| As
World War One drew to a close, Sergeant Leon Ragsdale McGavock was
anxious to see his family once again, but fate had other plans. (Courtesy
Alabama Department of Archives and History.) |
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Spring
2004, Issue 72
Article Abstracts and Supplements
With a pen
and a smile, Brooks satirizes politics. (Courtesy Charles Brooks.) |
The
Less Things Change: Charles Brooks and the Art of Alabama Politics
By James L. Baggett
Charles Brooks showed a talent for illustration as early as high school.
When he attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and was later hired
by the Birmingham News as its first political cartoonist, he molded
this talent into a memorable career. Brooks worked for the Birmingham
News for close to forty years, recording countless political and
social events in his own caustic perspective. Jim Baggett presents
many of Brooks's cartoons, which reveal a keen social insight into
Alabama politics, and remain relevant to this day.
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Electrician 2nd Class Hamilton Thompson Beggs disappeared in
the "Bermuda Triangle." (Courtesy Alabama Department
of Archives and History.) |
Alabama
and World War One: The Gold Star Collection
By Sam Duvall
The Gold Star Collection began as a project to create a book memorializing
young Alabama heroes who died in World War I. After the war, Dr. Thomas
Owen, then head of the state archives, began collecting information
about soldiers from across the state. Dr. Owen died before he could
finish the project, and it was turned over to his wife, Marie Bankhead
Owens, who succeeded him as head of the archives. Unfortunately, other
matters took precedence and the Gold Star book was never published.
Eighty years
later, writer Sam Duvall seeks to honor those Alabamians who died
in WWI by telling the stories of a few of the "Gold Star"
boys. Men of all religions, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds
represented Alabama during WWI. Duvall's vignettes seek to memorialize
the lost soldiers and acknowledge their contributions to Alabama,
the country, and the Great War.
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The Alabama Legislature finally adopted Bartram's
Oak Leaf Hydrangea as the State Wildflower in 1999, after years
of lobbying by the Alabama Wildflower Society. (Photograph by
Robin McDonald.) |
William
Bartram: First Scientist of Alabama
By John C. Hall
In 1772,
William Bartram left his Pennsylvania home and set out for the remote
frontier of the South. After visiting Georgia and the Carolinas, Bartram
eventually made his way to Alabama, where he discovered several new
species of plants, including the giant primrose, the cherry laurel,
and the pyramid magnolia. John C. Hall recalls the impact Bartram's
travels and findings had on natural science, as well as Romantic poets.
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Lillian on stage in Chicago in the 1930s. She
sent this to her husband William "Penny" Penn and
signed it "Wifie." (Courtesy John and Vivian Gadson.
Printed with permission.) |
Lillian
Goodner: Queen of the Sepias
By Marc Bankert
A little known
jazz singer from Alabama almost slipped into obscurity after her death
in 1994. Luckily, Lillian Goodner's impressive collection of photographs
of jazz stars such as Josephine Baker, Blanche Calloway, and Bessie
Smith were discovered shortly before she passed away. Marc Bankert's
story, with many of Goodner's photos, documents her five-decade-long
career as a performer and provides an intimate look into the lives
and careers of some of the Jazz Age's biggest stars.
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DEPARTMENTS
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Southern Architecture and Preservation
The
Old Rock House
By Robert Gamble
One of three views taken in 1935 by the Historic
American Buildings Survey (HABS) of early nineteenth-century
Alabama's only known stone dwelling. (Courtesy Historic American
Buildings Survey Collection, Library of Congress.) |
Alabama
Treasures
"Alabama": Story of a Song
By Kristen Record
Nature
Journal
Opossums
By L.J. Davenport
An opossum
ogles the author in suburban Birmingham. (Digital image by L.
J. Davenport.) |
Alabama Album
Behind the Smile
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