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Coming of Age in Utopia NewSouth Books In this exquisitely wrought memoir of a committed life, historian and civil rights activist Paul Gaston reveals his deep roots in the unique Alabama town founded in 1894 by his grandfather and later led by his father. The Fairhope colony was the creation of Ernest B. Gaston, an Iowa journalist, Populist, and communitarian reformer. Fairhope grew into a unique political, economic, and educational experiment and a center of radical economic and educational ideals and institutions. It was home to vibrant idealism and creative arts, and a haven for reformers, writers, and other visitors. As time passed, however, Fairhope, once a community where people came to solve social problems, became a resort where they came to escape them. By the early 1950s it was clear that great changes were coming to the South, and the author began to look outward for ways to take part in the coming struggle—the civil rights movement. Gaston's career at the University of Virginia forms the core of Coming of Age in Utopia. For a young man looking to enter the struggle against racial injustice, Virginia offered the white supremacy myths, values, and institutions of the Deep South but less of its violence and retribution. Beyond Virginia, his long years as an officer in the Southern Regional Council and his several visits to South Africa provided widening vistas for understanding how social change comes about and is thwarted. A master storyteller with a compelling personal life and unique involvement in these events, Gaston weaves accounts of struggles for social justice into a forceful narrative enriched with provocative interpretation.
Reviews "This deeply moving memoir and absorbing social history takes Paul Gaston from an upbringing in a model utopian community in Alabama to a forty-year career as a model scholar-activist for several generations of students at the University of Virginia, marked throughout by his radical commitment to racial and economic equality and his lifelong hope in the possibility of a more humane South." Matt Lassiter, professor of history, University of Michigan "Paul Gaston has given us two great gifts: a life well lived and a story powerfully told. Gaston has been a witness to, and a maker of, profound and humane Southern change. An enduring love of the South shines through in every act and in every sentence." Edward Ayers, president, University of Richmond "From a utopia to a university, from growing up to growing wise, from an idea to an ideal—Paul Gaston's compelling memoir of promoting racial justice in the South." Julian Bond, board chairman, NAACP
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