Walker Evans Photographs an Alabama Cemetery in 1936

Walker Evans [1903-1975] is one of the best known American documentary photographers of the 20th century. He made three brief trips to Alabama in his career, in March and the summer of 1936 and in 1973. I have written about him in several blogs posts, including this one which links to the others. 

Evans made that summer 1936 trip with writer James Agee; they spent a couple of months living with a sharecropper family in Hale County. That experience resulted in the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, perhaps the most famous non-fiction book ever written about Alabama. 

Most of Evans' photographs on that trip were taken in Hale and Greene counties. The ones below are taken from a roll of 36 exposures in a cemetery probably in one of those places. My source for these is the Walker Evans Archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Met's web site gives no location information except they were taken in Alabama in 1936. 

Divorced from specifics, these photos have a haunting, timeless quality, floating out there somewhere in the past. What does this cemetery look like today, I wonder? Based on the number of marble headstones, many of them large, and the location in a poor, rural state, this cemetery probably contained the graves of at least modestly well-to-do whites. 

Research into Evans' archives at the Met might reveal the location of these graves. If you recognize the place, please leave a comment on this post.

Other comments are below a few of the photos.

This grave appears to be that of "Laura Abbie, wife of J.N. Erwin". I've tried searching Find-A-Grave & Ancestry but no luck so far. Two photos below also have names visible, but I've been unable to figure them out yet. 

The Association of Gravestone Studies has a section of its web site devoted to the symbolism of images found in cemeteries. Here's what it says about hands:

"Hands are found on many gravestones.  It may be the hand of God pointing downward signifying mortality or sudden death.  The hand of God pointing upward signifies the reward of the righteous, confirmation of life after death.  Praying hands signify devotion.  Handshakes may be farewells to earthly existence or may be clasped hands of a couple to be reunited in death as they were in life, their devotion to each other not destroyed by death."

The gravestone below appears to have a hand pointing upward. 

This grave is topped by what appear to be salt and pepper shakers and a basket, perhaps of food. 

Walker Evans Photographs Two Alabama Stores in 1936

In a previous post on this blog I've examined Birmingham photographs taken by Walker Evans probably in 1936. I'll be examining two more photographs in this post and additional ones in the future. Here's what I wrote about Evans in that previous post. 

Walker Evans [1903-1975] was one of the great documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Evans made three brief trips to Alabama during his career, in March and the summer of 1936 and again in 1973. The images he recorded on the 1936 visits are among the most iconic Great Depression photographs taken in the United States. 

His most famous photos were taken in Hale County that summer. In the previous year Evans had been working for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program that was part of recovery efforts during the Great Depression. Evans traveled to various places, including the South, documenting agricultural and industrial life and work. 

In summer 1936 writer James Agee accepted an assignment from Fortune magazine to write about sharecroppers in the Deep South. Agee wanted Evans to accompany him, so the photographer took a leave from the federal agency. The two men spent eight weeks in the Alabama summer living primarily with three sharecropping families. The manuscript Agee delivered to Fortune was much longer than the magazine would publish; it eventually became the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men published in 1941. Agee's singing prose about the daily lives of these desperately poor but proud people, and Evans' images make reading the book an unforgettable experience.    

Evans' third trip to Alabama came in 1973 when he and artist and photographer William Christenberry, an Alabama native, toured Hale County. Some of the color photographs Evans took on that trip appeared with Christenberry's in a museum exhibition "Of Time and Place" as well as the exhibit's catalog. 

These two photographs were taken on one of the trips Evans and Agee made between Birmingham and Greensboro and Hale County. The location of the first one is unknown, the second was taken in downtown Marion. 

Further comments are below. 

Evans' photo of a store between Tuscaloosa & Greensboro #Alabama in 1936. 

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC

This store served as a billboard for all sorts of product advertisements; in fact, those ads may be holding the structure together. Coca Cola is certainly the most recognizable one today, although many will also recognize Clabber Girl, a brand of baking soda, powder and corn starch. Those products are still sold today by Hulman & Company, which also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the sanctioning body of open wheel racing as well as the Rumford line of baking powder. 

The other products may be more mysterious. Hicks Capudine Liquid was a patent medicine manufactured in Raleigh, North Carolina. 666 was a concoction for use against the "discomforts and distress" of colds and made by the Monticello Drug Company of Jacksonville, Florida. 

Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic was developed by E. W. Grove in the late 1870's. He had a small drug business in Paris, Tennessee, when he came up with a syrup in which he could suspend particles of quinine. That substance was an effective treatment against the chills and fever of malaria, which was common in the U.S. South, and the syrup made taking it more palatable. His product was an instant success, both regionally and around the world. The British army adopted it for all their troops in areas where the disease affected them. Bristol-Myers Company bought Grove's in 1957. 

On the left side of the building under the "666" ad there seems to be one for "Dr. Brown, Chiropractor" and something else I'm unable to make out. I also wonder what those notices on the doors had to offer.

Walker Evans' 1936 photo of Thigpen's grocery & hardware store in Marion

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC 

The store was owned and operated by Handley Gillis Thigpen, Sr. [1888-1948]. He is listed in the 1940 U.S. Census as the proprietor. He was married to Delia and 20-year old son Handley Gillis Thigpen, Jr., was living with them. During World War II he became a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps and died on May 13, 1945. 

Handley Gillis Thigpen, Sr., is buried in the Marion Cemetery. His son is also buried there. Delia died in March 1986.

Source: Find-A-Grave

J.C. Lincoln's Sunny South Minstrels in Alabama in 1936

First appearing in the 1830's, minstrel shows are perhaps America's oldest original contribution to theatrical popular entertainment, but they are a very problematic one. The productions included comedy, dancing and music and initially featured white performers in "blackface". The material made extensive use of black people as objects of hilarity, grotesque stereotypes and ridicule. Troupes with black actors and performers began to appear as early as the 1840's. Minstrel shows featured numerous stock characters and a three-part structure with various characters and acts in each part.

Despite some controversy, minstrel shows were wildly popular across America until the late 19th century when vaudeville, musical comedies and other entertainments began to erode their audience, especially in the North. Minstrel shows managed to continue finding audiences in smaller towns of the South and Midwest into the 1930's. One or two companies toured very rural areas into the 1950's. 

Despite their controversial nature, minstrel shows have had tremendous influence on popular music and comedy that continues today. The quick gags and sketches of much modern comedy are descendants. Many influential black performers such as W.C. Handy, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith worked in minstrel troupes. Many films such as The Jazz Singer [1927] and Minstrel Man [1944] contain recreated minstrel routines. The Wikipedia article linked above has an extensive history of the shows and long lists of the films and further reading. 

As far as I know, the history of minstrel shows in Alabama remains to be written. However, during his visit to Alabama in 1935 and 1936 famed photographer Walker Evans took several photographs that tell us something about these travelling shows in the state in the 1930's anyway. 

The first two photographs contain advertisements for "J.C. Lincoln's Sunny South Minstrels". According to a comment on the Shorpy site, a man named Harry Palmer organized the show and first put it on tour "under canvas" in 1927. Several trucks were probably required to carry the tent and other equipment. According to one source, the group was also known as "J.C. Lincoln's Mighty Minstrels".

What could the audience expect at the Sunny South show? An advertisement recently for sale in a Hillcrest Books catalog gives us some specific information: "Featuring the Famous New Orleans Brown Skin Models. See ALVINA the Fan Dancer. Free Street Parade. World’s Greatest Mammoth Minstrel Review. Sweet Singers, Fast Dancers, Funny Comedians."

The information given at Shorpy indicates the show last toured from Dothan in 1934. If that's the case, the ads in the first two photos below were a year or two old when Evans took them. I have no idea who J.C. Lincoln was--perhaps a master of ceremonies for the show.

The third photo here features an advertisement for the "Silas Green Show", known in early decades as "Silas Green from New Orleans". Organized in 1904, the production toured the South in various forms until 1957. Time magazine gave it a review in its April 29, 1940 issue. "Silas Green" combined elements of the minstrel shows with the musical and comedy revues of vaudeville.

The show was originally written by vaudeville performer Salem Tutt Whitney, and sold to the only African-American circus owner in the U.S., Ephraim Williams. Williams developed and expanded the show and toured extensively with a tent that seated 1400 patrons. In the early 1920's Williams sold half interest in the production to Charles Collier. After Williams' death in the mid-1930's, Collier owned the show until it ceased touring. 

The final two photographs show another ad for each show. Comments continue below.

Photograph taken by Walker Evans in August 1936. You can view it in ultra large format at the wonderful Shorpy site. This photo may have been taken in Selma, although Evans visited other places, such as Marion, that same month.

Source: Library of Congress

Taken by Walker Evans in Selma in December 1935. This poster tells us the J.C. Lincoln troupe appeared on October 28 and adult admission was a quarter.

Source: Photogrammar at Yale University

That day Evans also photographed the shop next door with a poster advertising the Silas Green Show, which had appeared in town on Thursday, October 31--although not necessarily in 1935! That poster looks pretty weathered. 

Source: Photogrammar at Yale University

These two photographs are identified on the Library of Congress site as being taken by Evans in January 1936. No town location is given. Further research would be required to determine just when and where Evans took these various photos. 

Source: Library of Congress

Buck Jones was a major star of mostly western movies of the period. This film had been released in July 1935. 

Source: Library of Congress

Whatever Happened to Advance, Alabama?

Everyone loves a mystery, so here's one. 

In the summer of 1936 writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans headed to Hale County, Alabama, on assignment for Fortune magazine. Agee had worked at the New York City publication since 1932. In 1935 Evans, working for New Deal agencies the Resettlement Administration and then the Farm Security Administration, spent time in the South documenting the effects of the Great Depression. I have written about the photographs Evans took in Birmingham on that trip in a previous blog post.   

Agee planned to write about the life of southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers, and he and Evans lived with three different families in Hale County for eight weeks that summer. The resulting lengthy article manuscript was rejected by Fortune, but in 1941 Agee published a book-length account, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, that featured many of the photographs Evans took on their trip.

Largely ignored at the time of publication, the book is now considered a classic and is a wonderful read. Although he used pseudonyms in the book, the real people have become well-known as well. The book has been very controversial in Hale County for various reasons, but I found it to be a sympathetic portrayal of noble people living in difficult circumstances. Agee was also a poet and fiction writer, and this book draws on techniques from both genres. 

Another manuscript about the trip was published in 2013 as Cotton Tenants. The original book inspired composer Aaron Copeland to write his opera The Tender Land, completed in 1954. In 1989 Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson published And Their Children After Them, which carries the stories of Agee's farmers up to the time of publication. The book won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. 

The two photographs below were taken by Evans on one of his two trips to the state and are labelled on various sites as being in "Advance, Alabama." The Photogrammer site at Yale University makes available thousands of photos taken in the 1930's and 1940's by New Deal photographers. These two are identified there is being taken in 1935 in Lee County.

Both the date and place seem wrong. Evans was indeed in Alabama in late 1935, but I have not encountered any reference to him in Lee County. The first photograph below appears in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men right after a photo of downtown Greensboro. That would seem to indicate the photos were taken on that summer 1936 trip with Agee.

"Advance" does not appear in Foscue's Place Names in Alabama or Harris' Dead Towns of Alabama. I've looked at 1937 road maps of Hale and Tuscaloosa counties and did not find "Advance." I also did not find such a town listed in the U.S. Geological Survey's Geographical Names Information System.

We should remember that Agee used pseudonyms for both the people and places in his book except for Birmingham. The county seat in Hale, Greensboro; the town nearest to the tenant families, Akron; and even Moundville are given other names. I wonder if "Advance" is the name given by Agee to some abandoned place in Hale County or if these shots were taken somewhere in Akron, Moundville or Greensboro. The only internal clue I can find, the C.W. Lewis Furniture Company, is described below. I did not find anything on the "Dunnvant General Merchandise" store. 

If you have any more info about the mystery of Advance, Alabama, let all of us know in the comments!!

This photo appears in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men right after one of downtown Greensboro. 

Source: Photogrammer at Yale University

On the side of this Dunnavant General Merchandise store is an advertisement for a Tuscaloosa business, C.W. Lewis Furniture Company. The ad urges "Come to See Us." 

Source: Photogrammer at Yale University

An invoice from July 1924


Source: University of Alabama Digital Collections

A C.W. Lewis Furniture Co. advertisement from the 1925 volume of the University of Alabama's yearbook, The Corolla 

Source: Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum

Walker Evans in 1937

Source: Wikipedia

Birmingham Photos of the Day (43): By Walker Evans in 1936

Walker Evans [1903-1975] was one of the great documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Evans made three brief trips to Alabama during his career, in March and the summer of 1936 and again in 1973. The images he recorded on the 1936 visits are among the most iconic Great Depression photographs taken in the United States. 

His most famous photos were taken in Hale County that summer. In the previous year Evans had been working for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program that was part of recovery efforts during the Great Depression. Evans traveled to various places, including the South, documenting agricultural and industrial life and work. 

In summer 1936 writer James Agee accepted an assignment from Fortune magazine to write about sharecroppers in the Deep South. Agee wanted Evans to accompany him, so the photographer took a leave from the federal agency. The two men spent eight weeks in the Alabama summer living primarily with three sharecropping families. The manuscript Agee delivered to Fortune was much longer than the magazine would publish; it eventually became the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men published in 1941. Agee's singing prose about the daily lives of these desperately poor but proud people, and Evans' images make reading the book an unforgettable experience.    

Evans' third trip to Alabama came in 1973 when he and artist and photographer William Christenberry, an Alabama native, toured Hale County. Some of the color photographs Evans took on that trip appeared with Christenberry's in a museum exhibition "Of Time and Place" as well as the exhibit's catalog. 

Evans' first trip to the state may have been late in 1935. Some of the photographs below are dated in that year, others in March 1936 and some just 1936. Whatever the exact dates, these images capture indelible scenes from the city's past. 

The three photos below that feature a steel mill seem to capture the Ensley Works. Take a look at the photograph on the BhamWiki site here and see what you think.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are from the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Birmingham steel workers

A similar shot of steel workers with Coca-Cola sign fully visible

Front entrance of a boarding house in Birmingham

Steel mill with workers' houses in the foreground

Roadside stand in the Birmingham vicinity

Source: ArtsMia 

Miners' houses near Birmingham

Another angle on those miners' houses

Company owned steel workers' houses