Alabama’s First Ladies of Flight

By Billy J. Singleton

Though Amelia Earhart may be the most well-known female aviator, several other women helped pave the way, including Katherine Stinson and Ruth Elder, both Alabama natives. Stinson was only the fourth woman to earn a pilot’s license, while Elder tried an Atlantic crossing before Earhart’s successful attempt. Both women embraced the numerous challenges involved in seeking recognition in an emerging field that had been previously open only to men, and they advanced aviation history in the process.

Profit and Prejudice: A Wealthy Person of Color in Antebellum Alabama

By Callie Rhodes Outlaw

Tuscaloosa’s Solomon Perteet, a nineteenth-century free Black man, lived a life that defied the expectations of his time and place. Perteet experienced a great deal of economic success and did business with many prominent men, including white men and government officials. He also, perhaps surprisingly, enslaved others, perhaps a sign that he was not so removed from the system as his economic success might have suggested.

“Bad Birmingham”: The Magic City’s First Experiment with Prohibition, 1907-1911

By Matthew L. Downs

Prior to the adoption of national Prohibition laws, many local areas experimented with various restrictions on alcohol. In a 1907 referendum closely watched throughout the state and elsewhere, Birmingham voters decided that the county should go dry. The experience that followed offered an insightful preview of what would happen when the nation followed suit about a decade later.  

Portraits and Landscapes

Helen Keller: Monument to a ​Radical Idealist

By Frye Gaillard

For over a decade, the United States Capitol has displayed a statue of Alabamian Helen Keller, highlighting her as she appeared at the ironic childhood moment when she connected the word for water with the item itself. Though Keller has long been revered by many worldwide, it’s likely many of her admirers know little of her life as an adult—a life explored in this quarter’s installment of “Portraits & Landscapes.”

Alabama Governors

Thomas G. Jones (1890-1894)

By Colin Rafferty

As one of Alabama’s last nineteenth-century governors, Thomas Jones arrived in his political roles after experience in the Civil War. Perhaps surprisingly, given that background, he had ideas about reform, though opposition from other politicians limited his ability to enact those ideas.

Behind the Image

A World in Wicker

By Frances Osborn Robb

Some photographs teach us about the era and values of their time, even if they do not represent any people. Such a photograph is the focus of this quarter’s installment of “Beyond the Image,” which explores a furniture trend that affected photography of the past—and still captures collectors’ attention today.

From the Archives

Two Photographs of Reconstruction

By Scotty E. Kirkland

Some 120 years after their acquisition, two photographs in the Alabama Department of Archives and History collection remain noteworthy for both the circumstances around their creation and the scenes they portray. The images date from 1872, during the contentious time of Reconstruction, when Alabama’s legislature was extremely divided—even to the point that multiple entities, meeting in different locations, claimed to be the true legislature. Through careful exploration, these artifacts continue to illuminate this complicated era in the state’s history.

The Nature Journal

Camp Fletcher

By L. J. Davenport

In the 1920s, Birmingham’s Pauline Bray Fletcher, Alabama’s first Black registered nurse, left her profession and embarked on a what could be considered her life’s most important work: founding a nature camp for urban Black children. Fletcher recruited a number of important supporters, but the camp’s launch was not without incident; white women who volunteered to train some of the camp’s staff were visited by the Ku Klux Klan. Despite such difficulties, however, Camp Fletcher survived and even excelled—and it remains today, a beacon of light beaming down from Shades Mountain.