On the cover: William Frye's "Vue of the Huntsville Spring from Nature," c. 1845. (Courtesy Warren Rhett/Photograph by Robin McDonald.)
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Article Abstracts and Supplements
Why Alabama Needs a New Constitution
By Albert P. Brewer
Alabama's constitution is the longest in the world, more than forty times as long as the US Constitution, and longer even than Moby Dick. The state's charter has been amended 706 times, for reasons as general as changing statewide school spending and as specific as allowing Mobile County to start a mosquito control program. In the Fall 2001 issue of Alabama Heritage, former Governor Albert P. Brewer outlines the case for abandoning Alabama's current constitution and writing a new one from scratch. He explains how the present constitution's provisions for an unstable tax structure, limited home rule, and restricted public spending impose needless handicaps on local governments, businesses, and citizens. With Alabama's constitution celebrating its one hundredth birthday this year, Brewer's words come at a particularly appropriate time in the hot debate on constitutional reform.
To Die in Dixie: Alabama and the Electric Chair
By Derryn E. Moten
This ought to shock you. Seventy-four years after electrocuting its first condemned prisoner in 1927, Alabama is one of the last states in the country to use the electric chair as its sole means of execution. Since that year, the state has put 175 individuals to death. An additional 190 on death row are currently waiting their turn--the seventh highest number of any state in the union. In the Fall 2001 issue of Alabama Heritage, Derryn E. Moten investigates the gruesome history of electrocution as a form of capital punishment, and he explains the charged controversy that has surrounded the practice in Alabama from the beginning. From the invention of the electric chair by a New York dentist, to a technological rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, to the construction of Alabama's "Yellow Mama" by a convicted burglar serving sixty years, Moten traces the bizarre course of Alabama's ultimate form of criminal justice.
Twickenham: Or How Huntsville Came to Share Its History with a London Suburb
By John R. Jordan, Jr.
What's in a name? In Huntsville's case, you could start with greed, power, factionalism, and international politics. But that's just the beginning. In the early nineteenth century, the Tennessee River Valley attracted the attention of many men seeking freedom and fortune. Two of these individuals--a rugged homesteader named John Hunt and a moneyed plantation farmer named LeRoy Pope--would play key roles in the foundation of the area now known as Huntsville. In the Fall 2001 issue of Alabama Heritage, John R. Jordan, Jr., describes the tenacious rivalry between these two men for the rights to own and name the budding settlement. How the town eventually came to be known as Huntsville, rather than Twickenham, as Pope had wished, is a revealing tale of their ugly struggle.
Places in Peril 2001
By Brandon Brazil and Patrick McIntyre
What is it about historic neighborhoods that gives each one of them its own unique sense of place? Good planning might be the best answer. In the Fall 2001 issue of Alabama Heritage, Brandon Brazil and Patrick McIntyre renew the magazine's popular annual "Places in Peril" feature, this time turning their focus on the concrete planning and legislation needed to preserve the unique character of Alabama's historic neighborhoods. "Keeping a historic neighborhood intact does not happen by chance," they write. "Successful local historic districts depend heavily on a committed and educated historic preservation commission that evenly applies design guidelines to regulate development." Their discussion is followed by a review of the state's most recent additions to the list of endangered historic landmarks. From the commercial encroachment on the elegant Sweetwater Plantation in Florence, to Opelika's Frederick House, which faces removal or demolition as the result of church expansion, ten new properties are described that now face the threat of loss.
DEPARTMENTS
ALABAMA ALBUM
"The Miles School of Dance: Birmingham's First Dance Studio"
THE NATURE JOURNAL
 Photograph by W. Mike Howell |
by L. J. Davenport
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