2018.

Archibald recently received more plaudits when he published a book based on his experiences growing up with his family in Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s.

“Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution” was released in March by Knopf and has been praised by such outlets as The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and National Public Radio.

In the book, Archibald examines the role of his late father — Robert L. Archibald Jr., a Methodist pastor who died in 2013 — and other white people in the church in failing to speak out more forcefully for racial justice during the civil rights era.

Archibald discussed the book when he was keynote speaker at the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce luncheon held via Zoom in June.

The book’s title, “Shaking the Gates of Hell,” comes from Methodism founder John Wesley, said Archibald, who enumerated his family’s church ties.

“My dad was a Methodist preacher, and so was his dad, and his (grandfather), and so on, and my mom’s dad was a Methodist preacher, and so was his dad, and I have a uncle and an aunt and a niece and a nephew who are all Methodist preachers,” Archibald said.

His father was a minister in Alabaster when Archibald was born in 1963.

In 2018, Archibald found filing cabinets containing every sermon his father gave during his career. As he read Robert Archibald’s sermons from the civil rights era, Archibald saw that his father was not directly addressing racial justice.

“The thing that was the most apparent was the silence of it all,” Archibald said, “That was when I had to find out why this is not representative of this man I knew.”

After all, his dad “was a good man,” he said. “He was there when we needed him and taught us to treat all people well,

and he worked behind the scenes to make things better.”

People who knew Archibald’s father told the author about “a conspiracy of silence” that existed in the South, including the church,

he said.

People who spoke out against segregation were often punished or threatened, and Archibald was told his father was silent because he wanted to protect his family

Archibald said he understands his dad’s fear, but “it doesn’t make me feel any better

about it.

“If you have a pulpit and you don’t use it, what good is it?” he said.

All of us have pulpits in our own way, Archibald said, “whether its the dinner table or the mass media.”

He noted that we can’t know with certainly how we would have acted in another time.

“But I know you can learn from the mistakes of the people you most admire, good people, and use that to help determine how you will live your life and what you will stand for,” Archibald said.

“Shaking the Gates of Hell”  is “not a condemnation of my father,” he said. “It’s a love story in many ways.”

The book is told through Archibald’s father, “but I believe it’s about us and about how we live in our own time,” the author said.

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brookchamber.org.