Birmingham-Southern Student Handbook 1927-1928

The financial woes of Birmingham-Southern College have been in the news a lot lately. As I continue to downsize my book collection, I recently came across this BSC student handbook for the 1927-1928 school year. Funny how things work out sometimes....

Roots of the school date back to 1856. In its current form BSC has existed since 1918, when the Methodist Church merged two of its schools at the present location.  So this handbook gives us a snapshot of the institution and its students a decade later. 

This small handbook is 5" x 3" in size and has 112 pages, so it's meant to fit easily into a coat or shirt pocket or purse. My copy is in fairly good condition, but shows some use as well. Unfortunately its owner did not fill in the "This handbook is the property of" form on page 2. There are no markings in the entire book, actually.

I have some comments below many of the photos. 

A history of BSC's first century is Birmingham-Southern College, 1856-1956 by Joseph H. Parks and Oliver C. Weaver, Jr. [Parthenon Press, 1957]. 

If this 1927-28 handbook is volume six, then the first one was issued in the 1922-23 school year. 

Some of the neat things about this little publication are the vintage advertisements such as this one for Loveman, Joseph & Loeb. The Birmingham department store eventually became Loveman's, which had several stores around the state and operated from 1887 until 1980.

Comments from editor Clay Bailey in his "Foreword" welcome students and tell them what they can expect--"multiplied privileges of residence and study" which he lists, as well as "the companionship of scholars and gentlemen" who will introduce students to the "treasures of art, literature, religion and science."

The "Alma Mater" has been expanded since this version was published. 

Whiting's photo is the only one of an individual in the text of the book that's not an advertisement.

On the next page is an admonition to freshman to familiarize themselves with BSC's traditions and ideals so they can have the privilege of contributing to them.

I guess the "Football Song" has been replaced by the  "Fight Song". 

Apparently a number of fraternities were active at BSC in 1927. 

Football was an important activity at BSC during the 1920s. The two schools that Methodists consolidated in 1918, Southern University and Birmingham College, both fielded football teams beginning in 1904 and 1909 respectively. After the merger, BSC compiled an 87-80-16 record between 1918 and 1939, when the school dropped football until bringing it back in 2007. The school won Dixie Conference championships in 1932, 1934 and 1937. 

The handbook describes the prospect of a good season, touting two particular players and the number  returning from the 1926 team, However, in the fall of 1927 BSC had a 3-6 record under coach Harold Drew; that was his final of four years. As you can see from the schedule in the photos above and below, BSC only played two games at the Munger Bowl, their home field. Two games were played at Rickwood Field, including the final one against arch rival Howard College, now Samford University. 

The Alabama Theatre opened in December 1927 and became the premier venue in the city for Paramount Studios' theater division. The Strand had held that place until then. The Strand closed in 1962 and was demolished the next year; the Alabama thrives today. 

Louis Saks' store operated in downtown Birmingham from the 1880's until the 1920's. 

Protective was founded in Birmingham in 1907 by a former governor, William Jelks. In 2014 the company was sold to a Japanese firm, but continues to operate from Alabama. 

Frank Lollar opened his first camera shop in Birmingham in 1910; by 1965 a sixth store opened in Eastwood Mall. 

The Florsheim Shoes company was founded in Chicago in 1892 and continues to operate today. 

I've yet to discover the relationship between Louis and Herman Saks in Birmingham or any possible relationship to the chain founded by Andrew Saks. 

Old Bryce Hospital: A List

I've accumulated a few postings on this topic, so it's time for a list!

Look What They're Doing to Old Bryce Hospital

Aerial View of Bryce Hospital in 1943

A Quick Visit to Bryce Hospital

Bryce Hospital: Some Photographs (1)

Alabama Photos of the Day: Sewing and Such at Bryce in 1916

My Visit to Huntsville Hospital in 1958

The newspaper item below turned up recently when my brother Richard and I were going through some papers at mom's house in Huntsville. I'm glad I can now pin down pretty much the exact date and place of my tonsillectomy at Huntsville Hospital, June 9, 1958, when I was 6 years and 3 months old. The physician might have been Thomas E. Dilworth, our family physician for many years. 

I remember Dr. Dilworth very well. I have a vague memory of him making a house call when I was pretty young and sick in bed, probably at the Cloverdale house noted in the article. At one point when I was 10 or 12, I was out riding my bicycle and bitten by a dog that chased me. We couldn't find the dog, so Dr. Dilworth recommended a series of rabies shots--one a day for 14 days. He started off giving them in the abdomen, but when that area became too sore he switched to the buttocks. The final two were given one in each arm. Mom didn't drive at that time, so dad drove me to the doctor's office each day including Saturday and Sunday. 

You can read more about Dr. Dilworth in the 1985 book Medicine Bags and Bumpy Roads, a history of medicine in Madison County by Jewell S. Goldsmith and Helen D. Fulton. A profile and a photo appear on pp 295-6. The book notes that Dilworth practiced at Fifth Avenue Hospital after his partner and cousin, Dr. J. E. Whitaker, opened that facility in 1954. So I can't be certain Dilworth did the surgery, but perhaps he also had privileges at Huntsville Hospital. He and his wife Jessie are both buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville. 

In this newspaper listing my address is given as 142 Cloverdale Drive. Sometime during the year after my tonsillectomy the address became 4220. I discuss this change in a blog post, "Cloverdale Drive, 'Jack and Jill' and Me."

Medical topics have been covered by newspapers for decades, but the nature of that coverage has changed over time. New techniques such as the spinal anesthetics described below were considered newsworthy at the time these two articles were published in 1909 and 1931. But when was the last time you saw a spinal anesthesia covered in the news? 

Spectacular achievements--transplants, gene therapy, robot surgery, new drugs--always get coverage until they become common or don't fulfill the initial enthusiasm. Other coverage is often devoted to children, adult local residents or various stripes of celebrities fighting cancer, etc. 

I don't know when the Huntsville Times began including these lists, or how long they lasted. Today this publication would contain many violations of HIPAA and general privacy concerns unless the patients or parents gave permission for such use. Perhaps the hospital did obtain such permission then. 

At the end of the Huntsville Hospital listing "Discharged" patients are four designated as "Colored". Presumably the facility was still segregated in 1958, with a ward or floor for black patients. That practice pretty much ended nationwide in 1965 when the law creating MEDICARE required hospitals to end racial discrimination in order to receive federal funds. 

Huntsville Times 10 June 1958

Huntsville Hospital opened June 8, 1926; this postcard is from the 1930s. Two new wings were added in 1956-57. The book by Goldsmith and Fulton mentioned above has an extensive history of this hospital. 

Here I am in the yard at Cloverdale Drive probably in 1957. From the look on my face, I may be worrying about that tonsillectomy already. 

Mom, younger brother Richard and I in front of the house. My blog post on the great February 1958 snowfall is here. 

The house on Cloverdale Drive in July 2018

Imperial Valley [Calif.] Press 12 June 1909

Calexico [Calif.] Chronicle 16 January 1931

Alabama Photographs: USO Club in Talladega in 1942

Ho, hum, another trip through Alabama Mosaic, and what do I find? Something of interest, of course. 

During World War II the Alabama Army Ammunition Plant operating near Childersburg manufactured gunpowder and other chemicals needed by U.S. Army forces. These products were taken to the Coosa River Ordnance Plant located near Talladega and run by the Brecon Loading Company. The employees of these sites, and others such as the Anniston Ordnance Depot, needed some place to socialize in their free time. The USO Club in Talladega provided such a haven for many of the military personnel and their spouses.

The United Service Organization was founded in 1941 to offer live entertainment to members of the armed forces and their families. Since then volunteers ranging from Hollywood celebrities to local residents have offered their efforts to that mission. The USO became well known during World War II as singers, dancer, comedians, actors and others appeared at military installations stateside and abroad.

The photographs below were taken in 1942 at the USO Club in Talladega. The first two were taken by either Frank Lollar or one of his employees. Lollar opened a photography and camera shop in Birmingham in 1910 and eventually owned at least six stores in the area. 

The first photo shows a scene from Noel Coward's play Ways and Means, first performed in London in 1936. The work was a short comedic play and part of a cycle of ten that were intended to be performed over three nights. Coward [1899-1973] was a multi-talented English playwright, director, actor, singer and composer. 

Such material would have been appealing to volunteer actors putting on such  performances over time at different venues. The Wikipedia entry linked above notes that in World War II alone, "According to historian Paul Holsinger, between 1941 and 1945, the USO did 293,738 performances in 208,178 separate visits. Estimates were that more than 161 million servicemen and women, in the U.S. and abroad, were entertained. The USO also did shows in military hospitals, eventually entertaining more than 3 million wounded soldiers and sailors in 192 different hospitals. There were 702 different USO troupes that toured the world, some spending up to six months per tour.^[22] "

You can view a number of other stills put together in a YouTube video.

A performance of Coward's play 19 June 1942

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

Conga line 18 May 1942

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

Sometime in 1942? Local young ladies often volunteered at USO clubs. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

The facility is now the Spring Street Recreation Center. 

Source: HipPostcard 

Birmingham Photo of the Day [84]: Gus Brown

Recently I've been roaming through Alabama Mosaic again, a place of infinite distraction, and here's the result this time. 

The document below can be found here and here at the Library of Congress' digital collection, "Federal Writers Project: Slave Narratives." The Federal Writers Project was a New Deal agency, and one of its efforts during the Great Depression of the 1930s involved interviewing former slaves. The Slave Narrative Collection contains over 2000 such interviews conducted in eleven states. Gus Brown was an interview subject in May 1937. 

He was interviewed in Birmingham by Alexander B. Johnson under the auspices of the Alabama Writers Project, a state component of the federal effort. The state archives has an extensive collection of this material. On the two state archives pages linked below Brown's photos, the photographer is identified as "Lollar's Birmingham, Alabama." That was presumably Frank Lollar, who opened a photography and camera shop in the city as early as 1910. The firm eventually operated at least six stores; one opened in Eastwood Mall in December 1965.

Because of his common name, I was unable to find anything on Johnson. At Ancestry.com, I did find an Alexander B. Johnson living in Birmingham who was counted in the 1920 census, age 7. He would have been 24 in 1937, so perhaps...

Like the slave narratives generally, Brown's life story is fascinating and poignant. He  grew up and thus enslaved on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia. Being his master's "body servant", Brown accompanied him into battle during the Civil War and remembered seeing Stonewall Jackson. After the war, Brown remained on William Brown's plantation until his former master died. Then he began work for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and ended up in Birmingham, where he decided to stay.  Between 1900 and 1967 the Seaboard was a major railroad in the southern U.S. 

I have so far been unable to trace Brown any further. Be sure to read this entire interview, and especially he finally two paragraphs. 

A photo of Brown taken May 8, 1937

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

Gus Brown, age 90

Source: Alabama Genealogy Trails

As my son Amos pointed out, the building behind Brown in the first photograph looks like the Jefferson County Courthouse.

Alabama Book: Women in Literature in 1895

Mary Lafayette Robbins opens her introduction by noting that "The making of this book has been a labor of love." Her goal is to make known the achievements of Alabama women in intellectual development, specifically literature. By page two her agenda is clear, however. She is critical of the whole "new woman" concept then current in America that promoted the idea women could move beyond their "proper environment." Robbins then promotes the idea that literary clubs and literature are good fits for the "capacities and limitations of woman."

Developments of the day, the suffrage movement, single women working outside the home and even riding bicycles really put the fear in promoters of the status quo.

Robbins does make important observations about Alabama women and "the world of letters":

At least Robbins doesn't object to higher education for women. 

Several female authors became well-known in Alabama between the end of the Civil War and the early 1900s. These include poets Maria Howard Weeden [1846-1905], Zitella Cocke [1840-1929], and Martha Young [1862-1941]. Weeden was also an artist noted for her watercolor portraits of former slaves. Elizabeth Bellamy [1837-1900] wrote poetry, short fiction and novels that were more realistic than much of postwar Southern literature that romanticized the antebellum South. Louise Clarke Pyrnelle [1850-1907] wrote popular children's literature that did portray slavery in a positive way. 

The book has two parts, information on the clubs and some selections of literature by Alabama women. The selections include poetry, fiction, and essays; some are complete, others are excerpts. A few examples of the literary clubs and selections are below the introduction. 

I've discovered nothing about Robbins beyond this book. On page 6 she is mentioned in the entry on the Alabama Federation of Literary Clubs. On April 17, 1895, representatives of several clubs from around the state met in Birmingham "in the parlors of the Presbyterian church on the South Highlands, one of the aristocratic suburbs." They discussed forming that federation. Robbins, from Selma, "read a strong paper in favor of the movement." The association was organized that day, and Robbins elected President. 

The club listing begins with the Alabama Federation of Literary Clubs and includes many local societies.

The Great Hartselle Bank Robbery of 1926

I've written about Hartselle in a previous post and covered a few of its historical highlights. Famed author William Bradford Huie was a native and is buried there. Other notable figures include John Sparkman, a U.S. congressman, senator and vice-presidential candidate in 1952, and Steve Woodward, who spent seven years as a Major League baseball pitcher. 

Hartselle is also famous for an event that took place in the town on March 15, 1926--perhaps the most spectacular bank robbery in state history. Let's investigate. 

Just after midnight on that Monday morning as many as eight men appeared in town and headed for the telephone exchange. There they cut three cables that tied Hartselle to the rest of the world via telephone and telegraph. Then they proceeded to the Bank of Hartselle. Along the way the gang kidnapped several locals who were awake at that hour and tied them up in the back of the bank. These men included J.B. Huie, the train station agent; Oscar Williams, who was waiting for a train; Les Williams, the police officer on duty, and Ernest Mittlwede, cashier of another bank heading home from a date. 

The robbers used six sticks of dynamite to open the safe, and after four hours left town with more than $14,000 in cash, gold and silver. No one was ever arrested for the crime. In its article about the robbery, the Decatur Daily reported the presence of two "high-powered" cars in Hartselle on Saturday, one driven by a woman and the other containing two men. Around 6 a.m. Monday Birmingham police found an abandoned vehicle containing empty money bags and numerous checks. The car had been stolen Sunday night from a city resident. 

Hartselle had a population of just over 2000 in 1926. Blogger Michele Jackson has written that authorities at the time in other small towns noted similarities between this robbery and one in Center, Alabama, on April 7 and another in Tennessee on April 10. Hartselle itself has kept memory of the crime alive; a reenactment took place in 2019. An historical marker can be seen at the end of this post; the building that housed the bank still stands and was a boutique called Bella Reese as of 2015. 

The article below appeared in the Tuscaloosa News on March 15, 1926. A 2020 article by Jackson can be read here. See also an Associated Press story, "Shocking, unsolved 1926 bank robbery still provokes interest" that appeared in the Birmingham News on March 18, 2000. 

According to the 1920 census via Ancestry.com, William Bradford Huie's father was John B. Huie. That census gives John's occupation as telephone operator for the railroad. 

Source: Newspapers.com 

Source: Hartselle Enquirer