Marian Acker Macpherson's skill with the etching needle is evident in this rendering of the Gorgas House in Tuscaloosa. Built in 1829 and restored in 1953, the Gorgas House once served as a dining hall and residence at the University of Alabama. (Courtesy Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Van Antwerp. Reprinted with permission of MAM Arts and the Estate of Marian Acker Macpherson.)

For Marian Acker Macpherson, the magnificent homes and stately buildings of Mobile were dear old friends—the distinctive remnants of a bygone era. With intricate etchings and vivid prose, she communicated her affection for them and, over the decades, her sadness at their decline. Born in 1906, Macpherson moved in the highest level of Mobile society. Educated in art schools in Mobile and Boston, she studied etching in Provincetown with W.H.W. Bicknell. Returning to her hometown, she published three books of architectural etchings with commentary, the last of which, Glimpses of Old Mobile, she revised at least six times between 1946 and 1983 as historic structures disappeared. Her colorful descriptions of the homes and edifices she found in a state of decay reveal a desire to instill in her fellow Mobilians a sense of possession and pride, as well as an awareness of the vulnerability of these architectural relics.

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Strikers protest unfair working conditions at the Merrimack Mill in Huntsville during a citywide strike on May 3, 1951. By the 1950s, welfare capitalism had declined in the South and company-owned mill villages faded from view. (Courtesy Huntsville Public Library.)

In the decades following the Civil War, Alabama's textile companies designed the mill village to be a "workingman's paradise," a modern-day utopia for blue-collar workers and their families. Opportunity abounded, wages were good, and all the amenities of "welfare capitalism" came with the job—but not without a price. By offering such incentives as free or cheap housing, education, healthcare, and recreational facilities, textile mills across the state were able to recruit, retain, and reward productive, loyal employees. From a management perspective, these self-sufficient, socially cohesive and geographically insular communities were immune from the agitations of northern labor unions. For the mill worker, however, life in the "workingman's paradise" often turned out to be one of constant sacrifice for the good of "the company."

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Many aspects of Juliette Morgan's white southern upbringing in Montgomery—her social class, education, and especially her temperament—seemed unlikely to yield a civil rights activist. Yet inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, and troubled by the injustice around her, that is precisely what she became. In the 1930s she began a one-woman campaign to end the segregation and racism that had for so long dominated the southern way of life. She wrote fiery letters to newspapers around the state, joined political groups, and publicly protested the discrimination she witnessed on a daily basis. Her passionate beliefs caused her to become estranged from friends, colleagues, neighbors, and even her own mother. But those who understood her cause encouraged her to brave the losses, which she did up until the end of her short but exemplary life.


Additional Information
Information about Mary Stanton’s book Journey Toward Justice: Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (University of Georgia Press, 2006) is available at Journey Toward Justice.

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Soldiers of the 37th Medical Ambulance Battalion negotiate a fallen tree as they carry a mock casualty on a stretcher along one of Camp Rucker's creeks. The 37th would land in France in October 1944 and aid the Allied drive across northern Europe throughout the remainder of the war. (Courtesy Army Aviation Museum, Fort Rucker, Alabama.)

For four years during the Second World War, the Ozark Triangular Division Camp, also known as Camp Rucker, trained scores of soldiers needed to defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. While Camp Rucker contributed to our country's success on a global scale, it also represented a personal triumph for former U.S. Congressman Henry B. Steagall, who campaigned for an army post to be located in his Depression-ravaged home district in Ozark, Alabama. With its rolling farmlands, wooded areas, and creek bottoms, Camp Rucker's varied terrain proved to be the ideal testing ground for soldiers training to conduct large artillery maneuvers. The recruits—mostly northerners who had never been to the south—would go on to fight in almost every theater of the Second World War.

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