In Decatur, the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge hosts the Festival of the Cranes celebrating the migratory arrival of cranes to Alabama for the winter. The festival’s significance comes from when the sandhill cranes suddenly began showing up again in the 1990s after a century of being nearly eradicated. Prior to1992, Wheeler NWR recorded only eleven sandhill cranes, but in a matter of thirty years, as many as 14,000 sandhill cranes will visit the refuge this year, having arrived this past October and staying as late as March.

​This past Wednesday a sizeable crowd gathered at the Scottsboro Boys Museum for its grand reopening. The general mood was both expectant and sober, as the many new informative exhibits on display were read and interacted with. This Thursday was a bright and beautiful day, a day when great darkness was exposed to the light. The dignity and legacy of nine young men in a time of tremendous oppression and injustice was remembered and their dignity evoked by the speakers. 

Beneath the shadows of the towering oak trees in the Old Cloverdale Neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama, a unique experience lies in the halls of a 1910 Craftsman-style home. The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, the only museum in the world dedicated to the lives of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, stands among other historical homes of the area, but the interior feels as if it has stayed frozen since the two writers occupied the adobe from 1931 until the spring of 1932.

​Have you seen a black bear while camping? Or, perhaps you have encountered one while hiking? If you have yet to see a black bear in person, Alabama is great place to spot one of these mammals. Not only do black bears reside here but they are also the state mammal! There are many fascinating facts to be learned about them, including the unfortunate fact that they are a species of highest conservation need in our state. 

My husband and I frequently visit Amelia Island, Florida, for a respite from the chaos of our daily lives, and because of our passion for history, we usually include some element of education with each trip. On our most-recent vacation, we visited the usual stops, including historic Fort Clinch. But it was a smaller, out-of-the-way beach that drew our attention most: American Beach, especially after learning if its Alabama connection. After hiking for miles along Black Rock Beach that was formed at the end of the Ice Age and truly transports you to Maui and then through Boneyard Beach that is full of eerie and majestical tree remains from storms past, we drove the short distance to American Beach. It was here that our day was spent, reading historic markers, talking with beach security officers, and researching every new detail that came to life. As my genealogy friends can relate, we hit a true historic rabbit hole.

Viola Virginia Hyatt is known by many names. Her family and neighbors in the community of Rabbittown simply called her Viola. The rest of Calhoun County, as well as the state of Alabama and the nation, knows her as the "Alabama Axe Murderess" or the "Torso Slayer." But what isn’t known is the motive that earned her these nicknames.

In August, the halls of Mobile’s Most Pure Heart of Mary School were once again filled with the din of students making their way to classes. This may seem an altogether regular occurrence, no different than scenes at public, private, and parochial schools throughout the nation. Still, the presence of students in the storied halls of Heart of Mary is, to some, nothing less than miraculous.

Heart of Mary parish was established in 1899 as a mission church by St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart, an order devoted exclusively to religious service in African American communities. For much of its history, Heart of Mary Church and School occupied the corner of Sengstak Street and Jefferson Davis Avenue (renamed Dr. Martin Luther King Avenue in the mid-1980s), the heart of Mobile’s Black business district. From the parish grew mission churches in two nearby communities, as well as the Knights of Peter Claver. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest group of Black Catholic lay leaders in the world. Heart of Mary parishioners, as well as several of its nuns and priests, played important roles in Mobile’s civil rights movement throughout the twentieth century.