​From Roosevelt to Rosa Parks: The Subversive World of Clifford and Virginia Durr, 1940 to 1955

By Thomas E. Reidy

After participating in writing the script for an Alabama Public Television film on Clifford and Virginia Durr, the author realized that a great deal of compelling information about the couple’s life and activism remained untold. Here, he focuses on the fifteen-year span that saw the Durrs move from Washington, DC, to Alabama. In this time, Cliff Durr went from holding prominent government positions that enabled him to work with presidents to a less visible—but equally crucial—legal practice defending civil rights cases throughout Alabama.

Truman Capote, Monroeville’s Other Muse

By Wayne Flynt

Today, Truman Capote remains best known for his so-called “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. However, his work in Kansas detailing the murder of a farm family was just one instance in a long and complicated career. The son of a tumultuous woman and a largely-absent father, Capote often spent time with his extended family in Monroeville, where he befriended Harper Lee. Throughout his literary ascent, Capote continued befriending important women, including Jackie Kennedy, but he always struggled to reconcile his troubled past with his literary aspirations and his sometimes tenuous place in New York society.

Pigskins to Stethoscopes: Football Players Who Practiced Medicine in Alabama

By Tim L. Pennycuff

On the surface, the two pursuits may not seem to have much in common, but in actuality, numerous collegiate football players have gone on to pursue careers in medicine. The two fields both require excellent discipline, time management, and work ethic; they may also spark other qualities of determination and tenacity. Regardless of which intersecting forces unite these pursuits, Alabama has benefitted from a number of football players-turned-physicians throughout the decades. Tim Pennycuff, an archivist at the University of Birmingham, has begun collecting a database of resources on such individuals, and in this article he shares some of the most compelling biographies from it.

Southern Architecture and Preservation

Present at the Beginning

By Robert Gamble

As Alabama approaches its bicentennial, Robert Gamble reflects on the rich history the state has accumulated, and he considers the scarcity of structures remaining from the early nineteenth century. Huntsville’s Poplar Grove, which dates from 1814, is the state’s oldest confirmed structure, but the Alabama Historical Commission is working to identify and verify other possible structures that witnessed Alabama’s transformation from territory to state.

Alabama Women

“Miss Ruby”: The Life and Career of Ruby Pickens Tartt

By Tina Naremore Jones

Even as a child, Ruby Pickens Tartt had a clear sense of her identity and her ambitions. An artist who studied in New York before returning to her native Alabama, Tartt remains best known for her contributions to the Works Progress Administration music archives. Working extensively with John Lomax, Tartt helped record and preserve numerous folk songs from across the state, and her work brought recognition to many of Alabama’s so-called outsider artists.

Revealing Hidden Collections

Rev. Richard Charles Boone

By Howard O. Robinson

Each quarter, “Revealing Hidden Collections” highlights archival or library collections throughout the state, helping identify and celebrate some of Alabama’s lesser known resources. This quarter’s installment looks at the Alabama State University Boone Collection, which preserves materials connected to Rev. Richard Charles Boone, a field director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The collection includes a range of materials, from letters and newspaper clippings to recordings of Boone’s speeches and even his “toilet paper manifesto,” a document he wrote while imprisoned. (He was later released for lack of evidence.) Each item helps contribute to visitors’ understanding of Boone and the cause for which he fought.

Portraits & Landscapes

The Legend of Savannah Jack

By Mollie Smith Waters

One of the most storied villains and murders in Alabama’s history remains largely a mystery to historians, who do not know his ancestry, his background, or even his appearance. What they do know, however, is that in the years immediately before Alabama’s statehood, Savannah Jack terrorized newly arriving white settlers, often murdering them and their families. Mollie Waters offers an overview of this rebel who haunted the Alabama territory and struck fear in its inhabitants.

Alabama Treasures

The Tale of Two Quilts

By Anne Henry Tidmore

When most people think of Civil War artifacts, often they consider items such as weapons, uniforms, flags, or letters. However, some important artifacts may have never seen a battlefield. One example is the Gunboat Quilt, an item in the collection of the First White House of the Confederacy, which was produced to help raise funds to buy Confederate gunboat to help protect Mobile Bay. They quilt’s 150 years have taken a toll on it, and conservation has proved tricky—but crucial. Officials from the White House of the Confederacy detail the recent steps taken to preserve this part of Alabama’s history.

The Nature Journal

The Small World of Northfork Creek

By L. J. Davenport

When the 2011 tornadoes hit Alabama, many aspects of the natural world were disrupted.

Although Northfork Creek, near Hackleburg, bears signs of the storm still, the ecosystem also possesses many compelling examples of “micro” life—including Frullania, a kind of liverwort. Davenport describes the quest to find this plant life, and in the process he offers a celebration of all things small.