Issue 110, Fall 2013
On the cover: Stained glass window by John Petts, donated in 1965 to the 16th Street Baptist Church by the people of Wales to replace one destroyed in the 1963 bombing. [Library of Congress]
Features
History on a Grand Scale: The Murals of the Wiregrass
By Scotty E. Kirkland
In the1980s, Dothan received recognition primarily for negative reasons, even being named one of the nation’s “Worst Cities” by Rand McNally. Residents, aware that the town’s rich history transcended the agricultural feats it was most known for, decided to take action, and eventually, their passion gave rise to the Murals of the Wiregrass, a series of nearly twenty outdoor art installations that celebrate the area’s diverse accomplishments, notable cultural and historical moments, and significant residents. Today, these murals have helped put Dothan on the cultural and artistic map—a very different map than the one Rand McNally envisioned several decades ago—and have offered a colorful history lesson of the people and events that shaped this community.
Alabama Women, Cookbooks, and Identity in the Progressive Era
By Emily Blejwas
As the twentieth century dawned across Alabama, a pair of women embarked on a baking task that likely seemed unremarkable: to create a better cake. In the kitchen of Magnolia Manor, Emma Rylander Lane and Lucy Parish developed what we now know as the Alabama Lane Cake. In the process, they participated in a movement that reflected a dramatic shift in the role of women across the state, one in which new strides in homemaking and culinary science simultaneously elevated the domestic sphere and empowered women to organize for enfranchisement in more public arenas.
General Philip D. Roddey: “Defender of North Alabama”
By Zack C. Waters
From modest beginnings, Philip D. Roddey emerged to be one of the Confederacy’s most controversial figures. Through several battles, including Shiloh, Roddey led his men to disrupt the Union efforts in a number of ways, from staking out their encampments and revealing their plans to burning their supplies and pillaging their transportation systems. Working with a number of notable officers, including Nathan Bedford Forrest, Roddey helped secure various parts of the Tennessee Valley for the Confederates. As the war dragged on, though, and as the Confederacy suffered losses, Roddey began to be blamed for some failures—not all of them his.
Eventually, accounts of a proposed prisoner exchange evolved into rumors that he tried to surrender, and his image became tarnished in popular memory. Zack Waters explores the true legacy of this Civil War veteran, distinguishing fact from legend and offering a more comprehensive assessment of his career than history has often allowed him.
Places in Peril 2013: Alabama’s Endangered Historic Landmarks
By Melanie Betz Gregory
Once again, Alabama Heritage has partnered with the state’s historical groups to identify a number of significant landmarks in danger of being lost to development, disrepair, or other factors. This year’s list includes hotels, Masonic buildings, homes, school buildings, religious institutions, and even geologic landmarks. One result of the “ Places in Peril” series is that a number of properties over the years have been rescued from destruction or dilapidation, and this year’s properties would benefit from the same intervention.
Departments
Southern Architecture and Preservation
Landmark with Many Lives
By Cecile King Striplin
Established as a nineteenth-century getaway, Mobile’s old Howard Hotel offered travelers a bayside respite from the disease and hustle of city life. But upon the death of its owner, it changed hands—and eventually purposes. Cecile Striplin traces the history of this landmark building, from its various identities as a hotel, through its time as a personal residence, to its current use as an administrative building for Bayside Academy. Throughout, she highlights the innovative and interesting developments arising when concerned individuals engage in historic preservation.
Becoming Alabama
Quarter by Quarter
By Joseph W. Pearson, Megan L. Bever, and Matthew Downs
As with each installment of Becoming Alabama, this quarter’s column takes us back to the Creek Wars, Civil War, and civil rights movement, detailing how Andrew Jackson deployed force against the territory’s Native American population, how Tuscaloosa resident Grant Taylor lamented the tedium of fighting in the Civil War, and how the city of Birmingham was stunned and grief-stricken by the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church—an act of violence that killed four young girls and galvanized supporters who vowed to bring change to “ Bombingham.”
Editor’s Note: Alabama Heritage, the Summersell Center for Study of the South, the University of Alabama Department of History, and the Alabama Tourism Department offer this department as a part of the statewide “Becoming Alabama” initiative—a cooperative venture of state organizations to commemorate Alabama’s experiences related to the Creek War, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. Quarter by quarter we will take you to the corresponding seasons 200, 150, and 50 years ago—sometimes describing the most pivotal events, sometimes describing daily life, but always illuminating a world in flux. We will wait for the ultimate outcomes as our forbears did—over time.
Alabama Treasures
The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827–1835
By Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins
First-hand accounts of Alabama life abound for some historical periods, but the Sarah Haynsworth Gayle journal remains singular, as it covers a time period in which the experience of Alabama women is otherwise largely unrepresented. Gayle’s life proved typical, filled with domestic duties to care for her husband, often absent for work, and their many children. And yet, that quotidian nature renders it valuable, as it presents a portrait of everyday life as many Alabamians experienced it. Gayle also refused to mince words, and her lively opinions offer entertainment and illuminating insight on her society and its people. Her journal was so revealing that descendants attempted to conceal portions by defacing pages and excising portions of text.
In this piece, Sarah Wiggins describes how the defaced, disintegrating, fragments of the journal were restored and reassembled, in preparation for publication this fall as The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827–1835: A Substitute for Social Intercourse (University of Alabama Press).
Southern Religion
A Visionary Outreach: The Episcopal Church’s Mission to the Poarch Creek Indians
By J. Barry Vaughn
Although the Poarch Band of the Creek Indian Tribe has a vibrant Alabama presence today, its future was not always so secure. In the Great Depression era, Episcopal Bishop George McDowell took a special interest in the Poarch community, sending church officials to reach out to and work with the Native Americans. Although initially wary, the groups soon developed warm and lengthy relationships that continue today.
[Guntersville Historical Society]
Portraits & Landscapes
The Trail of Tears in Alabama: 175 Years After Cherokee Indian Removal
By Sharon A. Freeman and Larry Smith
The 1830s removal of Native Americans from the southeastern United States, under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, remains well known. However, many of the details of removal—the exact routes taken, the nature of hardships faced, the burial locations of the numerous dead—are largely undocumented. Historians Sharon Freeman and Larry Smith trace the research that’s been done so far, illuminating the various routes taken along the Trail of Tears, and instruct readers how they might be involved in preserving such significant information.
The Nature Journal
Marker Trees, Or, Dances with Leaves
We tend to think of war in terms of its human cost—lives lost, power gained—but conflicts also often leave a profound mark on the land itself. This quarter’s “Nature Journal” explores that phenomenon, looking at the use of “marker” trees to mark both literal battles for territory and the ideological and political struggles waged to preserve the Bankhead National Forest. As such commemorative items, these trees serve both as living organisms and as historical artifacts reminding us of the very precarious nature of their existence.
Reading the Southern Past
The End of the Old South
In this quarter’s installment of “Reading the Southern Past,” author Stephen Goldfarb takes a new look at the Civil War era and the massive social changes that swept the nation during that time. His review considers Bruce Levine’s The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South (Random House, 2013), Allen C. Guelzo’s Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster, 2004), and Michael Vorenberg’s Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Each text adds to the emerging picture of the era, and particularly to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
