Alabama History & Culture News: July 13 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!

Why an Ontario man hanged in 1870 by the Alabama KKK was remembered this weekend

CBC.ca

The story of William Luke is a well known one in Alabama where the young ... We don't have to look for Black history to the United States or the Nova ...

Despite strong community effort in Newcomerstown, Alabama town picked for HGTV makeover New Philadelphia Times Reporter HGTV said Wetumpmka “has fostered something of a green revival, with newly christened walking and nature trails, and a nearby historic botanical area, ...

'To Kill a Mockingbird,' published 60 years ago, still resonates Atlanta Journal Constitution The book is loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, ...

'The Wonder Years' Reboot to Center Around Black Family in Alabama The Dad The show offered a nostalgic look back at one of the most tumultuous times in recent American history, following young Kevin as he navigated junior ...

Wiregrass boxing trainer/promoter Johnny Trawick to be inducted in Alabama Boxing Hall of Fame Dothan Eagle Johnny Trawick has had a long history in the sport of boxing in the Wiregrass. Based out of Dothan and Ozark, Trawick has trained more than 3,000 ...

A Black Alabama hero fights for America and freedom in new novel al.com “The Moon Above” is fiction, but it is historical fiction and, if anyone had a reason to hate von Braun at the time of his greatest triumph, it's a Black World ...

Marker Commemorating 1948 Racist Slaying in Alabama Missing

U.S. News & World Report

A historical marker that was erected to commemorate the racist killing of a black man in south Alabama more than 70 years ago is missing. By ...

The Witches Reboot: What Anne Hathaway's Grand High Witch REALLY Means Screen Rant Zemeckis's film is set in Alabama during the 1960s, which holds a lot of weight in historical significance. Before and during the 1960s, Jim Crow laws ...

Local historians looking for Revolutionary War soldier's resting place in Marshall Co. WAFF According to records, he was originally buried at Rogers Cemetery, but his body ... Cargill moved to north Alabama in 1828 and passed away in 1847.

Las Cruces author pens definitive Pat Garrett history Desertexposure tells the historic and tragic history of Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett, who was born June 5, 1850 in Chambers County, Alabama. ... Garrett was killed, and you can find his grave in the Masonic Cemetery on Brown Road in Las Cruces.

“Fancy Strut: A Novel” By: Lee Smith Alabama Public Radio There have been a great many bicentennial books discussing Alabama's founders, early history, larger cities and regions, and major twentieth-century ...

Bullock County citizens can contribute to Alabama's history Union Springs Herald By Faye Gaston. The Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) is asking Alabama citizens to share their experiences during the crisis of ...

Wreath placed on grave of Revolutionary War patriot

Dothan Eagle

It is believed that he lived in Georgia before moving to Alabama. One of his sons is the famous “Dancing” Grancer Harrison, .

Anniston's 44-year-old Book Rack saved from closing by new owners Alabama NewsCenter Anniston's 44-year-old Book Rack saved from closing by new owners ... The Book Rack, an Anniston institution that was set to close after almost 45 ... the closure of all “nonessential” businesses in Alabama and across most of the ...

Letters to the Editor: If the Alabama Hills are renamed, what about the state of Alabama? Los Angeles Times This name is a stain on our history, and we can and must do better. It's been on my mind recently as an Angeleno after the powerful Black Lives Matter ...

'I absolutely love big, beautiful Selma' Selma Times-Journal “Selma is a special place in Alabama and the nation due to its history,” Smith said. “Selma provided Americans nationwide equal opportunities. Selma ...

The Lady from Dallas: Hattie Hooker Wilkins a forgotten champion of voting rights in Selma Selma Times-Journal ... through historic Selma homes, was once the headquarters for Alabama's ... According to a 2016 article by the National Women's History Museum, ..

Black Lives Matter mural in Alabama has historical significance Yahoo News ... Michelle Browder believes art can change worldviews, so she designed and painted a Black Lives Matter mural in downtown Montgomery, Alabama ...

Historical record thin on specifics regarding Alabama's flag design WAFF ... state flag,” stated Steve Murray, Director of the Alabama Department of History and Archives. “We know that legislation was approved pretty quickly.”.

Birmingham Photo of the Day (76): Brown McDowell at the Princess Theatre

In 1908 documentary photographer Lewis Hine began work for the National Child Labor Committee , a private organization dedicated to child labor reform in the United States. He traveled the country visiting mines, mills, factories and other venues where children worked and documenting conditions and their lives. In October 1914 he took the photo below in Birmingham. Hine visited Alabama in 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1914. The Library of Congress has more than 5000 photos by Hine; over 200 were taken in the state.

I came across this picture recently on the Library of Congress' Flickr site. The description there notes, "Brown McDowell 12 year old usher in Princess Theatre. Works from 10 A.M. tp 10 P.M. Can barely read; has reached the second grade in school only. Investigator reports little actual need for earnings." 

What can we learn from this photo? The BhamWiki site tells us more about the Princess Theater and includes the photo. The venue, "a small cinema" on 20th Street North, operated from about 1910 until 1930. You can see a 1917 photo of the entrance here. 

In October 1914 a film called The Ex-Convict was showing at the Princess; the Kalem Company had released it on September 30, 1914. As far as I have been able to determine, the film is not among the many lost silent films but I have not located a current vendor for it either. This situation seems odd, since the movie had two big stars of the day, Guy Coombs and Anna Q. Nilsson. Both were very active in the silent era and were actually married in 1916-17. Coombs left films in 1922 and went into Florida real estate; he died in 1947. Nilsson's lengthy career declined in the sound era; she died in 1974. She was the first of a trio of early film actresses from Sweden who found great success in America, the others being Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman. 

I've managed to find a bit about Brown McDowell beyond this photograph & Hine's note about it. The boy and his family are listed in the 1910 U.S. Census, where they can be found in precinct 22 in Jefferson County. Brown was born in 1902, making him eight at the time of the census. Their household was crowded. Father Heram McDowell, born in Florida about 1860, was a machinist in a mine. His mother Linder was 32 years old. Brown was the fourth oldest of six children; sisters Willie May and Idene were older, as was brother Alon. Brother Roy was five and Herbert just one. 

I have found nothing about family members beyond this census. Some of the names are very common and I found none of those that matched ages. The unusual names--Heram, Linder, Idene and Alon--didn't turn up in other years or locations. I looked at the original census image, and the census taker's cursive handwriting is difficult to read. The digitization technology used at Ancestry.com's census materials may have misinterpreted them, although I couldn't do any better.  

I presume the note "Investigator reports little actual need for earnings" meant that Hines felt the family didn't require Brown's income. However, the McDowell's may have thought differently and emphasized work over education. 

Brown McDowell thus remains only a little less mysterious. I wonder about the suited gentleman whose head we cannot see [a theater employee?] and the woman in the ticket booth. 

Lewis HIne [1874-1940], a self portrait

Source: Wikipedia

Kalem Company advertisement that includes The Ex-Convict

Source: Moving Picture World 1914 via Lantern, the Media History Digital Library

Alabama & 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'

I was recently engaged in a peaceful reading of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and what should pop up but an Alabama connection. Let's investigate. 

Chapter 21 of the book is devoted to "Examination Evening" which ends the school year. The festivities take place in the schoolhouse well-decorated for the event. The students give recitations and otherwise demonstrate their learning before a crowd of parents and other town folk and under the schoolmaster's watchful eye. This sort of examination of students as public spectacle was common in antebellum America.

Tom Sawyer appears early in the program, but stage fright brings on a disaster. Yet many "declamatory gems" are heard, according to Twain. "Then there were reading exercises, and a spelling fight. The meager Latin class recited with honor." After some more performances, "Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the 'interesting' paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a 'poem'. Two stanzas of it will do.'" The young lady then proceeds to recite "A Missouri Maiden's Farewell to Alabama." 

At the end of this chapter, Twain includes this note: "The pretended “compositions” quoted in this chapter are taken without alteration from a volume entitled “Prose and Poetry, by a Western Lady”—but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be."

A note in the edition I read informed the reader that Twain referred to Mary Ann Harris Gay's The Pastor's Story and Other Pieces in Prose and Poetry, which by 1873 has reached its eighth edition. The entire poem can be read below. Before we look at it, who was Mary Ann Harris Gay?

Born in Georgia and a lifelong resident there, she was an author who is best remembered for her book Life in Dixie During the War published in 1897. In 1858 she published Prose and Poetry, which morphed through at least eight editions and at some point became The Pastor's Story. In 1907 she published a novel, The Transplanted, a Story of Dixie Before the War. Gay never married and after the war spent much of her time raising money for Confederate monuments and battlefield and cemetery preservation. Her home in Decatur, Georgia, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

"Alabama--good-bye! I love thee well!" Gay's poem opens; such generalities fill much of the work's three stanzas. However, that first stanza brings in a few specifics. We learn about the flowery woods where the speaker has wandered. She has "roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream; she has "listened to Tallasee's warring floods" and "wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam." In three lines she mentions the Tallapoosa River; Tallasee, a town on the Tallapoosa, and the Coosa River. Oh, and the Roman goddess of dawn, too. In the last stanza Gay declares she was no stranger in the state, and the people she left weren't strangers, either.

Chapter 19 of her book Life in Dixie includes the section "I make a trip to Alabama." Page 231 from that book is included below. On it Gay discusses her "precious aunt, my mother's sister, Mrs. Annie Watson, whom I loved dearly" and who lived in a beautiful home on a plantation in the state's "cotton belt." Could Mary Ann have visited her aunt in Alabama in her youth and gathered impressions used in the poem?

Another connection between Alabama and Mark Twain is the film Tom and Huck. Released by Disney in 1995, the movie followed the studio's 1993 production The Adventures of Huck Finn. Between April 18 and June 28, 1995, Tom and Huck was filmed in various state locations including Mooresville, Decatur and Huntsville. Cave scenes were shot in Cathedral Caverns. 

Why Twain picked on Mary Ann Harris Gay's poem is anyone's guess. I presume he could have found many other insufferable works of the day to use as his recitation example. And he did alter the poem a little bit, making the title "A Missouri Girl's" farewell. 

However, let's not forget this tale about Twain. "Author Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was once stranded here [Pollard, Alabama] when a wreck on the rails ahead prevented his going on to New York. It was hot and there were probably mosquitoes causing the elderly Clemens to declare, "I'd rather die in vain than live in Pollard!" Years later a native son of Pollard visited Twain's boyhood hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, and repaid the "compliment" in kind. Longtime Mayor Curtis Finlay loved to tell visitors, "to us the air is fresher, the water tastes purer, the grass grows greener and the birds sing sweeter in Pollard, Alabama than any place else on earth." [Source: "Pollard Station" historical marker]. 

In the 1870's Texas legend John Wesley Hardin, his wife Jane and their children spent time in Pollard with Jane's relatives. They had first fled to Florida on the run from the Texas Rangers. In August 1877 Hardin was arrested in Pensacola and returned to his native state to be tried for murder.

Make of all this what you will...

Frontispiece of the 1876 original edition of Tom Sawyer

Tyrone Power was an Irish actor who toured America in the early 1830's, including Alabama. His grandson was the popular 20th century film actor. And yes, I've written a blog post about all this. 

Mary Ann Harris Gay [1829-1918] in the 1890's

Source: Wikipedia

The edition I read is a bit unique, having been published by Montgomery's New South Books for the Big Read held at many libraries in Alabama in 2010. The Big Read is a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Mark Twain in 1907

Source: Wikipedia

Birmingham Photo of the Day (75): Electric Trolley Car

One thing I might be found doing during a pandemic--or any time, really--is wandering through the riches at Alabama Mosaic. On a recent visit I came across this photo of some trolley cars in Birmingham. 

In 1921 the Birmingham Electric Company was formed to generate electricity for the public and operate a streetcar system. The company replaced the Birmingham Railway, Light and Power Company that had closed in 1918. The BEC's company headquarters was the old Railway, Light and Power building constructed in 1915. Located at the corner of 1st Avenue North and 21st Street North, the building is now known as the Landmark Center. 

The trolley cars below were part of BEC's rolling stock and used sometime before 1951. Streetcar operations ended in Birmingham as in the rest of North America in the early 1950's. Toronto is the only city with a streetcar system essentially unchanged. The St. Charles Streetcar Line in New Orleans is considered the world's oldest continuously operating line. 

The destination plate visible on the car in the photo below says "Woodward". Could that have been a location associated with the Woodward Iron Company in Bessemer? Or Woodward Park near Elmwood Cemetery? Or....?

Source: Alabama Dept. of Archives and History

This book published in 1976 is a history of the city's streetcars from the 1880's until the early 1950's. 

Alabama History & Culture News: June 30 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!

Gordon Parks, the photographer who asked: 'Do black lives matter to you?'

Telegraph.co.uk

In Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama (below), a sleek ice-cream parlour is set against ... is Mr and Mrs Albert Thompson, pictured at home in Mobile, Alabama. ... on something more: that history lives on in the things it takes effort to see.

Dr. Hilary N. Green explains role women played in shaping the Lost Cause al.com Dr. Green is an associate professor of History at the University of Alabama and since 2015 she has hosted campus tours to contextualize many of the ...

In 1954, an Alabama woman became the first known person to be directly hit by a meteorite ... Business Insider Australia Mary Beth Prondzinski, the collections manager at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where the meteorite is on exhibit, told Insider, “It's one of ...

New baseball-card set reflects Alabama's place in Negro Leagues history al.com New baseball-card set reflects Alabama's place in Negro Leagues history. Updated 9:59 PM; Today 9:59 PM.

The Story of the Lehman Brothers, from Bavaria to Alabama, and From the Heights to the Crash The New York Times Arthur Miller's “Death of a Salesman,” published by Viking Press, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; Edward Albee's “Who's Afraid of Virginia ...

Group wants to rename California landmark named for Confederate warship CSS Alabama al.com The rethinking of place names in light of U.S. racial history has turned to California's Alabama Hills, a distinctive high-desert formation named for a ...

Thomas Blanton, last surviving KKK bomber of Birmingham church, dead at 81 WSB Atlanta “Tommy Blanton is responsible for one of the darkest days in Alabama's history, and he will go to his resting place without ever having atoned for his ...

Selma Business Owner Steps Up to Clean Neglected Cemetery Alabama News Network (press release) From the West Alabama Newsroom–. A Selma business owner has taken it upon himself to clean up an overgrown and neglected cemetery in Selma.

Don Siegelman exposes the corruption of politicized judicial system in book Opelika Observer Arguably the most successful and promising politician in modern Alabama history, his three-decade career in public service ran afoul of Republican ...

ABHC's historical preservation work recognized by national organization Alabama Baptist In addition, ABHC provides an opportunity for Alabama's Baptist churches, associations and entities to have historical documents microfilmed. In 2019, ...

Art History: North Alabama artist celebrates heritage and culture through pottery and quilts

The Decatur Daily

From the north Alabama studio she shares with Margarita, her pet parakeet, Guadalupe Lanning Robinson shapes slabs of clay and pieces together ...

The Historic Jones Store Museum of Smiths Station, Alabama WLTZ 38 NBC Nicole Jones catches up with the Mayor of Smiths Station to take a deeper look at the history of Smiths Station, Alabama. June 25, 2020. Nicole Jones,.

Pearson, Ann Bowling

Opelika Auburn News

She saw to it that Noble Hall was the first structure in Lee County to be put on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1972. The Alabama Historical ...

A Confederate warship haunts California's Alabama Hills National Scenic Area Los Angeles Times The Western U.S., including California, is peppered with old racially tinged place names, many of them holdovers from the Gold Rush. Close to ...

'He made us feel like we were the movement': Community remembers civil rights legend

The University of Alabama Crimson White

He [Thomas Linton]  was “instrumental in every major positive event that led to the end of segregation in West Alabama,” said UA history professor John Giggie. 

Archives Department acknowledges role in distorting Alabama's racial history al.com The Alabama Department of Archives & History said in a statement today that for much of the 20th century it promoted a view of history that favored the ...