Issue 75, Winter 2005
On the cover: The Ensley Community House offered Italian immigrants the opportunity to embrace American culture. [Courtesy Archives of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church]
Features
Bridging the Gulf: The Alabama-Cuba Connection
By Lawrence A. Clayton
A trade embargo against Cuba makes it nearly impossible for most Alabamians to visit the island nation just across the Gulf of Mexico from us. To understand the tragedy of this, one must look to the histories of Cuba and the state of Alabama and see how connected these two places really are. Since the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto first governed over the southeastern United States and the Caribbean, we have been tied to Cuba. In war, Cubans died on our soil and Alabamians died on Cuban soil. We share a complicated and exciting history of exploration, colonialism, war, trade, and even disease. A look at our shared past will attempt to bridge the gulf by revealing a bond that is stronger than the Iron Curtain that currently separates us.
The Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air Guard in the Bay of Pigs
By Warren Trest and Don Dodd
In 1961, under terms of absolute secrecy, sixty Alabama Air National Guard members headed to Central America, recruited by the CIA to train Cuban revolutionaries to overthrow the Castro government. As one disaster after another jeopardized the success of the Cuban insurgents, eight Alabamians flew into the maelstrom of the Bay of Pigs to assist. Though some made the ultimate sacrifice, their contribution went unacknowledged until 1977.
[W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama]
Caroline Lee Hentz’s Long Journey
By Philip D. Beidler
In 1834 Caroline Lee Hentz, a native of New England, arrived in the Deep South state of Alabama, where she would live for the next fourteen years. During that time, she would become one of the South’s most prolific, popular, and profitable antebellum authors, churning out an enormous volume of well-received plays, novels, stories, essays, and poems—virtually all of it written in Alabama. Her most famous book, however, was a pro-slavery response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist blockbuster Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Entitled The Planter’s Northern Bride, it was one of a wave of books defending slavery that appeared shortly after the publication of Stowe’s novel. Hentz’s book sold well throughout the North and South, and its importance as an example of “anti-Tom” literature secured her a place in history. But the real story behind Caroline Lee Hentz’s career as a writer is how she managed to achieve so much despite the best efforts of a bitter and chronically jealous husband.
A Settlement House in Ensley’s Italian District
By G. Ward Hubbs
In 1912 an experienced Methodist social worker, Dorothy L. Crim, accepted a salary of fifty dollars per month to found a settlement house similar to Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago. Despite a host of obstacles to reform, the Ensley Community House, which opened the next year, served its community for fifty-six years. Located in the heart of the city’s Italian District, it sought to alleviate the problems many immigrant workers faced—especially the sense of alienation and isolation from mainstream American culture. Crim saw herself as “building up a Christian nation,” fervently believing that democracy itself was “Christianity in action,” and her greatest satisfaction came when the families she helped in turn served others.
Departments
Alabama Treasures
Mystery of the Alabama Stone
By Bard Cole
The Alabama Stone, a two-hundred pound slab of sandstone bearing a mysterious Latin inscription, has been the focus of historical investigations and speculative theories since its discovery on the banks of the Black Warrior River in 1817.
Art In The South
An Unlikely Canvas
By Jim Noles
Beginning in the late 1930s, the Treasury Section of Fine Arts selected artists to decorate post offices across the country. Though Arthur Getz’s mural “Cotton Field” reflects the heritage and history of Luverne, it was painted on panels in Getz’s New York studio and mailed to Alabama.
Recollections
Jack McGowin’s Forbidden Diary
By Sam Duvall
Jack McGowin knew the dangers of keeping a journal–if the enemy found it, his fellow sailors would be sunk; if his superiors found out about it, he would be court martialed–and yet he was compelled to make note of the events that unfolded during the Second World War.
Nature Journal
Apple Cedar Rust
Jack McGowin knew the dangers of keeping a journal–if the enemy found it, his fellow sailors would be sunk; if his superiors found out about it, he would be court martialed–and yet he was compelled to make note of the events that unfolded during the Second World War.
