Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Alabama History & Culture News: December 22, 2021 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!


National Geographic: Clotilda slave ship more intact than thought, scans show - al.com
... ruins of the slave ship Clotilda was produced by continual sidescan sonar in March 2020 and released by the Alabama Historical Commission.



Alabama Historical Commission recognizes historic districts in Brundidge - The Troy ...
Specified areas of the City of Brundidge have been designated by the Alabama Historical Commission as historic districts.


The first Alabamians arrived 13,000 years ago, long before Moundville - al.com
Moundville is Alabama's best known ancient Native American site, ... There's a much older human history in Alabama, if you know where to look.


Opinion | Happy 125th birthday to the University of Montevallo - Alabama Political Reporter
Its rich history, cobblestone streets and beautiful, historic campus date back to 1896 when it was known as the Alabama Girls' Industrial School.


Saturday afternoon, Trussville city leaders, community members and local veterans held a groundbreaking ceremony for the future site of the ...

What's in a name? How Birmingham became Birmingham - Alabama NewsCenter
His eventual successor as president of the Elyton Land Company, Henry M. Caldwell, later wrote a history of the company that included an extensive ...

Gulf Shores seeks grant to highlight Native American history - Orange Beach News
Gulf Shores is taking aim at a $50000 historical grant to help ... by Dr. Greg Waselkov of South Alabama who is leading a study about the canal.



Why Alabama's 1st State House was a trapezoid and other findings in Old Cahawba - al.com
Historical archaeologist Linda Derry shows a simulated image of the First Alabama State House in Cahawba by Jeremiah Stager of the Office of ...


New book recounts the colorful 200-year history of Pike County - The Troy Messenger
For almost as long as Bullard can remember, she has had a strong interest in history, especially Alabama history, and, specifically, Pike County's ...

How a once visible Alabama Confederate statue is now displayed 'among hundreds' of objects
The complex interpretations of Semmes' legacy are on display within the timeline exhibit at the History Museum of Mobile, a venue that is located ...

Alabama high school student Jaycie Mandrell releases book
Alabama high school student Jaycie Mandrell releases book. By Joyanna Love The Clanton Advertiser. December 16, 2021. Alabama high school student ...


Anniston's New Haven celebrates 75 years of being a 'light' | The Alabama Baptist
... by playing “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. Sonja Adams of the Alabama Baptist Historical Commission presented the church with a plaque.

Historical marker placed at site of first seat of justice - The Troy Messenger
Alabama became a state on Dec. 14, 1819. On Dec. 17, 1921, Pike County was named after Gen. Zebulon Montgomery Pike, who actually never came here.

"Discoveries at the Site of Alabama's First State House" presented by Linda Derry - YouTube
Alabama Department of Archives & History ... will discuss the findings of archaeological work at Old Cahawba, Alabama's first state capital.

The Margaret, a new bar in Alabama, will be 'an excellent hang,' owner Pam Stallings says - al.com
The Nick, after all, is one of the most famous dive bars in Alabama, with a faithful clientele and a long history as a concert venue.

The new memorial now stands on a hill overlooking the Alabama girls home linked to eight children who died in a van crash that killed 10 people ...

Rozelle publishes first novel - The Clanton Advertiser
By JOYANNA LOVE/ Managing Editor. Lee Rozelle of Thorsby has released his first novel, “Ballad of Jasmine Wills.” The book has been published by ...


Alabama food blogger and author Kate Wood releasing new cookbook, 'Her Daily Bread ...
Kate Wood has revealed her highly anticipated new cookbook and devotional, “Her Daily Bread,” which consists of a year's worth of daily readings ...


Memorial dedicated at Alabama girls home to 8 crash victims - The San Diego Union-Tribune
A new memorial now stands on a hill overlooking the Alabama girls home linked to eight children who died in a van crash that killed 10 people ...

Alabamians who dealt with historic disasters reflect on recent Kentucky tornado - CBS 42
Wendy Suell of Hill's Carpet & Floor Coverings said memories of the tornado that tore through Central Alabama and destroyed her business on April 27, ...


Friday, December 17, 2021

Birmingham Photos of the Day (81): Alabama Boys Industrial School

As the Encyclopedia of Alabama notes, "The Alabama Boys Industrial School was founded in Birmingham in 1899 by social reformer Elizabeth Johnston. It was one of several private group homes established to house juvenile offenders in the state. It remained in operation until 1974, when it was taken over by the Alabama Department of Youth Services." The Department continues to operate the facility as its Vacca campus. You can see an early photograph of the campus buildings at the end of this post. The BhamWiki site has a different photograph from 1910. 

The school opened on the former George Roebuck plantation at Roebuck Spring. Johnston led a committee of the Alabama Federation of Women's Clubs that successfully lobbied the state legislature to fund a facility to remove young boys from the convict lease system and provide remedial education. About a decade after opening a new building replaced the school's original log cabin. 

Johnston lived on campus as head of the school until her death in 1934. The state provided a stipend for each boy; by early 1918 residents numbered almost 400. The students grew their own produce and operated a diary, and issued a regular publication on the school's printing press. The local Rotary Club provided instruments and uniforms for the brass band which became well known [see below]. 



Elizabeth Johnston 

She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981; she and actress Tallulah Bankhead were the only inductees that year. For more information, see her entry linked below. 





Dormitory at the school sometime before 1929








In August 2017 I posted an item about a 1924 visit John Philip Sousa made to Birmingham and included the following paragraphs related to the Industrial School: 

On February 18, 1924, this photograph was taken in front of the Cathedral Church of the Advent at the corner of 6th Avenue North and 20th Street North in Birmingham. Front and center is John Philip Sousa; to his left is Eugene C. Jordan, leader of the band standing around them. Could the woman be Sousa's wife Jane? She lived until 1944.  

The young boys surrounding them are members of the band of the Alabama Boys Industrial School, a reformatory chartered in February 1899 and located in the Roebuck area of Birmingham. The facility still exists; in 1975 it became the Vacca Campus of the Alabama Department of Youth Services. Who is the young girl dressed in a similar uniform?






Two photos from the infirmary sometime before 1929








The campus and buildings of the school























Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Alabama History & Culture News: December 14 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!


Bessemer's historic Lincoln Theatre added to Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage
Big news for Bessemer! Last week, the Alabama Historical Commission unanimously voted to add the historic Lincoln Theatre to the Alabama Register ...

Historic St. James Hotel Sees Steady Growth in 1st Year - Alabama News Network
From the West Alabama Newsroom–. It's been close to a year since the historic St. James Hotel reopened in downtown Selma.

Alabama Mural Trail reaches across the Tennessee Valley | WHNT.com
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – It's called public art. And there's plenty to explore right here in north Alabama. You could say the writings on the wall.


Auburn Building Science, Architecture faculty digitally preserving Alabama's disappearing Rosenwald Schools...
Their work will be presented through exhibitions to engage the public in civil rights history, teach emerging technologies and promote historical ...


The once-dilapidated Lincoln Cemetery was rededicated Friday after a decade of ... Her family was Black, and this was Alabama during Jim Crow.

Car belonging to Auburn student who disappeared in 1976 found in Alabama creek: "For 45 ...
WHNT reports Clinkscales' father, John Dixon Clinkscales, wrote a book about his disappearance, titled "Kyle's Story: Friday Never Came." He also ...


Professor Wins Book Award! | Alabama State University
ASU Faculty Member Receives New York City 'BIG BOOK AWARD' for Children's Book. By Kenneth Mullinax/ASU. An Alabama State University faculty ...

Kyle Clinkscales' parents died before his car was found in Alabama, but they never stopped ...
“We generally measure our lives as 'before” and 'after' the disappearance,” John wrote in “Kyle's Story: Friday Never Came,” a book he wrote in ...


Valley Grande Baptist celebrates 125 years of ministry
Lonette Berg, executive director of the Alabama Baptist Historical Commission, presented the church with a certificate.


Alabama's Hannah Brown reveals family tragedy, cancer scare in new memoir - al.com
Hannah Brown, Alabama native and star of "The Bachelorette" and "Dancing with the Stars," meets with fans and signs copies of her book "God Bless ...

“The Epicureans: A Novel” By: Charles McNair | Alabama Public Radio
McNair's New Novel Is a Transgressive Thriller. Charles McNair, Dothan native and Alabama graduate, has two previous novels: “Land O'Goshen,” 1994 ...

“Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham's Civil ...
Don Noble's newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven ...


Historic Huntsville neighborhood Magnolia Terrace to be surveyed
... historic resource survey funded by the Alabama Historical Commission. ... “This is exactly the right time to record and recognize our history ...


The history of Odenville and its first settlers | | annistonstar.com
... Christopher Vandegrift, and his family left Chester County, S.C., for Alabama. Christopher and Rebecca Amberson Vandegrift were parents.

Supporters want to add Africatown and the Clotilda to Alabama's Civil Rights Trail | Alabama ...
“The great thing about Montgomery and the Equal Justice Initiative and the Lynching Memorial it tells the story,” Patterson said. “Look, the history ...

Discover Wetumpka Impact Crater in Wetumpka, Alabama: One of almost 200 confirmed impact craters in the entire world, untouched for tens of ...

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Upton Sinclair Comes to Fairhope

Upton Sinclair was a prolific American author who wrote almost 100 novels and non-fiction books and numerous other materials in his long life. He was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore and died November 28, 1968, in New Jersey. In between those events and in addition to his writing, Sinclair married three women and ran several times for political office in California between 1920 and 1934 on the Socialist and Democratic party tickets. Several of his works, such as The Jungle and The Brass Check, initiated significant reforms in the meat-packing industry and journalistic practice. His 1927 novel Oil! inspired the 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In 1943 he won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

In the winter of 1911 Sinclair and his first wife Meta Fuller settled in Fairhope for a brief stay. He discussed these months on pages 162-165 of his Autobiography which are included below. Throughout his life Sinclair was attracted to progressive and reformist ideas, and that characteristic no doubt drew him to Fairhope. The town had been founded in 1894 as a single-tax colony after the proposals of American journalist and political economist Henry George. In his 1879 book Progress and Poverty George had argued for a single tax on land ownership as a route to a more equitable society. Supporters of this idea settled in Fairhope.

Sinclair had founded a "utopian" colony in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1906, which burned in six months, perhaps by arsonists. Thus as he says at the beginning of the excerpt below, "Since I could not have a colony of my own, I would try other people’s."

The author notes several progressive elements in Fairhope. One is the "cult of Dr. J.H. Salisbury, meat-diet advocate". James Henry Salisbury [1823-1905] was an American physician who was an early advocate of many health ideas related to diet. He developed the lean-beef Salisbury steak in 1888. Some of his ideas arose from his Civil War experience; others from extensive dietary experiments upon himself and others. Sinclair, as he notes a practicing and vocal vegetarian, decided to try the Salisbury meat recipe, and Eugene Wood, a "socialist comrade" also spending the winter in Fairhope, "wrote a jolly piece about 'America’s leading raw-food advocate who happens just now to be living upon a diet of stewed beefsteaks.' I had to bow my head, and add crow to my menu!"

Also mentioned is the Organic School founded in Fairhope in 1907 by Marietta Johnson. She and her family had moved there from Minnesota in 1902. Her school, which continues to operate today, had no tests, homework only for high school students and added craft and folk activities to regular academic studies. The school and Johnson became famous around the country when philosopher and education reformer John Dewey discussed them in his 1915 book Schools of To-Morrow. Upton and Meta's eight year-old son David attended the school during their residence. 

At the end of his comments Sinclair notes that in the spring he headed back to another single-tax colony in Arden, Delaware. Smaller than Fairhope, that village has retained its artistic and intellectual focus. The Sinclair's had built a house there in 1910, and Sinclair had been arrested and spent time in jail for playing tennis on a Sunday. After their return Sinclair invited poet Harry Kemp to come camp on their land. Meta and Kemp soon became an item, and Sinclair divorced his wife. 

Sinclair worked on a play and a novel while in Fairhope. His comments below include extensive material on the three-act comedy play, "The Naturewoman", which he says he wrote in two and a half days while fasting. He does not recommend the method to his fellow writers. The play, which he said like his others had no success was included in a 1912 collection, Plays of Protest. 

He began the novel Love's Pilgrimage in Fairhope in an attempt to describe a situation in which a once-married but now divorced couple could remain friends. He notes that Meta--Corydon in the novel--has come to Fairhope part of the time but returned north before he did. The book was published later in 1911.

Sinclair is a fascinating individual in the history of American fiction, muckraking and political activity. You can find numerous works by Sinclair available at Project Gutenberg

You can read Mary Lois Timbes' 2006 piece on Sinclair in Fairhope here. Her 2008 history of the town, The Fair Hope of Heaven, includes a chapter on Sinclair. 





Upton Sinclair as a young man



Source: Wikipedia





Sinclair's expose of American journalism was published in 1919




This novel appeared in 1911, the same year Sinclair was in Fairhope







Sinclair wrote "The Naturewoman" in Fairhope and discusses it in his comments below. 






This novel was published in 1927




Late in life Sinclair posed with a stack of 79 of the books he had written by that time. 




The excerpt below is taken from pages 162-165 of Sinclair's Autobiography as linked above. 

X

For the winter I took my family to the single-tax colony at Fairhope, Alabama, on Mobile Bay. Since I could not have a colony of my own, I would try other people’s. Here were two or three hundred assorted reformers who had organized their affairs according to the gospel of Henry George. They were trying to eke out a living from poor soil and felt certain they were setting an example to the rest of the world. The climate permitted the outdoor life, and we found a cottage for rent on the bay front, remote from the village. Dave Howatt was with us again; having meantime found himself a raw-food wife, he lived apart from us and came to his secretarial job daily.

I was overworking again; and when my recalcitrant stomach made too much trouble, I would fast for a day, three days, a week. I was trying the raw-food diet, and failing as before. I was now a full-fledged physical culturist, following a Spartan regime. In front of our house ran a long pier, out to the deep water of the bay. Often the boards of this pier were covered with frost, very stimulating to the bare feet, and whipped by icy winds, stimulating to the skin; each morning I made a swim in this bay a part of my law. (Says Zarathustra: “Canst thou hang thy will above thee as thy law?”)

Among the assorted philosophies expressed at Fairhope was the cult of Dr. J. H. Salisbury, meat-diet advocate; I read his book. Let me remind you again that this was before the days of any real knowledge about diet. Salisbury was one of the first regular M.D.’s who tried experiments upon himself and other human beings in order to find out how particular foods actually affect
 the human body. He assembled a “poison squad” of healthy young men, fed them on various diets, and studied the ailments they developed. By such methods he thought to prove that excess of carbohydrates was the cause of tuberculosis in humans. His guess was wrong—yet not so far wrong as it seems. It is my belief that denatured forms of starch and sugar are the predisposing cause of the disease; people live on white flour, sugar, and lard, and when the body has become weakened, the inroads of bacteria begin.

Anyhow, Salisbury would put his “poison squad” on a diet of lean beef, chopped and lightly cooked, and cure them of their symptoms in a week or two. He had a phrase by which he described the great health error, “making a yeastpot of your stomach.” That was what I had been doing, and now, to the horror of my friend Dave Howatt, I decided to try the Salisbury system. I remember my emotions, walking up and down in front of the local butchershop and getting up the courage to enter. To my relief, I caused no sensation. Apparently the butcher took it quite as a matter of course that a man should purchase a pound of sirloin.

I had been a practicing vegetarian—and what was worse, a preaching one—for a matter of three years; and now I was a backslider. My socialist comrade, Eugene Wood, happened to be spending the winter in Fairhope, and he wrote a jolly piece about “America’s leading raw-food advocate who happens just now to be living upon a diet of stewed beefsteaks.” I had to bow my head, and add crow to my menu!

XI

In Fairhope was the Organic School, invention of Mrs. Marietta Johnson. It was then a rudimentary affair, conducted in a couple of shacks, but has since become famous. Our son, David, then eight years old, attended it. His education had been scattery, with his parents moving from a winter resort to a summer resort. But he had always had the world’s best literature and had done the rest for himself. Fairhope he found to his taste; we had a back porch and a front porch to our isolated cottage, and he would spread his quilt and pillow on the former, and I would spread
 mine on the latter, and sleep outdoors every night on the floor. I asked if he minded the hard surface, and his reply belongs to the days of the world’s divine simplicity. “Oh, Papa, it’s fine! I like to wake up in the night and look at the moon, and listen to the owl, and pee!”

I tried the experiment of fasting while doing my writing; a marvelous idea, to have no stomach at all to interfere with creative activity! A comedy sprang full-grown into my brain, and I wrote it in two days and a half of continuous work—a three-act play, The Naturewoman. I record the feat as a warning to my fellow writers—don’t try it! During a fast you are living on your nerves and cannot stand the strain of creative labor. When I finished, I could hardly digest a spoonful of orange juice.

The Naturewoman, like all my plays, had no success. It was published in the volume Plays of Protest a couple of years later, and had no sale. Not long thereafter, the students of Smith College, studying drama under Samuel Eliot, gave it in New York, and these emancipated young ladies found it charmingly quaint and old-fashioned; they played it in a vein of gentle farce. Apparently it never occurred to them that the author might have meant it that way. I have frequently observed that an advocate of new ideas is not permitted to have a sense of humor; that is apparently reserved for persons who have no ideas at all. For fifty-six years I have been ridiculed for a passage in The Jungle that deals with the moral claims of dying hogs—which passage was intended as hilarious farce. The New York Evening Post described it as “nauseous hogwash”—and refused to publish my letter of explanation.

Corydon had come to Fairhope for a while, and then had gone north on affairs of her own; it had been arranged that she was to get a divorce from me. I thought that a novel about modern marriage that would show the possibility of a couple’s agreeing to part, and still remaining friends, would be interesting and useful. So I began Love’s Pilgrimage. In the spring I came north and took up my residence in another single-tax colony, at Arden, Delaware, founded and run by Frank Stephens, a sculptor of Philadelphia; a charming place about twenty miles from the big city, with many little cabins and bungalows scattered on the edge of the woods. Frank was glad to have me come—and alas,
 a year and a half later he was gladder to have me go! For the Philadelphia newspapers found me out, and thereafter, in the stories that appeared about Arden, socialism was more prominent than single tax, and I was more prominent than the founder. This was my misfortune, not my fault. I wanted nothing but to be let alone to write my book; but fate and the editors ruled otherwise.





"A test with books open" at the School for Organic Education. The frontispiece to John Dewey's 1915 book Schools for To-Morrow