Former professor and retired lawyer Jim Vickrey spoke to a crowd in Auburn last week about his new book on racism in Alabama and the latest challenges the state faces.

“I don’t believe anyone infected with the scarlet fever of racism ever overcomes all of its effects,” Vickrey said. “That is why affirmative action is still needed in public higher education in America and Alabama.”

Vickrey spoke to an audience gathered at Pebble Hill at Auburn University last week about his fourth published work, Awakenings to Racism in Alabama: The Education of a Native Son and the Lessons He and His Peers Learned Resisting Jim Crow.

Tracing his personal “epiphany on race” to a March 11, 1965, event at Auburn while he was researching his master’s thesis on the KKK, he related the changes it wrought in h

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