Babs Deal, Scottsboro & The Torch

As I wandered recently in my book collection, I came upon this item. I've had it a long time and don't remember how I acquired it. The item in question is the 1973 issue of The Torch, a literary magazine from the "Literary Club" at Scottsboro High School. Since this issue is volume 6, the publication presumably first appeared in 1967. I found nothing about such a magazine on the current high school web site, so I have no idea how long it was published beyond that year. 

High school literary magazines are a genre little studied. A search on Google Scholar brings up in the first results a few articles ranging from 1930, 1966, 1971, and two in the 1980s. The 1971 article noted more than 600 such magazines were being published in the U.S. For my junior and senior years in 1968-9 & 1969-70, I worked on the one at Lee High School in Huntsville. Another journal seems to be have been published there recently. 

Well, now to the real point of this article. Back in July 2017 I wrote a blog post about Babs and Borden Deal, two prolific Alabama novelists and short story authors. Babs [1929-2004] was born in Scottsboro. As described in that blog post, I met her in Auburn in the late 1970s. She and Borden had divorced in 1975. 

If you look below at the page opposite The Torch staff listing, you'll find something interesting. In the middle of that page are some thanks to people who conducted workshops for students, and Babs is listed for "short story". So I guess she was in Scottsboro at some point during the 1972-3 school year. 

As noted in the blog post on the Deals, Babs is buried in Scottsboro. 

I've also included some sample writing from The Torch. 

I wondered if this Rodney Jones was the well-known poet and Alabama native of the same name, but he was born in 1950 and was thus 23 in 1973, so I guess not!

This article by Clarke Stallworth appeared in the Birmingham News 26 March 1982. In it she laments the "bestseller" mentality of publishers and notes that after 25 years her publisher Doubleday doesn't "want me any more." She mentions the completed manuscript for a thirteenth novel. Perhaps it is among her papers, also at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.  

Source: My blog post on the Deals

Movies with Alabama Connections: Judge Horton & the Scottsboro Boys

This made-for-television film was first broadcast on April 22, 1976, on the NBC network. Perhaps it received a re-broadcast or two, but it seems to have fallen off the map since then. As noted below, there was a VHS release but that's no longer available in the usual places. Even that bastion of obscure films and television modcinema doesn't have it. The video does turn up in the collections of about 25 libraries. 

I don't think I've ever seen it; I was living in Auburn at the time, working for the university and not watching much television. After all, that was the ancient times before cable and all we received by antenna were a few Montgomery and Columbus, Georgia, stations, and perhaps now and then a fuzzy one from Atlanta. 

Yet the thing seems familiar. That may be due to the presence of two veteran actors I am familiar with, Arthur Hill as Judge Horton and Vera Miles as his wife. Anyway, I thought I would cover this item in my blog series of movies with Alabama connections. Perhaps a future reader has seen it and will comment.

I'm not going to cover the whole Scottsboro Boys event in this post. There are plenty of sources for learning more, including an entry at the Encyclopedia of Alabama and one on Wikipedia. A revised 2007 edition of Dan T. Carter's classic book is also available, as are many other sources. 

This film focuses on on the figure of James Edward Horton, an elected judge on the Alabama Eighth Circuit Court. The first three trials of the nine black "Scottsboro boys" for the rape of two white women took place in that town in April 1931. The trials were quick and the defendants had poor legal representation. The convictions were appealed and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ordered new trials in a landmark decision about the conduct of such proceedings. Returned to a lower court, the case was given a change of venue and ended up in Judge Horton's courtroom in Decatur.  

Horton was born in Limestone County and spent some of his childhood in Athens. After a false start at medical school at Vanderbilt, he transferred to Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, and earned both a bachelor's and a law degree there. Horton served a term in the Alabama house in 1910-1914 and was elected to a senate seat, but a court position opened, and he accepted the nomination. After a time he left that court and returned to his law practice and farming. Horton eventually ran for a seat on the Eighth Circuit Court and was in his second term when the Scottsboro cases landed in his lap. 

Both defense and prosecution accepted Horton. However, after the trial and conviction of Haywood Patterson, he made a scathing statement about the state's case. You can read it on Horton's Wikipedia page. As a result, he was removed from the case by the Alabama Supreme Court and then lost his reelection bid the following year. In March 1934 he sold his farm to TVA, and he and wife Anna bought another property and farmed and raised cattle. Horton died age 95 in March 1973. A statue of him was unveiled on the grounds of the Limestone County courthouse in October 2017.

The cases of the nine young men festered for decades. Not until 2013 were final posthumous pardons given to three defendants who weren't previously pardoned or whose convictions weren't overturned. One of the women, Ruby Price, eventually recanted her accusations and testimony; the other, Virginia Price, did not. 

In 2010 the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center opened to document the case and its ramifications. I've discussed a visit my younger brother Richard and I made to the museum in August 2019 here. 

More comments are below. 

 

This film was released on VHS at some point by USA Home Video, but was not available on Amazon or ebay when I checked recently. This paperback based on the screenplay did turn up on ebay. The movie was filmed in Monticello, Georgia. A trailer can be seen on YouTube.

Vera Miles as Anna and Arthur Hill as Judge HortonSource: Famous Fix

Ruby Bates and Virginia Price

Source: The First Scottsboro Trials

The defendants in the Scottsboro trial and their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, at a Decatur jail. Standing, left to right: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson (front), Andrew Wright (partially obscured), Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems, and Roy Wright. Haywood Patterson is seated next to Leibowitz.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

This first edition of Carter's book, published in 1969

A Visit to Scottsboro (2)

Last August my younger brother Richard and I made an abbreviated summer brother trip by visiting Scottsboro, a town neither of us remember ever seeing before. On our way there from mom's house in Huntsville we passed through Owens Cross Roads so we could check out Gibson Books. I've written about that fascinating emporium here.

We arrived in Scottsboro about 4 on a Friday afternoon. You can read part 1 of this post about our visit here. In this one I cover more of Saturday's activities.

So here is Scottsboro's shopping mecca, the world famous Unclaimed Baggage Center. We left the Scottsboro Boys Museum and drove just down the street to this place. Quite a disconnect, but that's America.

I was underwhelmed, actually. The place is huge, with seeming acres of men's, women's and children's clothing. Then there's the luggage, cameras, winter ski equipment, and just endless stuff. I went through the books section, which consisted mostly of bestselling novels from the past decade or so. I didn't find anything of enough interest to warrant a purchase, but Richard did get a sports coat and a hat. We wondered if they had a back room where the guns, knives, brass knuckles, booze, etc, were for sale....

You can read about the Center's history here and a "how it works" page is here. Since it was a summer Saturday, the place was packed.

Another Scottsboro attraction is the railroad depot and museum. Unfortunately, the museum was closed, so perhaps another day....

The depot was built by the Memphis-Charleston Railroad on a route that ran through such north Alabama towns as Tuscumbia, Decatur and Madison as well as Scottsboro. This building opened in January 1861 as the town's first brick structure. 

 

The Memphis and Charleston had built 272 miles of track between Memphis and Stevenson by May 1857. The first station was a wooden platform with a small building from then until the brick one opened. 

 

This depot served both freight and passengers until a dedicated passenger depot opened in January 1892. 

A historical marker can be seen that describes the depot:

The Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company constructed the Scottsboro Railroad Depot in 1860-1861 as a passenger and freight facility. The rail line ran throughout the Confederacy and the Union considered its capture vital to cutting off supplies to the south. On January 8, 1865, the Depot was the site of an intense battle between 101st U.S. Colored Infantry and the 110th U.S. Colored Infantry, who held the Depot, and Confederate soldiers led by Brigadier-General H. B. Lyon. The out-numbered Union soldiers defended the station until Confederate artillery fire drove them from the building. In 1870, newly incorporated Scottsboro designated the Depot as the center point of town when laying out the city limits. With the completion of a new building in 1891, the Depot stopped handling passenger traffic. The Depot remained important in the economic and social activity of the city until the 1960's. The Depot is one of only three remaining pre-Civil War railroad depots in the State of Alabama.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998

As noted on the marker texts above and below, on January 8, 1865, Union defenders and Confederate attackers skirmished at the depot. Cannonball and other damage is still visible.

 

The depot is the oldest existing business structure in Jackson County, and one of only three pre-Civil War depots still standing in Alabama. 

I failed to take a photo of side 1 of the marker below, but here's the text:

In late December 1863, Union Maj. Gen. John A. Logan established his Fifteenth Army Corps headquarters in Scottsboro, Alabama. On January 11, 1864, by command of Gen. Logan, Brig. Gen. Hugh Ewing, commanding the Fourth Division, was ordered to guard the railroad and telegraph line from Scottsboro to Stevenson. Gen Ewing sent his First Brigade under the command of Col. Reuben Williams to Scottsboro, and it set up four separate regimental camps on either side of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, adjacent to or within one block of the Scottsboro Depot. The regiments under Col. Williams’ command included some 3000 men of the 26th Illinois, the 70th Ohio, the 12th Indiana, and the 97th Indiana, as well as an Illinois artillery battery.(Continued on other side)

Near the depot is the abandoned Farmers Gin Company building

Another abandoned building near the depot, formerly the Scottsboro Wholesale Company. 

Memorial to Andrew Jackson on the courthouse square

Robert Thomas Scott bought 1240 acres in Jackson County between 1848 and 1858. He established a grist mill and saw mill for residents of the area and a post office called Scott's Mill opened in May 1854. The name of the community was changed to Scottsboro in 1860 and incorporated in 1870 after the county seat was relocated from Bellefonte in the previous year. More details are given on the marker above. The original city limits extended a half mile in all directions from the depot. 

Memorials to Jackson County's dead in America's wars

On our way back to Huntsville we had lunch here and a pleasant drive along Lake Guntersville.

A Visit to Scottsboro (1)

Last August my younger brother Richard and I made an abbreviated summer trip by visiting Scottsboro, a town neither of us recalled seeing before. On our way there from mom's house in Huntsville we passed through Owens Cross Roads so we could check out Gibson Books. I've written about that fascinating emporium here.

We arrived in Scottsboro about 4 on a Friday afternoon. En route I remembered that Alabama author and Scottsboro native Babs Deal is buried there. I suggested to Richard that we try to find her grave site, and he agreed. See the comments below for details on our Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning activities. There's more in part 2 of this post, including some history of Scottsboro. 

Back in July 2017 I wrote a blog post on Babs and her husband Borden Deal. Before, during and after their marriage the two published a number of novels and short stories. Babs died in 2004 and is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Scottsboro. The cemetery has over 6600 burials, and since I had not contacted the office ahead of time, we did not find her grave. If I ever make it back to Scottsboro perhaps I can do some better planning. We did have a nice drive through the place!

There is a photo of her gravestone at the Find-A-Grave site. 

Once we finished in the cemetery, we headed downtown and drove around the courthouse square while I took a number of random photographs. This business has apparently been operating since 1992, but I'll bet the building is older. 

W.H. Payne opened Payne's Drug Company in 1869. The store moved to this location on the courthouse square in February 1891. The business stayed in the Payne family until the 1930's; a series of other owners has kept it operating since. The pharmacy closed in 1991, but the Soda Fountain and Sandwich Shop remains a popular place in Scottsboro. 

You can read more about Payne's and see other photos here and here. 

La De Da's on the square probably has some interesting merchandise.

This view of one part of the courthouse square shows the attractive, well-kept area. We noticed very few empty storefronts, too. 

A view of the Old Hickory Masonic Building with the Masonic symbol clearly visible. 

The old city hall building is now home to the Jackson County Legislative Delegation.

A view of a street off the square

The current Jackson County Courthouse was constructed in 1911-12. You can read more about it and the previous courthouse here. 

In April 1931 the courthouse was the site of the first of four trials involving the infamous Scottsboro Boys case. 

Unfortunately, McCutchen's is only open for lunch, so we weren't able to try a meal there.

One of Scottsboro's best known attractions is Unclaimed Baggage, where many possessions left by airline passengers end up. More about consumer mecca in part 2. This sign is visible from the Scottsboro Boys Museum. 

The former Joyce Chapel United Methodist Church, a few blocks from the Jackson County Courthouse, is now the location of the Scottsboro Boys Museum. The facility houses print and other items related to the trials and efforts to free the nine men who were accused of the gang rape of two white women. 

On Saturday morning after breakfast we headed to the Museum first. We were unable to take photos inside, but we did watch the 2001 "American Experience" documentary. The film is available on YouTube. This article "Who Were the Scottsboro Boys" is also helpful.

The museum, which opened in January 2010, is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2020 and renovations are planned.The museum is worth a trip to Scottsboro by itself. 

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama