Alabama History & Culture News: April 29 edition

Here's the latest batch of links to just-published Alabama history and culture articles. Most of these articles are from newspapers, with others from magazines and TV and radio station websites. Enjoy!

10 recent books with Alabama ties you'll want to read al.com In the past several months, books released with Alabama ties include a short story collection by 16 of the state's most famous writers, a biography of ...

Park Service Awards $500K for Restoration of Oldest Building at Alabama HBCU

The Washington Informer

A historic site of the civil rights movement that graces the campus of one of Alabama's historically Black colleges and universities is getting a facelift to ...
[Building is at Miles College]

UNA receives bicentennial legacy award Times Daily FLORENCE — The University of North Alabama's Collier Library and Information Services project, Celebrating Our History: Inventory of Archival ...

Effort to preserve Prattville history honored Montgomery Advertiser Effort to preserve Prattville history honored. Marty Roney, Montgomery ... Pratt is touted as Alabama's first industrialist. "Most people think that ...

Alabama, Lyric Theatres in B'ham need help to stay open during coronavirus pandemic WBRC “WITHOUT YOUR HELP, WE ARE HISTORY,” the post reads, in part. If you would like to support these historic landmarks, you can donate at this link.

Alabama's day of devastation: Remembering the April 27 tornado outbreak 9 years later

al.com

There were 62 confirmed tornadoes in Alabama on that one day alone, making it one of the largest tornado outbreaks in Alabama history. Alabama ...

Former Confederate capitals take very different paths on voting rights

Montgomery Advertiser

With few interruptions in their history, Montgomery, Alabama, and ... to address Alabama's historical legacy and present-day implementation of voter ...

BOOK REVIEW: 'Historic Alabama Bells' and Paul Revere's role The Decatur Daily "Historic Alabama Bells," by Thomas Kaufmann, (History Press, South Carolina), $23.99 paperback. SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM! Please log in, or ...

This week is a deadly anniversary in the history of lynching

al.com

Utilizing brains and brawn only works when communities come together. - Jaylah Cosby, JCMP 2020 Fellow, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Embracing her call to lead: Homewood rector to become 1st female bishop in Episcopal Diocese of ...

thehomewoodstar.com

She had already hit a “first female” mile-stone earlier in her life when she became the first female in Alabama history to lead a four-year university.

Red, Black, White: The Communist Party in Alabama

People's World

Mary Stanton's Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930-1950 is a concise, readable overview, a welcome contribution to the history of ...

Governor will order flags lowered for Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins alreporter.com ... have been made for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.” ... “Alabama mourns his loss, but we continue to honor his life of tremendous service ...

How did the tiny community of Pine Apple get its name? al.com The name of the tiny town of Pine Apple in South Alabama is confusing to some. Is it named for ... A historic cemetery adjoins the grounds. Don't Edit.

The story behind Alabama's second oldest covered bridge al.com While it stands, let's take a look at the history of one of Alabama's oldest covered bridges. NOTE: This bridge is located on private property and not ...

Alabama actress portrayed a beloved TV mom al.com She is buried near her mother in Mobile Memorial Gardens Cemetery. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we ... [Jean Byron]

Brittany Howard's Transformation The New Yorker She practiced with her rock band, Alabama Shakes, whenever she could. “I would work ... We drove past a cemetery (“Hell, yeah! Thinkin' about death ...

A historic life Tuscaloosa News Sarah Van Voorhis Woolfolk Wiggins bore the nickname “Belle,” as in Southern, somewhat ironically. As the University of Alabama history department's ...

Sarah Wiggins Tuscaloosa News Ruth Truss, left, professor of history at the University of Montevallo, and Sarah Wiggins attend the induction of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle into the Alabama ...

You can visit these real Alabama sites mentioned in novels al.com Writers love to draw from their experiences and familiar places to add realism to fictional books. Often, authors will create made-up settings based on ...

9 mural cities you can visit in Alabama without leaving your car al.com The city of about 65,000 residents is decorated with at least 19 murals in its historic downtown. Subjects include local history, famous people from the ...

'The Slave Who Went to Congress' tells the story of Alabama's Benjamin Turner Alabama NewsCenter On the heels of the Alabama's bicentennial celebration, this book provides an ... In addition, NewSouth Books has provided a free lesson plan to help ...

Alabama granted ownership of the Clotilda ship wreck alreporter.com The AHC is charged with protecting, preserving and interpreting Alabama's historic places. This charge also includes abandoned shipwrecks, or the ...

State of Alabama given ownership of last US slave ship ABC News A federal judge granted ownership of the Clotilda shipwreck to the Alabama Historical Commission in a one-page order released Monday.

Clotilda presents the state with an opportunity Dothan Eagle On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose ordered ownership of the remains of the two-masted Gulf schooner transferred to the Alabama Historical ...

Alabama granted ownership of the Clotilda ship wreck alreporter.com The AHC is charged with protecting, preserving and interpreting Alabama's historic places. This charge also includes abandoned shipwrecks, or the ...

Anthology of Alabama Poetry 1928

The Alabama Writers' Conclave was founded in 1923 and is one of the oldest organizations for authors in the U.S. Today it's known as the Alabama Writers' Cooperative. The AWC chooses the state's Poet Laureate, a position created by the state legislature in 1931; the choice is certified by the governor. The current Laureate is Jennifer Horne. You can read about that program and see a list of all laureates here. 

Before the AWC was even a decade old, the group published The Anthology of Alabama Poetry 1928. I have included the table of contents and the biographical notes below since this book is not widely available. WorldCat.org lists only 57 libraries having it in their collections; several of those are in Alabama. Bookfinder.com, which aggregates the inventories of hundreds of used and rare book dealers, turns up no copies for sale. 

The collection was published by Ernest Hartsock of the Bozart Press in Atlanta. The forward was written by Frances R. Durham, President of the Conclave. See more on her below. Hartsock and his press were apparently significant in the South's literary world; a master's thesis "Ernest Hartsock and the Southern Literary Renaissance" was written by Monroe F. Swilley at Georgia State College in 1969.

This anthology is something of a snapshot of the poetry landscape in Alabama at the time of publication. Included is "A Biographical Dictionary of Alabama Poets" that offers brief entries on most of the men and women included. There are some 80 poets in this collection; the majority are women. Note how many of these individuals were also members of other national, regional and local writers' groups, art guilds, etc. 

I haven't reproduced any of the poems, but the titles will give you an idea of the sorts of things included. Lots of poems about the natural world and various emotions appear in these pages. Some are poems related to Alabama themes, such as Wallace M. Sloan's "Birmingham".  Many poems are pale, precious, sentimental things produced by writers untouched by the modernism gripping poetry and literature and the rest of the arts at the time. Some readers might add, "Untouched by talent, too" and so it goes.   

As far as I know, this anthology was the first of only three ever published of Alabama poets that attempted state-wide coverage. The other two are Louise Crenshaw Ray's Alabama Poetry (1945) and Ralph Hammond's Alabama Poets: A Contemporary Anthology (1990). 

On his massive web site "History of Birmingham Poetry" Craig Legg has much to say about the AWC and the contents of this anthology. 

I have added a few other author achievements and information below the directory images that follow.   

I have been unable to find any information about Funk, who created this Art Deco illustration. He is not included in the biographical directory. The work seems a bit racy for a 1928 publication related to Alabama poetry, but maybe  the easily offended didn't see it. 

Emily Campbell Adams is described as the "Author of very clever and timely verses Plantation Prohibition", but I can find no information on a collection of that name.

The collection Flowers from the Foothills by Mary Chase Cornelius is a chapbook of 28 pages.

Francis R. Durham was President of the Conclave at the time of publication. 

Scottie McKenzie Frasier's Fagots of Fancy is a 1920 collection of some 60 pages with an introduction by Alabama novelist and playwright Helen S. Woodruff. You can read the collection here. The title page notes the poems are "In Free Verse." In 1922 her second collection Things That Are Mine appeared; read it here.

Kate Downing Ghent's 42-page chapbook A String of Pearls and Other Poems was published in 1925. I could not find information on Sips of Cheer.

Unfortunately, I found no information about or copy of Annie Shillito Howard's "The Vision of Bienville", a poem written for Mobile's bi-centennial celebrated in 1902. Perhaps it was published in a local newspaper. 

Lawrence Lee was born in Gadsden and graduated from Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery. He attended the University of Virginia, graduating in 1924, then settled in New York for editorial work. This opportunity apparently led to his editorship of Sea Stories and Sport Story Magazine. Both publications were part of the Street and Smith empire, which published dime novels, pulp magazines and other materials between 1855 and 1959. 

The FictionMagsIndex shows several poems Lee published in magazines in the 1920's and later. Lee may have returned to Virginia; he published two poetry collections in the 1930's with connections to that state. The first was Summer Goes On in 1933 and then Monticello and Other Poems in 1937. Both were issued by Scribner's, a major New York imprint; they publish Hemingway, for instance. 

At the time of this anthology's publication, Maud Lindsay was one of its best known authors. A childhood friend of Helen Keller's, she founded in Florence the state's first free kindergarten in 1898. She wrote a number of books of stories and poems for children, much of it reflecting her own experiences. The Online Books Page has links to full texts of several of her books.

The directory describes Mitylene Owen McDavid as a painter and the author of "numerous" published books. The only one I could find was Culinary Crinkles: Tested Recipes issued by the Woman's Guild of Birmingham's Church of the Advent in 1919. 

Kate Slaughter McKinney wrote at least two novels as well as poetry that appeared in her own collections and anthologies, much of it while living in her native Kentucky. She married a superintendent of the L&N railroad and was living in Montgomery at the time this anthology appeared.

John Trotwood Moore [1858-1929] was born in Marion, Alabama, but is more closely associated with Tennessee where he was state archivist and librarian for the last decade of his life. A Confederate veteran, Moore authored novels, short stories and poetry. He was a Lost Cause proponent; you can read his "A Ballad of Emma Sansom" here.

Charles J. Quirk [1889-1962] published several collections of poetry including the two mentioned, Sails on the Horizon [1926, 44pp] and Candles in the Wind [1931, 102pp].

Louise Crenshaw Ray [1890-1956] continued to write poetry and published four collections often with poems featuring Alabama themes and settings. She also edited the 1945 collection Alabama Poetry featuring work by members of the Poetry Society of Alabama, founded in Birmingham in 1929. You can find an extensive discussion of her life and poetry at Craig Legg's History of Birmingham Poetry. 

Eugenia Bragg Smith is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery. Her poem "The Coquette" in the form of a villanelle about a butterfly can be found here.The bio note here observes, "She is also a successful writer of Greeting Card Verse". Such poetry is often unsigned and a literary production so ephemeral most of its practitioners are unknown. 

Hudson Strode [1892-1976] was a legendary English professor and creative writing teacher at the University of Alabama beginning in 1916. He published a wide range of novels, non-fiction, and poetry. Strode also taught many student who went on to become writers such as Helen Norris and Lonnie Coleman.

Alicia Joel Towers wrote Psychology and Mechanics for Writing [Birmingham: A.H. Cather, 1924] and Piney Woods Poetry [1929, also Cather].

Clement R. Wood had a very prolific and very strange writing career that continued until his death in 1950. He graduated from law school at the University of Alabama, and by 1919 had published his first book. This one was followed by a steady stream of novels, poetry collections, biographical profiles, historical works and more. He also edited a number of books, including a popular rhyming and craft handbook for poets. Wood wrote or edited a number of the popular Little Blue Books, including the classic The Art of Kissing. You can read more about Wood here.  

Nena Wilson Wright's Birmingham and Other Poems appeared in 1926. The title poem "Birmingham" can be read here along with other poems about the city. 

Martha Young [1862-1941] was already well-known as a regional author by the time this anthology appeared. Between 1901 and 1921 she had published eight books of tales, fables, songs and stories based on her life as a girl growing up in Alabama. She was admired, at the time anyway, for her use of African-American dialect. You can read a typical title, When We Were Wee: Tales of the Ten Grandchildren published in 1912 here.

This history of the AWC's early years was published in 1993.

The Poetry Society of Alabama was founded on February 7, 1929, in Birmingham. I don't know how long it lasted, but it must have been in pretty good shape when this anthology was published in 1945. The Alabama State Poetry Society was founded in 1968, so I presume the earlier organization disappeared before then.   

Louise Crenshaw Ray's "Alabama Poetry"

Since April is National Poetry Month, I'm posting a few items on this blog about Alabama poets and such. In this one let's take a trip through a 1945 collection of poems by 37 members of the Poetry Society of Alabama and the career of its editor, Louise Crenshaw Ray.

Louise Crenshaw was born in Butler County on May 17, 1890, one of seven children. Her father was Thaddeus Crenshaw, who served three terms in the Alabama legislature. An ancestor, Andrew Crenshaw, served on the state supreme court and is the namesake of Crenshaw County.

Louise attended what is now Huntingdon College in Montgomery and also received a B.A. from the University of Alabama. She married lawyer Benjamin Ray on January 23, 1918. They had two daughters, Anna and Mary. 

Ray published four collections of poetry during her lifetime. Color of Steel appeared in 1932, followed by Secret Shoes (1939), Strangers on the Stairs (1944) and Autumn Token (1957). Her poems were also included in various magazines and anthologies. In the early years she wrote about such topics as Alabama history and the natural beauty of the state. Later in life subjects like love, loss, and racial issues appeared. 

Ray died October 23, 1956, in Birmingham. 

Craig Legg's magnificent history of Birmingham poetry project has some more details. Here are Legg's first two paragraphs about Ray:


 In 1933 the talented and dedicated Louise Crenshaw Ray was named Society president, the latest in a line of talented and dedicated literary club women to lead the organization. All Poetry Society officers were poets themselves, likewise gifted with organizational skills and leadership qualities. Along with Ray, the most active were Mary Pollard Tynes, Anne Southern Tardy and Martha Lyman Shillito. All published widely in the newspapers and magazines of the day, and served as officers in a number of clubs, including The Poetry Society, Birmingham Writer’s Club, The Quill Club and the Birmingham branch of the National League of American  Pen Women.
     In my own humble opinion, in the actual writing of poetry, Louise Crenshaw Ray stood head and shoulders above her peers. Born to a proud Old South family in the Alabama Black Belt, she moved to Birmingham as a young woman, taught school, and married lawyer Ben Ray. In 1932 she published her first volume of collected poems, titled Color of Steel, a fully realized, mature book of poetry and perhaps the best that I have yet come across by a Birmingham-related poet. It got mostly good reviews- and perhaps more important- received a flood of publicity, generating many newspaper articles about both book and poet. At the age of forty-two, Mrs. Ray was well past the age of ‘starlet,’ but, like James Saxon Childers at Birmingham-Southern, more often than not she seemed to command center-stage on the active Poetry Society ‘scene.’

Then he proceeds to an in depth discussion of the poems in Ray's book Color of Steel.

Below is more information about Ray and some of the other poets in this collection. Many of these individuals were also active in the Alabama Writers' Conclave [now Cooperative] and various local writers groups. The Poetry Society of Alabama was founded in Birmingham on February 7, 1929, and apparently disappeared at some point after publication of this anthology. Ray served as President in 1933. The Alabama State Poetry Society was founded in 1968. 

Some of these poets, such as Ray, were included in the Anthology of Alabama Poetry which the Conclave had published in 1928. I expect to post an item about that book this month. 

Bert Henderson was the third poet laureate of Alabama,  serving from 1959 until 1971.

Martha Lyman Shillito was the seventh President of the Alabama Writers' Conclave [now Cooperative], serving in 1929-1930. 

Mary B. Ward was Alabama Poet Laureate 1954-1958 just prior to Henderson. She was an original member of the Alabama Writers' Conclave [now Cooperative] and helped organize the 50th anniversary celebration in 1973. She was a feature writer for the Birmingham News and published poems in such places as The Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review of Literature, Sewanee Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Star.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Craig Legg's "History of Birmingham Poetry" Chapter 4, the 1930's blog post  has an extensive discussion of Ray's life and her collection Color of Steel published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1932. 

Source: eBay

The three poems below are taken from the 1945 anthology Ray edited and include the name of the journals that originally published them.