| Cover:
After being attacked at a 1956 concert in Birmingham, Nat "King"
Cole refused to return to his home state of Alabama. (Rutgers Institute
of Jazz Studies.) |
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Winter
2004, Issue 71
Article Abstracts and Supplements
Tinsley Harrison
teaches medical students at the bedside of a patient in 1964.
(Courtesy UAD Archives, University of Alabama at Birmingham.) |
The
Doctors Harrison: A Magnificent Obsession
By James Pittman
Two buildings and a statue at the medical school at the University
of Alabama at Birmingham bear his name, but Dr. Tinsley Harrison's
legacy extends beyond the structures and monuments. In his article,
James Pittman tells the story of Tinsley Harrison, the seventh generation
of Harrison family doctors, who helped change the way medicine is
practiced in this country by changing the way medicine is taught.
His forefathers had been country doctors who made house calls. Tinsley
Harrison took this personal approach to the hospital where he made
sure his students were looking to the patient, not to reference books,
in order to make their diagnoses. But textbooks, too, were part of
Harrison's pedagogy; he literally wrote the book on medicine: Harrison's
Principles of Internal Medicine, the bible of medical wisdom still
used today by doctors and medical students. James Pittman tells the
story of Tinsley Harrison and his family of doctors and how they have
perpetuated this magnificent obsession of teaching medicine, now into
its ninth generation.
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Photographs of Cole's attackers appeared in the newspaper after
the attack. They were charged with "assault with intent
to murder." (The Birmingham News, April 11, 1956.) |
Interrupted
Melody: The Attack on Nat "King" Cole
By Gary S. Sprayberry
A highly anticipated Nat "King" Cole concert in Birmingham
in 1956, which drew thousands of music fans from across Alabama, came
to an abrupt and violent halt as a group of men from a pro-segregation
organization charged the stage. In this article, Gary Sprayberry explains
Asa "Ace" Carter's motivations for planning the attack on
Cole in April 1956 by telling the history of the North Alabama Citizen's
Council and Carter's campaign to rid the state of rock-and-roll music.
Carter accused the music of subverting white culture and teaching
"coarse negro phrases" to white teenagers. His plan to interrupt
the Nat "King" Cole concert and kidnap the singer was part
of that campaign, but resulted in its undoing. The cost of the ill-conceived
attack to the people of Alabama proved substantial because Nat "King"
Cole never again set foot in the state of his birth.
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In this image
from the Victorian journal St. Stephen's Review, the
judge is deciding if he should recommend a pardon for Florence
Maybrick (life) or whether he should let her hang (death). Ironically,
the personification of death is Jack the Ripper. Florence's
and the Ripper's crimes were contemporary, but no one would
link them until over a century later. (Courtesy Daniel L. Dolgin.) |
Jack
the Ripper and a Belle From Mobile
By Daniel Dolgin
The infamous Jack the Ripper who haunted the streets of London over
one hundred years ago may seem far removed from Alabama, but, thanks
to a Southern Belle from Mobile, the crimes may be closer to home
than we have ever imagined. Florence Chandler married James Maybrick
on a vacation to England when she was only nineteen. More intriguing
than the chance that this young girl from Alabama had unknowingly
married the future Jack the Ripper is the possibility that she ended
his killing spree by poisoning him with arsenic—an idea she might
have gotten from her own mother. Daniel Dolgin tells the tale of the
beautiful young woman from Mobile who has the distinction of being
the first American woman sentenced to death in England.
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At the Battle
of Chancellorsville, George Nutting of the 5th Alabama Infantry
threw this battle flag like a javelin into the woods rather
than have it taken by and "damn Yankee." (Alabama
Department of Archives and History.) |
The
Guards' Civil War
By G. Ward Hubbs
At first glance
the young men from Greensboro, Alabama, who joined the Confederate
army were no different than the thousands of men from all over the
South who did the same thing. What makes the Greensboro Guards different
is the fact that many of the men were committed diarists. They did
not simply write down the usual soldier's complaints about weather
and food and aching feet; instead, they used their journals to contemplate
everything from why the Yankees were fighting to who was the prettiest
girl. G. Ward Hubbs has compiled excerpts of these journals into a
narrative, and together they tell the well-rounded and complicated
story of what it was like to be a soldier in the Civil War. Using
many excerpts from the diaries themselves, Hubb's article takes the
reader to the battlefields, the hospitals, the prison camps, and the
lonely tents of the common Civil War soldier.
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DEPARTMENTS
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Southern Architecture and Preservation
Instead of the familiar torch, the restored
Vulcan now holds a spear in his right hand.
(Photo by Robin McDonald.)
A Roman God in Alabama: Birmingham's Vulcan
By Karelisa Hartigan
Recollections
William Denson: An Alabama Gentleman in the Devil's Court
By Joshua Greene
Nature
Journal
A female bolas spider sleeps on a Cullman County leaf, resting
up for the night's deceptions.
(Digital image by W. Mike Howell.)
Bolas
Spiders
By L.J. Davenport
Alabama Album
Point Taken
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This page created 01/16/04
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