Alabama History & Culture News: January 24 Edition

 

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

Fairhope is an Alabama place of wonders, from sunsets to seafood to storybook castles ...

Alabama NewsCenter

The late Winston Groom, creator of “Forrest Gump,” lived in nearby Magnolia Springs. Business is so brisk that they've added The Book Cellar, an event ...

Outlaw House just a memory, new book highlights unique sites in Alabama | WKRG WKRG It's one of two Mobile County landmarks featured in a new book that highlights unique old buildings in Alabama. Apart from some stones from the ...

'Descendant' Review: Africatown Documentary Rectifies Black Erasure by Filling Historical Gaps Yahoo Because for the many Black folks living in Africatown, Alabama, where the last slave ship made landfall, remembering is what they do best.

Africatown building sold by descendants of Clotilda owner cannot be renovated, will be demolished AL.com ... settlement to develop and build a new Welcome Center adjacent to the Old Plateau Cemetery where gravesites of Clotilda passengers are located.

The Last Slave Ship review: the Clotilda, Africatown and a lasting American injustice - The Guardian The Guardian Ben Raines offers a welcome and affecting history lesson about a dark moment ... custom-built schooner, the Clotilda, returned to Mobile, Alabama, ...

Albertville Museum receives Alabama Humanities recovery grant | News | sandmountainreporter.com

Sand Mountain Reporter

The Albertville Museum has earned a $6000 competitive Alabama Humanities ... Our Mission of protecting and displaying the History of Albertville.

PBS host Darley Newman explores Alabama Civil Rights Trail in new season of 'Travels with ... Alabama NewsCenter Darley Newman visits many historic sites on the Alabama Civil Rights Trail in two episodes of her PBS series "Travels with Darley," including ...

7 Writers of the Harlem Renaissance - HISTORY History.com Author Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Corbis/Getty Images. After growing up in rural Alabama and Florida, Zora Neale Hurston attended Howard ...

US researchers test pig-to-human transplant in donated body - New Haven Register

New Haven Register

This time around, surgeons in Alabama transplanted a pig's kidneys into a brain-dead man — a step-by-step rehearsal for an operation they hope to try ...

CVHS to host historian Mike Bunn in virtual program - Valley Times-News Valley Times-News 23, the Chattahoochee Valley Historical Society will be featuring this subject in a virtual meeting. Mike Bunn, one of Alabama's leading ...

Historian invites public to dedication at historic Speake cemetery | News | moultonadvertiser.com Moulton Advertiser However, the ceremony will be open to the public and visitors are welcome to attend, Mize said. “Members of the Alabama Historical Commission will be ...

Imani Perry on how the racial sins of the South belong to us all - Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times A native of Alabama who was raised in New England, Perry considers the South ... and in the sense of where I'm situated socially and historically.

Alumna Publishes First Coloring Book About African-American Inventors | Alabama State University

Alabama State University

“The coloring and activities book is a fun and interactive way to start learning our Black American history,” Thompson-Gray said.

Alabama is in a 'State of Denial': Join the discussion of a whitewashed history poisoning our ... AL.com The 1901 Alabama Constitution was forged in a period most Alabama history textbooks breeze past — the years following Reconstruction when Union ...

Historian invites public to dedication at historic Speake cemetery | News | moultonadvertiser.com Moulton Advertiser A Lawrence County cemetery is being added to the state's list of ... “Members of the Alabama Historical Commission will be present,” Mize said.

Alabama A&M Athletics Hall of Famer and team photographer Sidney Jackson dies - HBCU Sports HBCU Sports Funeral services will be at Saint Joseph Catholic Church (2300 Beasley Avenue, Huntsville) at 9 a.m. on Monday, January 24 followed by military burial ...

Published author has ties to Greenville The Greenville Advocate “My mother worked at the Alabama Institute as well. ... Barnes started her published career with two poetry books, “More P's Please,” volumes 1 ...

CVHS to host historian Mike Bunn in virtual program - Valley Times-News Valley Times-News Mike Bunn, one of Alabama's leading historians and director of the ... Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama, will be speaking on his most recent book, ...

Cardiology & Cardiovascular Surgery: Intersections in Alabama

Today I'm posting a piece by a guest author, Dr. James Boogaerts of the UAB School of Medicine. He discusses the way in which the specialties of cardiology and cardiovascular surgery came to the state-specifically at what is now the UAB Heersink School of Medicine-after World War II.

A more detailed look at some of this history can be found in 

Holman WL, Deas DS Jr, Kirklin JK. Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB): A Legacy of Innovation, Education, and Contributions. Semin Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2020 Winter;32(4):606-616

A good overview of the state's medical history is Howard Holley's 1983 book, A History of Medicine in Alabama. 

I would like to thank Dr. Boogaerts for allowing me to add his piece to AlabamaYesterdays. I have added a few images and notes at the end. 

Much of Alabama's medical history is poorly documented. I've written quite a few related posts on this blog; you can find links to some of them here. 

History of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery

-  Intersections in Alabama -

James Boogaerts, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease

Received his Ph.D. & M.D. from LSU Medical Center in New Orleans, completed his residency and a cardiology fellowship at UAB 1984-90

  

     Dr. John Burrett, first cardiologist in Alabama, arrived in Birmingham in 1946. Dr. Burrett had lived on East 88_th Street in Manhattan when he graduated in 1937 from New York Medical College, where his father was dean. He subsequently moved to Boston and worked in the physiology lab of Dr. Walter B. Cannon at Harvard, then trained as a cardiology fellow with Dr. Paul Dudley White, who had begun the first cardiology service in the U.S., at the Massachusetts  General Hospital, in 1916.  Dr. Burrett and Dr. White co-published a research article on congenital heart disease in 1945.

 

John Burrett 

Paul Dudley White           

 

     One question regarding the John Burrett story is why an established physician from the Northeast would move to the South in the mid-40s and join the faculty of the Medical College of Alabama, which had moved in 1945 from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham.  The facts are that Dr. Burrett had met Dr. Joseph Donald, an Alabama surgeon, during his military service and he had met and married a nurse, Clara Bray, who was training in Manhattan.  Her home was in Orlando, Florida, but her extended family was from Georgia.

 

Tinsley Harrison

Al Blalock

Vivien Thomas 

     Tinsley Harrison came to UAB in 1950.  His roommate and close friend during med school and residency at Johns Hopkins (in the 1920s) was Alfred Blalock, who performed the first-ever elective cardiovascular surgery on November 29, 1944, with VivienThomas talking him through the operative procedure.  Two decades later, Levi Watkins - by happenstance - followed the pathway of Vivien Thomas to Vanderbilt and later to Johns Hopkins. Levi Watkins enrolled in Vanderbilt School of Medicine in 1966 and then moved through Johns Hopkins as a surgical resident and joined the faculty at Hopkins as a cardiac surgeon.     

   

Dr. Levi Watkins

Luther Hill

Michael DeBakey

John W. Kirklin

 Earlier, Luther Hill had performed the first successful emergency cardiac surgery in the U.S. - in Montgomery, Alabama in 1902 - when he sutured the heart of patient with a penetrating stab wound.  Michael DeBakey, while a medical student at Tulane in New Orleans, pioneered use of the roller pump for blood transfusions in the 1930s; the roller pump was later used in the first heart-lung bypass machine in 1953.  In 1955, while at Mayo Clinic, significant improvements were made by John Kirklin and his team.  Kirklin was recruited to UAB in Birmingham in 1966.

Dr. Andreas Gruentzig 

     Andreas Gruentzig arrived at Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta in 1980.  One of his cardiology fellows was Gary Roubin.  While on faculty at Emory, Roubin pioneered development of the intracoronary stent.  He came to UAB in 1989.

Dr. Gary Roubin      

 

      Contributions of physicians working in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia - Luther Hill, Tinsley Harrison, Michael Debakey, Al Blalock, Vivien Thomas, John Kirklin, Levi Watkins, Andreas Gruentzig, and Gary Roubin - are thus connected to both early and recent pivotal events in cardiology and cardiovascular surgery.

 

See   *pump*  and   *balloon*  and   *stent*  pages

Article by Burrett, White and others published in the July 1942 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation while Burrett worked in White's lab in Boston. 

After he joined the Medical College of Alabama faculty in 1946, Dr. Burrett published a few articles in his area of expertise. two of them are listed below. The one above appeared in the October 1947 Jefferson-Hillman Hospital Bulletin and had a different format. As noted on the first page above, he reviewed the "so-called orthodox therapy" on myocardial infarction [heart attack]. His talk at the house staff bi-monthly seminar was followed by extensive discussion of his remarks.  

1: BURRETT JB, KAHN SS. Incidence of a very slow ventricular rate in a young adult with A-V block and Stokes-Adams attacks. Jefferson-Hillman Hosp Bull. 1947 Jul;1(3):56-64. PMID: 20252035.

2: BURRETT JB. Nonsurgical congenital heart disease. J Med Assoc State Ala. 1950 Sep;20(3):79-81. PMID: 15437143

 

Alabama History & Culture News: January 17 edition

 

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

Horror in Alabama: The genre's roots in the state run deep, from 'Scream' to 'Get Out' - al.com AL.com They swapped location of the 1983 book from Norway to Demopolis, Alabama. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021). Alabama connection: Stars ...

Dan Abrams Authors New Book About Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Trial - Law & Crime

Law & Crime

The coming new book Alabama v. King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Criminal Trial that Launched the Civil Rights Movement takes a look at the ..

Filmmaker from Opelika tells untold stories of African Americans in Alabama | Local News ... Opelika Auburn News Theo Moore has a passion for learning history and sharing these stories with others. His goal is to share the untold, inspiring success stories of ...

Was Alabama the 1st US State To Declare Christmas an Official Holiday? - ToysMatrix

ToysMatrix

Historical records show that, in 1848, the Alabama state Legislature first labeled Christmas a bank holiday — a legal title that mandates a one-day ...

Ambushed in Eufaula: Alabama's forgotten race massacre - al.com AL.com I want to show you what a hole in Alabama history looks like. Downtown Eufaula is postcard pretty. It fits the Hollywood idea of what a small ...

A place for untold history: Historians and Black leaders in Auburn share high hopes for ... Opelika Auburn News A historical marker in Loachapoka indicates that the first Rosenwald Fund school was built there in ... Jeremy Gray of Alabama House District 83.

Opelika's Abby Snelling makes a stitch in time to embroider history into art - Alabama NewsCenter Alabama NewsCenter (Tessa Battles / Alabama Living). History may be made one moment at a time, but Abby Snelling is capturing it one stitch at a time.

National Geographic Announce New Documentary – “Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship ... What's On Disney Plus Stacye Hathorn, Alabama State archaeologist, Alabama Historical Commission; Joseph Grinnan, maritime archaeologist/diver, SEARCH, Inc. Kamau Sadiki, ...

EJI's New Legacy Museum Named Alabama Tourism's 2022 Attraction of the Year Equal Justice Initiative The new Legacy Museum provides a comprehensive history of the United States with a focus on the legacy of slavery. From the Transatlantic Slave ...

The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning

B Raines - 2022

… A secret beneath the murky waters of an Alabama swamp has been revealed.
One hundred … After successfully returning to Alabama from Ouidah, one of Africa’s
most notorious slave … ,” producing one of the most definitive accounts in the …

History on display in sculpture at Alabama Bicentennial Park

Alabama NewsCenter

The bronze sculptures in Montgomery's Alabama Bicentennial Park represent pivotal moments in Alabama's history. (contributed).

Alabama's capitol is a crime scene. The cover-up has lasted 120 years. - al.com AL.com State of Denial: How white-washed history poisons Alabama. ... Perched atop Goat Hill in Montgomery, the Alabama capitol is the sort of backdrop ...

Whiskey Bottle Tombstone – Clayton, Alabama - Gastro Obscura Atlas Obscura Whiskey Bottle Tombstone. Clayton City Cemetery. Clayton, Alabama. In 1863, a woman buried her hard-drinking husband beneath his beloved booze.

Birmingham author writes book to help people find purpose in life - YouTube YouTube A Birmingham native has released a new book that helps people find their purpose in life. Eric Jones' new book is titled “When Passion Me

BREAKING: Oak Mountain State Park expands 1644-acres, thanks to Forever Wild and EBSCO Bham Now Last week, before 2021 came to an end, the state of Alabama's Forever ... To put the size of the expansion into perspective, Alabama's largest and ..

Nat King Cole & W.C. Handy

These two musical giants from Alabama are linked by the 1958 film St. Louis Blues. Cole played Handy in the film named after one of his best known songs and loosely based on his life. Actress Ruby Dee and several other jazz greats such as Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald also appear. Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is in the movie, which features more than ten of Handy's songs. Cole released an album of Handy compositions to accompany the film. 

William Christopher Handy was  born in Florence on November 16, 1873. He was the son and grandson of ministers, and the family saw that he received a good education. His father Charles discouraged an interest in secular music, but Handy was able to gain local exposure to it anyway in the form of folk and popular music from a fiddler, "Uncle Whit" Walker and the marches and cakewalks of minstrel shows passing through his home town. 

Handy earned a teaching certificate, but soon was making more money at the Bessemer Iron Works near Birmingham. He joined a vocal quartet that toured as far as St. Louis, where they were stranded, and he heard some of the folk materials that would become his most famous composition. He then joined a minstrel show as the cornet player in their marching band and toured to Canada, Cuba, and many others places. After a time back in Alabama and in Mississippi, he settled in Memphis where his blues song writing and publishing flourished. By the time of his death on March 28, 1958, Handy was known around the world for his musical contributions. A U.S. postage stamp was issued in his honor in 1969. 

Handy felt the film would be "the crowning glory" of his career, as noted by David Robertson in his 2009 biography, W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues [p.228]. The "biopic" was hardly accurate, but as Robertson observes, Cole looked good in the role of Handy.

Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery on March 17, 1919. In 1923 Coles' Baptist minister father moved the family to Chicago along with so many other blacks moving north in the Great Migration. As he grew older the young Nat heard jazz legends such as pianists Earl Hinds, Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson in nearby clubs. His mother taught him piano, and he dropped out of high school at 17 and joined his older brother Eddie's jazz groups, Within a few years he had married, moved to Los Angeles, dropped the "s" from his last name and formed the Nat King Cole Trio with a guitarist and bass player. The group's lack of a drummer was unusual at the time. 

By the age of 25 Cole picked up the nickname "King" & the King Cole Trio had increasing popularity in both west and east coast venues. Their 1943 recording "Straighten Up and Fly Right" had such success the group crossed over to the pop charts. Capitol Records began marketing Cole's velvet voice with love ballads, and in 1955 the Trio disbanded. Cole's popularity continued until his death on February 15, 1965, and his recordings of "Unforgettable", "Ramblin' Rose" and others have remained popular. His 1960 release The Magic of Christmas was the biggest selling such holiday album of the 1960's. 

Cole's achievements include a short-lived variety program on the NBC television network. Due to a lack of sponsorship the show only ran for 30 episodes in 1956 and 1957. Yet the program broke new ground; never before had a black had such a prominent role on American television.

St. Louis Blues was not Cole's only film appearance. He is the uncredited piano player in the El Rancho nightclub sequence of the 1941 Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane and played the Sunrise Kid in Cat Ballou, released the year he died. In between he appeared as himself, as a singer or piano player in a variety of movies and television episodes. He had a major dramatic role alongside Gene Berry and Angie Dickinson in Samuel Fuller's 1957 war movie, China Gate. Other such roles includes Night of the Quarter Moon [1959] and Istanbul [1957].

If Cole had not died so young, perhaps he would have expanded his work in films and television. 

Nat King Cole and W.C. Handy in 1958

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

That Time John Dodge Died in Mobile

Recently one of my Google Alerts coughed up an interesting article. The piece was a brief notice about the unmarked grave of John Lewis Dodge [1893-1916], who has an unfortunate connection with Mobile. Because he was a professional baseball player in 1912 and 1913, the Society for American Baseball Research had paid for a marker at the plot in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, which was installed early in December 2021. 

Some sources say Dodge was born in Tennessee in 1889, but the 1900 U.S. Census has him as seven years old and living with his family in Bolivar, Mississippi. His father, born in Louisville, was a physician who moved to Bolivar to set up his practice and met his mother Fannie. The census also lists a two year-old sister, Mary. 

Fannie developed tuberculosis, and despite the family's move to Arizona she died in 1902. John's father died two years later, back in Mississippi, apparently from an overdose of chloroform he was using to self-medicate his headaches. What happened to John Jr. and Mary in the following few years is unknown, but by 1909 John was playing professional baseball in a minor league in Arkansas. 

Over the next four seasons with various teams he batted well and played even better on defense at third and second bases and shortstop. Late in the 1912 season he was called up by the Philadelphia Phillies and made his major league debut on August 29. Even though he played in only 30 games, he managed to demonstrate his defensive skills in a number of  plays noted by newspaper accounts.

Dodge was traded to the Cincinnati Reds on June 3, 1913, three games into the season and played his final game for them on October 5. His offense improved in the 94 games, but his defensive skills deteriorated--he made 27 errors at third base. During his major league career Dodge had a .215 batting average, made 90 hits, had four homers and 48 runs batted in, and scored 38 runs. 

New management of the Reds sold Dodge's contract to a Louisville Class AA team, at the time the highest level of minor league play. Perhaps the Reds wanted a more consistent player. His defense and hitting improved, but apparently not enough; he was traded down to the Nashville Class A team on July 27 of the 1914 season.

Among Dodge's teammates was pitcher Tom Rogers; the two would have a fateful reunion of sorts in 1916. In the 1915 season Dodge started off hitting well, but soon tapered off as pitchers figured him out. He was released by the Nashville team and then played winter ball in New Orleans.

For the 1916 season Dodge signed with the Mobile Sea Gulls, where he probably felt he had a final chance to move back upward toward the majors. He was hitting well after 39 games, but then came a home contest against his former team, the Nashville Volunteers, on June 18. 

In the seventh inning Dodge was hit with a fastball above his left eye. The Nashville pitcher was his friend and former teammate, Tom Rogers. At first the injury was not considered serious, but as a precaution Dodge was carried off the field and taken to the Inge-Bondurant Sanitarium, a private Mobile hospital. His condition worsened overnight and by the next morning Dodge was comatose. He died early that evening of internal hemorrhaging in the brain. 

His only survivors were his sister Mary Elizabeth and a grandmother in Memphis. On August 15 Mobile and the Chattanooga Lookouts played an exhibition game that raised $1500 for Mary. The sister later married, had two daughters and died in Connecticut in 1975. 

Dodge has been described as the first professional baseball player killed by a game pitch. In 1920 a shortstop for the Cleveland Indians, Ray Chapman became the first major league player to die in this way. These two men are certainly the best documented cases, although there may have been others in the early days of the game.  

I am indebted to the article on Dodge written by Chris Betsch at the Society for American Baseball Research site and the entry on Dodge at BaseballReference.com You can find much more information there. 

A general history that covers 1877-1973 is Robert Obojski's 1975 book, Bush League: A History of Minor League Baseball. 

Dodge playing for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1913

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Baseball Reference

Dodge's new marker in Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, KY

Source: WDRB.com 

The private Mobile hospital where Dodge was taken after his injury.