The South

I just thought there would be like a lot of kids with like camouflage clothes and like confederate flags

So, it does exist but like it's like secret. But that happens in the north too

it is just so different coming to a place that has so much history in that it is such a thing to be and especially to be just Alabama in general just confederate flags, you know? 

any university in the South, the history there, there's going to be some kind of negative history.

I just like visualized it as like the Deep South, like it would be a lot of old white people yelling at you as you walk past and stuff like that.

I just thought I thought it was going to be like real Southern just like you know, Alabama small town

I didn't expect a lot of Muslims to be here in the South, in general. Because, I generally think that you'd stay away from somewhere  you might get attacked for your faith.

 Nobody, nobody thinks of Alabama as important

I came from Georgia… and that was always my idea of the South because that's where I lived for 14 years

I've heard people say it before too, like I came down here because I knew it was The South. They can do it because it's The South, right? Because of the whole idea of what Alabama is. Not just the campus but the state.

our campus is also very reminiscent of like the old South, and that in itself is whether conscious or unconscious draw to our campus

When someone from overseas thinks about the United States, they don't think Alabama. They'll think of the South, but they don't think of Alabama.

People think that when you come to Alabama it's just going to be a place of complete backwardsness. It's just going to be you know, hillbillies everywhere and n-words flying. 

I mean it is in the Deep South

it's Alabama but we still don't --at least most— a lot of us don't tolerate that type of thing

“you don't want to sound like you're from Alabama”

asking why I would go here, knowing the history of Alabama.

she wanted to show people that Alabama was capable of so much more than they give us credit for

not only being a person of color in Alabama, but like LGBT person of color in this state. Even if not directly, has done so much harm to my identity. I don't think the state deserves it from me to continue to struggle and toil