Alabama Photos: A Mobile Youth Orchestra in 1937

I found the first photograph below in D. Antoinette Handy's Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras [1981]. Then I found it and a related photo at a web site devoted to the history of America's New Deal during the Great Depression. The photos show a girls' orchestra performing in Mobile under the auspices of the National Youth Administration. Let's investigate.

President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the National Youth Administration in June 1935 and it operated as part of the Works Progress Administration until 1939. The NYA was discontinued in 1943 as the economic effects of World War II began to take effect. The agency paid grants to young people aged 16 to 25 to assist with job training and actual jobs in public works and service projects. That web site on the New Deal I mentioned has some detail from the NYA's final report about the orchestras sponsored by the agency. 

There is another important Alabama connection at the NYA. The agency's Executive Director for its entire existence was Aubrey Willis Williams, who was born in Springville in St. Clair County on August 23, 1890. Despite his impoverished background, by the time he was 30 he had earned a PhD at the University of Bordeaux in France and begun a career in social work in Ohio and Wisconsin. President Roosevelt appointed him as Assistant Federal Relief Administrator under Harry Hopkins, an important New Deal figure and a close advisor to FDR.

When the National Youth Administration was organized, Roosevelt selected  Williams to direct it. One of his early tasks required him to appoint a Youth Director for each of the 48 states; he picked future president Lyndon Baines Johnson to head the operation in Texas. The 26 year-old Johnson soon earned a reputation for fairness that included black participation in the agency's programs. This experience may have influenced President Johnson's Great Society programs and efforts such as Job Corps and Upward Bound.

In 1945 after the NYA had been dissolved, Roosevelt appointed Williams to be director of the Rural Electrification Administration. His support of blacks in federal programs meant that Southern senators did not support him and  blocked his nomination.

He returned to Alabama to continue civil rights work, but attacks by Southern politicians who wanted to link integration and communism continued. These men included the powerful senator from Mississippi James Eastland and Governor George Wallace.

In 1945 Williams and Alabama journalist Gould Beech had purchased The Southern Farmer newspaper and turned it into a venue for liberal opinion and activity in the South. The paper eventually failed, and Williams returned to Washington, D.C., in the early 1960s. Despite suffering from stomach cancer, he attended Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington in August 1963. Williams died on March 15, 1965.  

Source: U.S. National Archives via the New Deal of the Day site

Aubrey Willis Williams [1890-1965]

Source: Library of Congress via Wikipedia

Alabama Photos: Kwik Chek in Montgomery

In going through some papers at mom's recently, I found the small recipe collection below; I've included a few sample pages. The "Kwik Chek" name was vaguely familiar, so that sent me to the research farm known as Google. As luck would have it, I turned up some Kwik Check photos in the Alabama state archives digital collections.

The site has quite a few black-and-white and color photos taken from 1954 until 1966 at Kwik Check stores in Montgomery. Most are interior shots. I've chosen just two and included them below.

Since mom' house is in Huntsville, I presume the recipe booklet came from a store there. The pamphlet is 5.5" x 3.5" and has 16 unnumbered pages. Products on the back cover are promoted in the booklet, as shown in the recipe for "Barbecued Potatoes" that mentions Mazzola Corn Oil and Reynolds Wrap. 

Several copies of this pamphlet are up for sale on Amazon and eBay, each with a different store listed at the bottom of the front cover. The one on Amazon lists the publisher as the National Broiler Council, which makes sense given the emphasis on chicken. Their logo is on the back cover of the pamphlet. The date stated for the Amazon copy is 1972. A couple of the entries on eBay claim the 1950s and 1960s. Who knows? No date is given in the booklet I have. 

I came across a 2009 blog post that places the Kwik Chek chain in "Winn-Dixie's Family Tree". Kwik Chek seems to have begun in the Tampa and Miami areas and expanded beyond Florida during its lifetime from the 1950s into the 1970s. Winn-Dixie retains the "Chek" image in it's logo and Chek brand of sodas. 

Montgomery store located at 2252 Mt. Meigs Road on 1 August 1955
Photo by John E. Scott

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History 

Interior shot taken by John E. Scott at the Montgomery store in the Normandale Shopping Center on East Patton Road 27 October 1960

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

Remember Trading Stamps?

As we were going through some papers at mom's recently, my younger brother Richard came across these relics from the past--trading stamps. Mom was a big user of these back in the day; my wife Dianne tells me her mother was, too. The ones we found were S&H Green Stamps, Plaid Stamps [a program of the A&P company] and Top Value Stamps. 

According to Wikipedia, trading stamps were first used in 1891 at a department store in Wisconsin. Five years later the Sperry and Hutchinson Company began offering its line of stamps to retailers; by 1957 around 200 companies had entered the business. In addition to the three seen here, other prominent companies included Gold Bond Stamps and Blue Chip Stamps. In the late 1950s in the U.S. around 250,000 retail outlets were offering stamps and almost two-thirds of households saved them. Stamps could be redeemed for all sorts of products. 

Most trading stamps were given at supermarkets, grocery stores and gas stations; that practice began to decline in the 1970s for various reasons. In 2008 the last remaining company in the printed stamps field in the U.S., Eagle Stamps, shut down operations. S&H Green Stamps closed its online "Greenpoints" program in 2020 and also announced that the classic printed stamps no longer had any value.

Top Value stamps shut down in the 1980s and S&H honored them for a while. At its height, S&H had its own redemption centers in larger cities. In Alabama these centers, which were like department stores, operated in Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville and perhaps other locations. 

I don't remember anything specific mom purchased with such stamps, but I imagine most items were practical!

Pondering Alabama Maps (10): A Neat One from 1906

I've written quite a few posts on this blog related to maps. I've done a series "Pondering Alabama Maps" with nine entries including Pelham in 1917, 1926 and 1928; early state road maps; an 1867 railroad map, a 1913 highway proposal, and Shelby County in 1822 and 1825. I've also covered more recent state highway maps and Benton County in 1852.

So here we are again, pondering an Alabama map. As with so many things, I stumbled across this one on the Alabama Mosaic site. The map was published in 1906 by the Geographical Publishing Company of Chicago, which existed from around 1893 until 1966. Perhaps the Birmingham News was one of several clients for which the company produced similar maps. 

The map notes that the News is "Alabama's Greatest Newspaper" and has the "Largest Circulation of Alabama Newspapers." The annual subscription cost for delivery on a rural route was $3.40; by mail $5.00. I presume most sales at this time were on newsstands and from young boys hawking each day's issue on the sidewalks. 

Shown on the map are the governors of Alabama and the state capitol building in Montgomery. The map copyright is 1906, but oddly Governor B.B. Comer is included; he served 1907 until 1911. His election took place in 1906, however. 

Each county on the map includes numerous towns and cities. Naturally when I look at old state maps I look for Pelham and it's on this one, right there between Helena and Keystone. Although its growth did not begin until the 1970s, Pelham has been around since the 1870s.

If you look at this map on the Mosaic web site, you can zoom in for closer examination.

In these Days of Modern Times (2)

Sometimes I just want to do something silly on this blog, so here we are. Again.

Back in October 2021 I posted some photographs of our front porch. Here's what I said then:

We seem to have had a lot of Amazon orders delivered lately [for some mysterious reason!], and many of them come with an email and a photograph of the item(s) on our porch. I present some here for the general amusement of the  readers to show the endless variety of Amazon delivery placement on this porch. The [Halloween] pumpkins are keeping watch. 

A tip of the hat to all the anonymous Amazon drivers and photographers out there.

So now I'm back with a whole new set. These are from April and May 2022. 

To be continued, I'm sure...

1 April 2022 

Some of these can be rather artistic. 

2 April 2022

6 April 2022 

20 April 2022

24 April 2022

26 April 2022

30 April 2022

2 May 2022

5 May 2022

11 May 2022

Grand Theater in Huntsville

Recently my brother Richard and I were going through some papers at mom's house in Huntsville, and we found this piece torn from a newspaper many years ago. Mom saved an item on the other side, but this side gives the source and date and includes an advertisement for a movie showing at the Grand Theater. Neither Richard nor I remembered the Grand even though we both grew up in Huntsville. So naturally I decided to investigate.

I found some information on the Cinema Treasures site and a page devoted to Huntsville movie theaters. The Grand first opened in April 1920 on Jefferson Street, but that original movie house burned in December 1924. Its replacement opened the following year and featured a Robert Morton theater organ. The Theater closed on May 25, 1960.

As the ad below notes, the theater featured the final local showings that day of The Bridge On the River Kwai, a classic World War II film released on December 14, 1957, in the United States. I suspect the Grand was a second-run theater at the time of this ad, since the film is showing there six months after its U.S. release.

Can't beat those ticket prices, though! 

Alabama Slaves Auctioned in New Orleans in 1858

The digital collections of the Smithsonian Institution are a rich source of Alabama-related materials. In a recent wandering there I came across the item below.

That item is a broadside advertising a slave auction in New Orleans on March 25, 1858. As noted, the auction took place in the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel, built in 1838 at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres Street. Such auctions were common there before the Civil War. The hotel, rebuilt in 1960, continues to operate as the Omni Royal Orleans.

Of course, one thing about this broadside really caught my attention. Thirteen slaves were to be auctioned, eight were from Alabama and the others being "acclimated slaves". His wife Martha and their four children were included with George, so there are actually thirteen from the state:

Absalom, 28, plantation hand

Ned, 43, plantation hand

Tom, about 46, plantation hand

Bill, 23, plantation hand

Frank, 25, plantation hand

Alfred, 35, plantation hand

Polly, 23, cook, washer and ironer

George, 23, plantation hand and carriage driver; to be sold with his wife Martha, 30 and their four children, Ned, 7, Nancy 6, Horace, 4, and Mary, 1

The broadside gives more details about the eight that might be of interest to the buyer or in the interest of full disclosure by the seller. 

One question immediately arises: why weren't these slaves auctioned in Montgomery, which had a large slave market for many years? A slave market also operated in Mobile. Perhaps transport of the slaves to one of the New Orleans markets would bring higher prices. Also unknown is whether these slaves came from the same Alabama plantation. 

I did manage to find some information on the slave auctioneer, "N. Vignie". The Louisiana Statewide Death Index gives Norbert Vignie's birth year as 1811 and death date as April 29, 1877, in New Orleans. The 1850 U.S. Census notes his occupation as auctioneer in the "Miscellaneous Business Services" industry. 

Vignie's office is given on the broadside as No. 8 Banks' Arcade Passage; the Arcade was a block-long structure built in 1833 by Thomas Banks. The building is now the St. James Hotel. He also lists the corner of Conti Street and Exchange Alley, the site of numerous office and retail establishments over the years. Presumably he had two offices, which might mean he was very active in the slave trade auctions in the city. 

In 1870 the U.S. Census listed him as living in Ward 6 of New Orleans, perhaps at the 293 Royal Street that appeared in the 1875 city directory. His occupation? "Retired auctioneer."

Too bad we can't follow the life stories of the slaves beyond this broadside. 

Source: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

St. Louis Hotel 

Source: Wikipedia

Google maps shows this building at 293 Royal Street in New Orleans, near the Hotel Monteleone, and perhaps Vignie's last address.