David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Connor’s people had to force her to
move to the white side. (Imagine
someone trying that on Michelle
Obama.)^1 Connor liked to spend his
mornings at the Molton Hotel downtown,
doing shots of 100 proof Old Grand-Dad
Bourbon, and sayings things like, A Jew
is just a “nigger turned inside out.”
People used to tell jokes about
Birmingham, of the sort that weren’t
really jokes: A black man in Chicago
wakes up one morning and tells his wife
that Jesus had come to him in a dream
and told him to go to Birmingham. She is
horrified: “Did Jesus say He’d go with
you?” The husband replies: “He said
He’d go as far as Memphis.”