Wiley Brooks Remembers: A Haven of Safety on Valley Street
Ed. note: A number of recent Untold Stories feature childhood memories of people who grew up in Montevallo, Alabama and left to pursue lives and careers in other parts of the country. Wiley Brooks is a musician, songwriter, and producer who has recently returned to live in the community that shaped his earliest years.
“We have to now fight to correct the historic record, to have an honest accounting of what happened to our parents, and grandparents, and their parents, because without an honest accounting, we will not make it to the next step.”
“We must love one another or die.”
The photo of young Wiley was taken in a studio on the second floor of a building on Montevallo’s Main Street. “I remember walking up the stairs to get that picture taken. My mother took me there to get that picture taken.” – source: interview
“I draw from real memories, emotions, and personal experiences, then shape those ideas into lyrics and a musical direction. From there, I use AI-assisted music tools as part of the creative process to explore melodies, arrangements, and vocal ideas. After that, I refine the song, adjust the feel, improve the sound, and make sure the final version reflects the emotion and message intended.”
“For a song like ‘Montevallo,’ the heart of the process is memory, storytelling, and honoring where I came from.” – source: email June 25, 2026
Perhaps you have heard Wiley Brook’s recently released song, “Montevallo in My Heart.” We interviewed Wiley this past June to learn more about the feeling for Montevallo that shapes this recollection of a loving community.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Wiley lived on Valley Street with his grandmother, Hazel Rogers, who took in laundry from white families, and his mother, Magnolia Martin, a graduate of Alabama A & M who taught in Alabaster. The family house stood on an African American stretch of Valley Street that began at Shelby Street and ran past Ward Chapel AME Church down to Shoal Creek.
It was “like a village, you know,” Wiley recalls. The neighbors were like family, always looking out for each other. “It’s hard to describe. It was just the closeness in Montevallo.”
[Inset from 1933 Sanborn map showing Valley Street]
During the idyllic Valley Street days, young Wiley had no way of knowing that his own family had endured racially motivated violence and intimidation: “I didn’t know about all the other stuff that was going on. My family protected me from a lot of that stuff.”
As he grew older, he learned bits and pieces of the family story. He came to realize that the silence of the adults in his early years protected him from the pain, hurt, grief, loss, and fear that shadowed his family and other Black families during the era of racial terror in the South.
He learned that his ancestors had been enslaved in nearby Bibb County and, after Emancipation, settled on land near Randolph.
From grandmother Hazel he learned about the near-lynching of her father, who was taken up by some white men, possibly the Klan. Why? “The word got out that some black guy had raped a white woman, and so they came in. They were looking for it, so they came and grabbed my great grandfather and took him away.”
The family feared they would never see him again. Even an unfounded suspicion of rape was enough to get a Black man killed. He was returned home after “a long time,” but the terror and brutality continued: “They took his land from them and ran him out of town, and that's how they ended up in Montevallo.”
His Bibb County ancestor rests today in the family plot on the hill in Montevallo Cemetery. His name was Bill Ward.
Wiley reflects today: “No matter what my family endured during those turbulent times, they never taught me to hate or dislike anyone. Instead, they taught me not to judge an entire group of people by the actions of a few, and to treat each person as an individual.”
During his early years Wiley knew little of these things. The women who raised him protected from the troubles they had heard about or experienced. The Black community on the street and at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church held Wiley with loving arms, created for him a cocoon of physical and emotional safety.
Young Wiley did not know that he lived on the margins of the white society. That centuries-old ideas about race restricted where he could go and what he could do. He did know that to play with other kids he could go down the hill from his house on Valley Street to the Black swimming hole in Shoal Creek.
- Mike Mahan, No Hill Too High for a Stepper
During his return visits after moving to Birmingham, Wiley would be taken by his grandfather, Robert Rogers, to what he now ironically calls “picnics” by the creek. These “picnics” were gatherings at a single bench overlooking the Black swimming hole. “That was our park over there, that little piece of area over there by the water filtering system. But I didn’t know better. I mean, I loved it. I didn’t know how poor we were.” It was much later that he learned that Orr Park existed. “The only park I knew was down there by the creek.”
Grandfather Rogers taught him how to make a kite himself, using tree limbs and paper bags and torn up rags, and he had just as much fun as white kids who constructed kites with strong wired frames and glued paper. “I was rich you know, because I was with family.” His grandfather showed him his first snapping turtle. He bought Wiley plastic tools and the youngster would follow him around while his grandfather worked around the house.
Today we talk about intergenerational trauma. The adults in Wiley’s life knew deep in their bones that the stunting effects of racism could be passed from generation to generation. Their protective silence gave him a chance to move forward. They confronted inherited trauma with their best weapon—love—which he gives back in “Montevallo in My Heart.”
Most of this material comes from a telephone interview with Wiley Brooks, June 23, 2026. The quote from Bryan Stevenson is from “Confronting America’s Legacy of Slavery,” Reveal.org, June 17, 2026. We would love to preserve more memories like these. If you or someone in your family has memories to share, contact us at Montevallolegacy@gmail.com. Submitted by Kathy King and James Salter.