Issue 100, Spring 2011
On the cover: Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University. [Library of Congress]
Features
“The Uplift of Humanity”: Booker T. Washington in Context
By Robert J. Norrell
Booker T. Washington rose from his childhood as a Virginia slave to become one of America’s most ardent advocates of African American progress. Acclaimed for his abilities as a public speaker and educator, Washington lectured widely and helped establish the Tuskegee Institute, later renamed Tuskegee University. Many people—both black and white—respected his work, and Washington maintained relationships with presidents and industry magnates. However, he also had detractors—white men who felt threatened by the possibility of equality for African Americans, but also some northern black intellectuals who felt Washington’s approach to equality was too patient and accommodating.
A force in his own time, Washington’s legacy has often been ignored or overlooked, dismissed by critics who use contemporary standards to evaluate events of the past. As part of Alabama Heritage’s 100th issue, Robert J. Norrell revisits Washington and his legacy, offering a revised appraisal of this significant leader.
History In Ruins
Text by Robert Gamble, Photography by Robin McDonald
Along Alabama’s highways and byways, crumbling architectural ruins remind us of the layers of history beneath our feet. Each one tells a story of the ambition, enterprise, and dreams someone had generations ago—and of the inevitable effects of time and change. Robert Gamble and Robin McDonald shed new light on these sites, detailing their history and uncovering their potential. From residences to industrial complexes, railways to resorts, churches to general stores, these sites represent fading facets of Alabama’s landscape and its cultural heritage.
Alabama Fever: The Land Rush to Statehood
By Donna Cox Baker
Originally part of the Mississippi Territory, the region we now know as Alabama was predominately “Indian country” until 1814, when the Creeks forfeited around 20 million acres for their failure to prevent the “Red Stick” element from warring against the United States. The cession treaty fomented a land rush that brought tens of thousands of white settlers and their slaves to the territory in just a few years. Travel was tedious, irksome, and dangerous—forcing the emigrants to depend upon the hospitality of strangers and the services of the recently vanquished Indians. Lured by fanciful accounts of boundless resources, they were often disappointed to find a few log cabins where they expected towns and swamps where they expected meadows—but they persevered.
Development was hindered by spotty and unreliable communication, and in many instances, the area remained isolated from the rest of the nation. After the Mississippi Territory was divided, Alabamians rushed to secure statehood and the security of federal representation for their own territory, which became the union’s twenty-second state barely five years after the land opened. As a special feature of our 100th issue, Alabama Heritage editor Donna Cox Baker recounts the journey to statehood and the people who made that journey possible in this commemoration.
Alabama Children Confront the Civil War
By James Marten
Although a number of adolescents participated in the Civil War by enlisting in local regiments, most of Alabama’s children spent the Civil War trying to retain as normal a life as possible. Relatively few accounts of their experiences survive, but James Marten has scoured them to provide a look at wartime childhood in Alabama. In addition to the stress of war itself, children often endured the prolonged absence of fathers, scarce provisions, and, in areas where battles occurred, tumultuous surroundings. Despite this, they strove to maintain the routine of everyday life, in some cases even attending school regularly. Throughout it all, they revealed the curiosity, innocence, and resilience of youth.
Departments
Alabama Treasures
The Moundville Duck Bowl
By Bill Bomar
A true Alabama treasure, the Moundville Duck Bowl has finally returned to the land of its discovery. The prehistoric artifact, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, remains one of the loveliest pieces of its kind. Although it was discovered in Alabama by Clarence Bloomfield Moore, the Duck Bowl was transported north, where it remained, most recently as part of the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The piece is on loan to the Moundville Archaeological Park and Museum through September 2011. For a time, at least, the Duck Bowl has come home.
Becoming Alabama
Quarter by Quarter
By Joseph W. Pearson, Megan L. Bever, and Matthew Downs
This quarter’s installment of “Becoming Alabama” delves deeper into those significant periods of Alabama’s history. Joseph Pearson explores the dynamics of Creek culture, where clashes began to arise between those Creeks who adhered to traditional mores and those who advocated a cooperative approach to changing events and circumstances. At the root of all these negotiations was the very nature of Creek cultural identity, which remained threatened by settlers encroaching on native lands and customs. Megan Bever looks at the early events of the Civil War, including the formation of the Confederacy and the fall of Fort Sumter. Moving into the twentieth century, Matthew Downs investigates how southern resistance to integration affected industrial growth and development and Alabama’s economic stability.
Editor’s Note: Alabama Heritage, the Summersell Center for Study of the South, the University of Alabama Department of History, and the Alabama Tourism Department offer this department as a part of the statewide “Becoming Alabama” initiative—a cooperative venture of state organizations to commemorate Alabama’s experiences related to the Creek War, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. Quarter by quarter we will take you to the corresponding seasons 200, 150, and 50 years ago—sometimes describing the most pivotal events, sometimes describing daily life, but always illuminating a world in flux. We will wait for the ultimate outcomes as our forbears did—over time.
Portraits and Landscapes
Abraham Mordecai: “The Cradle-Rocker of Montgomery”
By Robert D. Temple
Abraham Mordecai’s role as founder of Montgomery remains clear. However, other details of his life have been veiled by history and corrupted by conflicting accounts. One of Alabama’s few Jewish settlers, Mordecai established an early trading post and a cotton gin in the area that would become Montgomery and earned the trust of the native community, for a time even serving in a diplomatic capacity and negotiating between natives and settlers. Accounts of a falling out between Mordecai and local Creeks offer widely disparate versions of events, leaving historians to puzzle out the true legacy of this settler.
Southern Religion
The Basement: Foundations of Alabama’s Largest Christian Youth Movement
By Charity R. Carney
In honor of our 100th issue, Alabama Heritage debuts its newest department, “Southern Religion.” In the first installment of this new department, Charity Carney explores the latest iteration of evangelism in Alabama. Driven by Matt Pitt, Birmingham’s The Basement uses the latest technology to target contemporary youth. At the same time, it draws on an evangelical tradition with deep roots, revealing how even the hottest new thing has origins in our past.
The Natural Journal
Eight Acre Rock
Sometimes nature’s loveliest gems lurk out of sight, hidden from passersby. This quarter in “Nature Journal,” L. J. Davenport explores one such treasure, the secret garden at Eight Acre Rock. Venture with Davenport into Alabama’s own rock garden, a secluded wonderland too often missed in the bustle of everyday life.
Reading the Southern Past
Philip Henry Gosse
Reviewer Stephen Goldfarb surveys the work of naturalist Philip Henry Gosse and discusses the long-awaited publication of his work in Philip Henry Gosse: Science and Art in Letters from Alabama and Entomologia Alabamensis (University of Alabama Press, 2010). The book finally “does justice to what might just be the most exquisite paintings of insects in existence,” says Goldfarb. He also discusses the republication of Gosse’s 1859 text Letters from Alabama (U.S.): Chiefly Relating to Natural History, also providing finely detailed imagery of Alabama’s antebellum life—though this time with words.