On April 25, 1898, the U.S. formally declared war on Spain and joined the fight for Cuba's independence. Eager to make a name for himself, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt resigned his post and personally financed an armed expedition to Cuba. It was Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" who took San Juan Hill away from Spanish defenders on July 1, 1898. Legend tells how Roosevelt, with a saber in one hand and a pistol in the other, led his Rough Riders and the Ninth Cavalry, an African-American regiment, to the sounds of "Charge!" The story became so popular back home that it was even re-enacted on stage, as in this minstrel show from 1899. (Library of Congress.)

A trade embargo against Cuba makes it nearly impossible for most Alabamians to visit the island nation just across the Gulf of Mexico from us. To understand the tragedy of this, one must look to the histories of Cuba and the state of Alabama and see how connected these two places really are. Since the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto first governed over the southeastern United States and the Caribbean, we have been tied to Cuba. In war, Cubans died on our soil and Alabamians died on Cuban soil. We share a complicated and exciting history of exploration, colonialism, war, trade, and even disease. A look at our shared past will attempt to bridge the gulf by revealing a bond that is stronger than the Iron Curtain that currently separates us.

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Alabama Air National Guardsmen Major Riley Shamburger (top left), Captain Thomas W. "Pete" Ray (top right), Wade Gray (above left), and Leo F. Baker (above right) were killed as they flew into Cuba on April 19, 1961. Their families did not learn the truth about what happened to them until 1978. (Wade Gray photo courtesy of Joe Shannon; all others courtesy Southern Museum of Flight.)

In 1961, under terms of absolute secrecy, sixty Alabama Air National Guard members headed to Central America, recruited by the CIA to train Cuban revolutionaries to overthrow the Castro government. As one disaster after another jeopardized the success of the Cuban insurgents, eight Alabamians flew into the maelstrom of the Bay of Pigs to assist. Though some made the ultimate sacrifice, their contribution went unacknowledged until 1977.

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In 1834 Caroline Lee Hentz, a native of New England, arrived in the Deep South state of Alabama, where she would live for the next fourteen years. During that time, she would become one of the South’s most prolific, popular, and profitable antebellum authors, churning out an enormous volume of well-received plays, novels, stories, essays, and poems—virtually all of it written in Alabama. Her most famous book, however, was a pro-slavery response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist blockbuster Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Entitled The Planter’s Northern Bride, it was one of a wave of books defending slavery that appeared shortly after the publication of Stowe’s novel. Hentz’s book sold well throughout the North and South, and its importance as an example of “anti-Tom” literature secured her a place in history. But the real story behind Caroline Lee Hentz’s career as a writer is how she managed to achieve so much despite the best efforts of a bitter and chronically jealous husband.

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Besides learning the English language and American customs in cooking and cleaning, immigrant women at the Ensley House learned how to sew American-style clothes for their families. (Courtesy Archives of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.)

In 1912 an experienced Methodist social worker, Dorothy L. Crim, accepted a salary of fifty dollars per month to found a settlement house similar to Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago. Despite a host of obstacles to reform, the Ensley Community House, which opened the next year, served its community for fifty-six years. Located in the heart of the city’s Italian District, it sought to alleviate the problems many immigrant workers faced—especially the sense of alienation and isolation from mainstream American culture. Crim saw herself as “building up a Christian nation,” fervently believing that democracy itself was “Christianity in action,” and her greatest satisfaction came when the families she helped in turn served others.

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