Wayme Flynt

Wayne Flynt, a self-proclaimed hell raising, bible preaching, history teacher, grows roses and plays with his grandkids.  Known for speaking his mind and challenging those in positions of power to use theirs, he not only serves as Alabama’s unofficial conscience, he also has contributed eleven painstakingly researched books that help tell the story of our state.  Flynt’s integrity requires him to tell this story honestly, even when it is not popular to do so.

His sense of integrity comes from a long line of people who do not give a hoot what others think and a set of parents whose work ethic could stretch the workday to sixteen hours and move a family thirty-six times.  Despite constantly being the new kid and an intense dislike of school, a high school teacher sensed something about his intelligence. She placed him on the debate team, where his gift for argument based on facts took root. It also took him to Howard College, now Samford University, on a scholarship where he got his first taste of government—he served as President of the SGA.  After graduation, his boyhood dream of attending seminary and becoming a preacher collided with the racism of the southern Baptists. Frustrated, he left the state seeking higher ground.  But Florida’s ground was not all that high after all, and after his dissertation at Florida State University, he returned home. The podium, he had decided, could be just as powerful as the pulpit.

Throughout much of his career, time was Flynt’s main constraint.  He became one of the most sought after speakers, a veritable itinerant evangelist of all things Alabama: religion, politics, and the historical context in which they had been set.  During some periods he had to turn down ten invitations for every one he accepted.  His popularity as a prophet soared.  But like the prophets of old, not everybody liked him.  Some downright despised him.  Wife Dorothy worried more than once about his well being; the threats came, but Flynt ignored them and went right on about his business, that of bettering Alabama.  

“Mind Your Own Business” by fellow Alabamian Hank Williams may be Flynt’s favorite song, but Alabama’s business became his. And for that, it is impossible to calculate how lucky Alabama is.

Wayne Flynt, Distinguished University Professor of History at Auburn University has won numerous teaching awards during his thirty-eight year career including the Mortar Board National Honor Society Favorite Educator. He has won the Lillian Smith Award for nonfiction, the Clarence Cason Nonfiction Writing Award, and twice won both the James Sulzby Jr. Book Award and the Alabama Library Association Award for nonfiction. 

“I was called to fight, not win”, he says. But fighting for the rights of others, especially the dispossessed, is winning, and for the courage of his convictions, The University of Alabama and its College of Communication and Information Sciences is honored to welcome Wayne Flynt into its Communication Hall of Fame.