Issue 70, Fall 2003

Issue 70, Fall 2003

On the cover: The familiar dome of Tuscaloosa’s Bryce Hospital may be in danger. [Photograph by Robin McDonald]


Features

When Men Must Die:
An Alabama POW at Bataan

By John D. Lukacs

When General Douglas MacArthur was ordered out of the Philippines during the early days of World War Two, the remaining American and Filipino troops were forced to surrender to the Japanese. What followed became known as the Bataan Death March. During the sixty-five-mile forced march, Lieutenant Bertram Bank of Alabama witnessed the beatings and executions of his comrades. Bank survived, only to be imprisoned for years in Japanese POW camps in the Philippines. The American and Filipino POWs thought they had been abandoned. But when hope was almost gone, a daring rescue brought these “ghost soldiers” back from the dead.


Heart of a Small Town

By Robin McDonald

Alabama Heritage readers have been delighted for years with the brilliant photography and design of our magazine’s creative director, Robin McDonald. This holiday season marks the debut of Robin’s much-anticipated new book, Heart of a Small Town (University of Alabama Press, 2003). In the Fall issue, Robin presents a photographic “sneak peek” of the fascinating little towns that dot the Alabama landscape. Some are growing, some declining, but all have a story to tell.


A Dangerous Business: Children on the Front Lines

By Michael Sznajderman

Audrey Hendricks walked out of Birmingham’s Center Street Elementary School and into history. Although only nine years old, she was going to be a part of a vital element in the Civil Rights organizers’ plan to challenge the racial injustices in America’s most segregated city. The Civil Rights Movement had lost steam and media attention. Organizers Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. needed a way to gain attention and sympathy, so they organized the movement’s first youth march. When the schoolchildren began their march on May 2, 1963, Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor quickly arrested the demonstrators, filling up the city’s jail and juvenile hall. As the stunned nation and a troubled President Kennedy looked on, the children marched again. With nowhere to hold the protesters, Connor tried to disperse them by ordering Birmingham’s firefighters and police officers to use fire hoses and canine units. Public outrage soon brought an end to segregation in the city.


Places in Peril 2003

By Keri Coumanis

The Alabama Preservation Alliance and the Alabama Historical Commission have once again listed Alabama’s most significant historic “Places in Peril.” This year, AHC Endangered Properties Coordinator Keri Coumanis focuses on historical sites that are in danger of being lost due to economic pressures. Lack of funding, too much economic growth, and urban redevelopment all threaten to uproot places of historical value. With local interest, however, these historical sites can be preserved for future generations. From the vandalism of rural cemeteries, to the deterioration of Bryce Hospital, to the lack of protection for the Civil War battlefield at Day’s Gap in Cullman County, Coumanis illuminates a critical need.


Departments

Art in the South

Appalachian Primitive Dolls

By Alison Burke

The Appalachian primitive doll has been a standard plaything for many children in the mountain communities of Alabama and northwards. These dolls exist in many variations, and have become highly sought-after items of folk art. As examples of the evolution of children’s toys, and as windows into the rich cultures that produced them, these dolls serve an important educational purpose. 


Southern Folkways

Gibeon Sullivan’s Cooling Board

By Breck Stapleton

At first glance, the home created by Gibeon Sullivan seems unremarkable: four bedrooms, a dogtrot, constructed of broad strips of hand-hewn timber. But one feature of the cabin would transform his front porch into an important place in Wagarville: the “cooling-board,” where the community’s dead were displayed before internment. This piece offers a valuable insight into a different time, when death was more visible and funerals were important community events.


Alabama Treasures

The 1863 Battle House Register

By Aaron Welborn

At one time, the Battle House was Alabama’s only first-class hotel. Virtually every traveler of note passing through the South stayed there, and its tattered, leather-bound register contains the signatures of hundreds of important Civil War-era personalities who stayed at the hotel. This register captures a fascinating cross-section of southern high society at a pivotal historical moment.


Recollections

Birmingham’s Black YWCA

By Ashley Grantham and Gillian Goodrich 

From its beginning in 1912, the YWCA’s Eighth Avenue Branch offered practical training, fellowship, and safety for young black women looking to make their own way in the industrial city of Birmingham. The Eighth Avenue Branch played a strong role in the Birmingham black community, and its history is important to that of the city itself.


The Nature Journal

Fairy Shrimps (and Vernal Pools)

By L.J. Davenport

Fairy shrimps densely populate temporary, mineral rich, vernal pools. These extremophiles–relatives of the famous “sea monkey,” the brine shrimp–exhibit a “pulsed” life cycle, with no contact between generations. L.J. Davenport describes this life-cycle and discusses the ways in which the fairy shrimp has adapted to survive in extreme conditions.

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