Issue 73, Summer 2004
On the cover: Her daily bus commute would inspire a life-altering crusade for Juliette Morgan. [Courtesy Alabama Department of Archives and History]
Features
Etched in Time: The Art of Marian Acker Macpherson
For Marian Acker Macpherson, the magnificent homes and stately buildings of Mobile were dear old friends—the distinctive remnants of a bygone era. With intricate etchings and vivid prose, she communicated her affection for them and, over the decades, her sadness at their decline. Born in 1906, Macpherson moved in the highest level of Mobile society. Educated in art schools in Mobile and Boston, she studied etching in Provincetown with W.H.W. Bicknell. Returning to her hometown, she published three books of architectural etchings with commentary, the last of which, Glimpses of Old Mobile, she revised at least six times between 1946 and 1983 as historic structures disappeared. Her colorful descriptions of the homes and edifices she found in a state of decay reveal a desire to instill in her fellow Mobilians a sense of possession and pride, as well as an awareness of the vulnerability of these architectural relics.
Comfort Under Control: Alabama’s Textile Mill Villages
By Pamela Sterne King
In the decades following the Civil War, Alabama’s textile companies designed the mill village to be a “workingman’s paradise,” a modern-day utopia for blue-collar workers and their families. Opportunity abounded, wages were good, and all the amenities of “welfare capitalism” came with the job—but not without a price. By offering such incentives as free or cheap housing, education, healthcare, and recreational facilities, textile mills across the state were able to recruit, retain, and reward productive, loyal employees. From a management perspective, these self-sufficient, socially cohesive and geographically insular communities were immune from the agitations of northern labor unions. For the mill worker, however, life in the “workingman’s paradise” often turned out to be one of constant sacrifice for the good of “the company.”
Juliette Hampton Morgan: From Socialite to Social Activist
By Mary Stanton
Many aspects of Juliette Morgan’s white southern upbringing in Montgomery—her social class, education, and especially her temperament—seemed unlikely to yield a civil rights activist. Yet inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, and troubled by the injustice around her, that is precisely what she became. In the 1930s she began a one-woman campaign to end the segregation and racism that had for so long dominated the southern way of life. She wrote fiery letters to newspapers around the state, joined political groups, and publicly protested the discrimination she witnessed on a daily basis. Her passionate beliefs caused her to become estranged from friends, colleagues, neighbors, and even her own mother. But those who understood her cause encouraged her to brave the losses, which she did up until the end of her short but exemplary life.
Camp Rucker During the Second World War
By Jim Noles
For four years during the Second World War, the Ozark Triangular Division Camp, also known as Camp Rucker, trained scores of soldiers needed to defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. While Camp Rucker contributed to our country’s success on a global scale, it also represented a personal triumph for former U.S. Congressman Henry B. Steagall, who campaigned for an army post to be located in his Depression-ravaged home district in Ozark, Alabama. With its rolling farmlands, wooded areas, and creek bottoms, Camp Rucker’s varied terrain proved to be the ideal testing ground for soldiers training to conduct large artillery maneuvers. The recruits—mostly northerners who had never been to the south—would go on to fight in almost every theater of the Second World War.
Fort Rucker, Alabama]
Departments
Alabama Treasures
A Hero’s Prize Returns
By Clyde Harris Eller
The Hobson loving cup was created to commemorate Raymond Pearson Hobson, who was imprisoned in Cuba in 1898. In October of 1900, the people of Alabama presented the treasure to Lieutenant Hobson at the State Capitol. Over the years, the cup drifted to Virginia, but in January 2004 it returned to Alabama, where it now resides in the permanent collection of the Alabama Historical Commission.
Alabama Heritage Revisited
Moretti’s Warning: The Myth Demystified
By Bob Cason
A myth repeated often enough has a tendency to take on the mantle of credibility; one such myth is the story that sculptor Giuseppe Moretti warned that his statue of Vulcan– “a god dedicated to moneymaking”–should never be separated from his more spiritual marble creation, the Head of Christ. Bob Cason unravels myth from truth in this follow-up to a department entry from Alabama Heritage Issue 71.
Southern Architecture and Preservation
Vestavia’s Sibyl Temple
By Cindy Riley
Originally constructed as a burial monument for one of Birmingham’s most flamboyant mayors, the historic Sibyl Temple in the City of Vestavia Hills has a past as intriguing as the man who commissioned it more than seventy years ago.
Nature Journal
The Soldier Fish
The “soldier fish” (now more commonly known as the rainbow darter) appears in soldier’s tales from both the Confederacy and the Union. Though strange to the narrators of those stories, the fish is well known to ichthyologists and fans out broadly in the Great Lakes and Mississippi and Tennessee River systems, ruthlessly driving out all competitors in pursuit of total Darter Domination.
