Issue 49, Summer 1998
On the cover: Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin walking on lunar surface, July 20, 1969. [Courtesy Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville]
Features
The Life and Times of D.W. Zorn (A Story That Is Mostly True)
By Charles E. Adams
Author Charles E. Adams, a West Blocton native, relates the story of the fire that destroyed most of the town’s business district. West Blocton, less than a half-century old at the time of the fire, had grown up next to Blocton, a “company” town founded by Truman H. Aldrich, a New York native who came south after the Civil War and established the Cahaba Coal Mining Company. As a result of the area’s rapid growth, much of West Blocton had been built in boom-town haste.
Although warnings about fire safety had been raised, many residents ignored the potential threat to their downtown area, and when a fire was accidentally started in a cleaning and pressing shop on the morning of July 12, 1927, it quickly grew out of control. By day’s end, the flames had destroyed forty stores, twenty homes, and several professional offices, devastating the small central Alabama town and making residents wonder if they could ever recover.
Famous Men: Walker Evan’s Photographs of Hale County Sharecroppers
By Mindy Wilson
During the Great Depression, the Black Belt of Alabama served as a haunting reminder that slavery had been replaced by an equally inhumane way of life—tenant farming. Conditions in the Black Belt were documented most strikingly by photographer Walker Evans and writer James Agee in the pair’s critically acclaimed book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Over the past fifty years, the book, which combines Agee’s sympathetic portrayal of the sharecroppers’ day-to-day struggle against overwhelming odds and Evans’ unflinching record of the effects of poverty, has come to be seen as a classic in documentary history. In her article, Wilson details the work that Evans and Agee compiled while observing the daily lives of tenant farmers near Greensboro, Alabama, provides insight on how their work was accepted in the ’30s and ’40s, and also assesses the impact of the book on later generations.
Huntsville and the Space Program Part Two: The Nineteen Sixties
By Mike Wright
In the second of two articles on the development of the space program in Huntsville, NASA historian Mike Wright offers a behind-the-scenes look at Huntsville’s team of brilliant scientists and technicians, led by the charismatic and controversial Wernher von Braun. From the Soviet Union’s 1961 success in putting a man in orbit to the 1969 moon landing by U.S. astronauts, Wright explores the early victories and defeats of the space program, when modern cowboys with names like Armstrong and Shepard set out to explore the newest undiscovered frontier. A resident of Huntsville, Wright also discusses the concurrent growth of the town along with the industry that made it world-famous.
The first part of this feature was published in Issue 48.
Departments
Art in the South
William Christenberry: The Early Years, 1954-1968
By Susan Sipple Elliott
In 1960, William Christenberry–then a young art instructor at the University of Alabama–discovered a book that would change his life. That book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, would shape Christenberry’s artistic ambitions for the rest of his life.
The Nature Journal
The Siren’s Song
Shark’s Tooth Creek boasts a biological treasure: the discarded teeth of prehistoric goblin sharks, buried eighty million years but now accessible to anyone with a wire screen and the patience to go fossil-hunting.
Southern Architecture and Preservation
Selma Points the Way in Restoration as the St. James Hotel Reopens
By John Sledge
Selma’s 1837 St. James Hotel–the only antebellum riverfront hotel left in Alabama and one of only a handful remaining in the Southeast–has undergone a dramatic restoration. Situated near the steamboat landing, the hotel was a favorite of nineteenth-century river travels; now reopened, city leaders hope that it will attract tourists and spur other projects along historic Water Avenue.
The Ramble
APA and Friends Join for a Black Belt Ramble
On May 2, 1998, Friends of Alabama Heritage and the Alabama Preservation Alliance teamed up to sponsor a ramble to historical places in the Alabama Black Belt. This special department entry recounts that day’s travels.
