Fall 1993, Issue 30

Article Abstracts and Supplements

Coeducation in Alabama: “In Accord with Nature”
By Leah Rawls Atkins

A century ago, Alabama women finally won admission to the state’s universities. At the time many feared that coeducation would never work. They claimed that academic knowledge was unnecessary in the life of a southern woman and that a college education would only make women “inferior housekeepers.” Others claimed it would distract male students, lower the standards of the institution, and ruin male camaraderie. Leah Rawls Atkins details the progressive leadership of William LeRoy Broun, president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College at Auburn, and the “relentless persistence” of Julia Tutwiler that turned coeducation into a reality. In September 1892, the A. & M. College opened its doors to its first three female students, and a year later two young women were admitted to the University of Alabama. Although it took decades for women to become fully integrated into campus life, they now represent almost half of the student bodies at both Auburn University and the University of Alabama.



Star Quilts of Nineteenth Century Alabama
By Mary Elizabeth Johnson Huff

Ever since Sara Sedgewick Everett, wife of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony stitched one of the first quilts in North America in 1704, thousands of quilts have been completed for reasons ranging from necessity to artistic expression and in all manner of shapes, sizes, and patterns. The star pattern, in particular, has dominated the work of American quiltmakers for nearly three centuries, largely because of its adaptability and the design’s use of various-sized scrap pieces of fabric. And it is through this versatile pattern that Alabama women have found means of expressing their own lively concepts of color and design. As quiltmaking flourished across Alabama, local quiltmakers made their share of star quilts in patterns ranging from Feathered Stars to the Star of Bethlehem.



The Killing of Father Coyle: Private Tragedy, Public Shame
By Paul M. Pruitt, Jr.

Anti-Catholic fanaticism, a thriving Ku Klux Klan, and the murder of a Catholic priest brought Birmingham into the nation’s spotlight in 1921. Father James E. Coyle, pastor of St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Birmingham, was reading and greeting passersby on his front porch on the evening of August 11, 1921. One of the people he greeted was Edwin Stephenson, a Methodist parson and supporter of the Ku Klux Klan who viewed the Catholic Church as a treasonous organization. Stephenson fired three rounds from his pistol and shot the priest in the head. By 8 o’clock that evening, Father Coyle was dead. The priest’s death and the ensuing trial added fuel to the hot political and cultural battles that were already marking this period in Birmingham’s history.