Alabama history

This week, the Genre Reading Group met to discuss books on Alabama history.  2019 is the 200th anniversary for the state, so be on the lookout for programs and events celebrating the bicentennial!

They Also Served: Twenty-Five Remarkable Alabama Women by Mildred Griffin Yelverton

Includes information on Tallulah Brockman Bankhead -- Ruth Robertson Berrey -- Myrtle Brooke -- Annie Rowan Forney Daugette -- Loula Friend Dunn -- Hallie Farmer -- Henrietta Magnolia Gibbs -- Amelia Gayle Gorgas -- Dixie Bibb Graves -- Agnes Ellen Harris -- Pattie Ruffner Jacobs -- Elizabeth Johnston Evans Johnston -- Helen Adams Keller -- Kathleen Mallory -- Edwina Donnelly Mitchell -- Sister Chrysostom Moynahan -- Marie Bankhead Owen -- Annie Lola Price -- Ruby Pickens Tartt -- Carrie A. Tuggle -- Loraine Bedsole Tunstall -- Julia Strudwick Tutwiler -- Lurleen Burns Wallace -- Margaret James Murray Washington -- Augusta Evans Wilson.

The Infamous Birmingham Axe Murders: Prohibition Gangsters and Vigilante Justice by Jeremy W. Gray

A reign of terror swept the streets of Birmingham in the 1920s. Criminals armed with small axes attacked immigrant merchants and interracial couples, leaving dozens dead or injured over the course of four years. Desperate for answers, police accepted clues from a Ouija board, while citizens clamored for gun permits for protection. The city's Italian immigrants formed their own association as protection against the Black Hand, an organized band of brutal criminals. Eventually, the police turned to a dangerous and untested truth serum to elicit confessions. Four black men and a teenage girl were charged and tried, while copycat killers emerged from the woodwork. Journalist Jeremy Gray tackles one of the most curious and violent cases in Magic City history.

The Most They Ever Had by Rick Bragg

In the spring of 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills of northern Alabama had come to the edge of all they had ever known. Across the South, padlocks and logging chains bound the doors of silent mills, and it seemed a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville that their mill still bit, shook, and roared. The century-old hardwood floors still trembled under whirling steel, and people worked on, in a mist of white air. The mill had become almost a living thing, rewarding the hardworking and careful with the best payday they ever had, but punishing the careless and clumsy, taking a finger, a hand, more.

The mill was here before the automobile, before the flying machine, and the mill workers served it even as it filled their lungs with lint and shortened their lives. In return, it let them live in stiff-necked dignity in the hills of their fathers. So, when death did come, no one had to ship their bodies home on a train. This is a mill story—not of bricks, steel, and cotton, but of the people who suffered it to live.

Three Capitals: A Book About the First Three Capitals of Alabama by William Brantley

"Three Capitals is an in-depth study of Alabama's first three seats of government--St. Stephens, Huntsville, and Cahawba.... The University of Alabama Press has reprinted the book in a handsome new edition with a pertinent introduction by Malcolm C. McMillan. Brantley's study is a tribute to the accomplishments of an amateur historian and contains a wealth of useful information." --Bulletin of the History of the Early American Republic

Living History in Alabama (NOT AVAILABLE IN THE JCLC)

This vintage travel guide to the state was published in 1969, the 150th anniversary of the state.

Birmingham View: Through the Years in Photographs published by the Birmingham Historical Society

This book traces Birmingham, Alabama's rapid growth from frontier to full-fledged city during the early 20th century through the photographs produced by the Birmingham View Company (1905-1961)

Vintage Birmingham Signs by Tim Hollis

Most people do not stop to realize how many of their fond memories involve advertising signs. Although these neon spectaculars, billboards, and even signs painted directly onto brick walls were created expressly to persuade customers to buy products or patronize businesses, many such signs remained in place for so long that they became beloved landmarks in their own right. For Images of America: Vintage Birmingham Signs, Tim Hollis has scoured the archives of Birmingham’s former sign companies, as well as other private collections, to compile some of the best remembered or most obscure signs that dotted the urban and suburban landscape. Here readers will again see the Buffalo Rock bottle pouring its ginger ale into a glass, the Golden Flake clown smiling down at passersby, the Barber’s milk clock at the Five Points South intersection, and many more. Through these vintage photographs, readers can once again visit such once-thriving destinations as Eastwood Mall, Burger in a Hurry, and the Kiddieland amusement park.

Abandoned Birmingham by Leland Kent

Founded in 1871 after the Civil War, Birmingham rapidly grew as an industrial enterprise due to the abundance of the three raw materials used in making steel--iron ore, coal, and limestone. Birmingham's rapid growth was due to the booming iron and steel industries giving it the nickname "Magic City" and "Pittsburgh of the South." The city was named after Birmingham, England, as a nod to the major industrial powerhouse. The iron and steel industries began to dry up by the early 1970s, leaving behind dozens of abandoned structures that now dot the city's landscape. In the last several years, Birmingham has begun to experience a rebirth. Money has been invested in reconstructing the historic downtown area into a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use district. In Abandoned Birmingham, photographer Leland Kent gives the reader an in-depth look at the forgotten buildings and factories throughout the city.

Mardi Gras in Mobile by L. Craig Roberts

Mardi Gras in Mobile began its carnival celebration years before the city of New Orleans was founded. In the 1700s, mystic societies formed in Mobile, such as the Societe de Saint Louis, believed to be the first in the New World. These curious organizations brought old-world traditions as they held celebrations like parades and balls with themes like Scandinavian mythology and the dream of Pythagoras. Today, more than 800,000 people annually take in the sights, sounds and attractions of the celebration. Historian and preservationist L. Craig Roberts, through extensive research and interviews, explores the captivating and charismatic history of Mardi Gras in the Port City.

Mountain Brook Village: Then & Now published by the Birmingham Historical Society

This is the story of a village, how it was planned and how it grew over eight decades. Lavishly illustrated, this book tells the story, beginning with historic documents prepared by Jemison & Company before the Great Depression. "This is largely a picture book, with a total of 136 photographs and drawings never seen before" says Marjorie White, Director, Birmingham Historical Society. "In many instances, we show original businesses, businesses that came along later, and the current look and layout of the Village." The pages are fascinating, both in their ability to chronicle one of Birmingham, Alabama's upscale retail markets and as a social history. To see the original plans for the Village (included) and know it today is a testament to the incredible investment in quality planning," says White.

Alabama Cemeteries: A Guide to Their Stories in Stone by Donna Booth

As you travel, by car or by armchair, you will discover The Bear Man's Last Tracks, Little Nadine's Playhouse, The Whiskey Bottle Tombstone, the Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard, and many other stories and places that will raise the hair on your neck, make you laugh, or move you to tears. Of special interest to libraries and genealogists in search of local cemeteries. Complete with black-and-white photos, directions, and state map.

Alabama: The History of a Deep South State by William Warren Rogers, Leah Rawls Atkins, Robert David Ward, and Wayne Flynt

Once the home of aboriginal inhabitants, Alabama was claimed and occupied by European nations, later to become a permanent part of the United States. A cotton and slave state for more than half of the 19th century, Alabama declared its independence and joined another nation, the Confederate States of America, for its more than four-year history. The state assumed an uneasy and uncertain place in the 19th century’s last 35 years. Its role in the 20th century has been tumultuous but painfully predictable. This comprehensive history, written in the last decade of that century, presents, explains, and interprets the major events that occurred during Alabama’s history within the larger context of the South and the nation.

Alabama: The History of a Deep South State is the first completely new comprehensive account of the state since A.B. Moore’s 1935 work. Divided into three main sections, the first concluding in 1865, the second in 1920, and the third bringing the story to the present, the book’s organization is both chronological and topical.

General readers will welcome this modern history of Alabama, which examines such traditional subjects as politics, military events, economics, and broad social movements. Of equal value are sections devoted to race, Indians, women, and the environment, as well as detailed coverage of health, education, organized labor, civil rights, and the many cultural elements—from literature to sport—that have enriched Alabama’s history. The roles of individual leaders, from politicians to creative artists, are discussed. There is as well strong emphasis on the common people, those Alabamians who have been rightly described as the “bone and sinew” of the state.

Each section of the book was written by a scholar who has devoted much of his or her professional life to the study of that period of Alabama’s past, and although the three sections reflect individual style and interpretation, the authors have collaborated closely on overall themes and organization. The result is an objective look at the colorful, often controversial, state’s past. The work relies both on primary sources and such important secondary sources as monographs, articles, and unpublished theses and dissertations to provide fresh insights, new approaches, and new interpretations.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South by Walker Evans and James Agee

A landmark work of American photojournalism “renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality” (New York Times)

 In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when, in 1941, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was first published to enormous critical acclaim. This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land and the rhythm of their lives, is intensely moving and unrelentingly honest, and today—recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century—it stands as a poetic tract of its time. With an elegant new design as well as a sixty-four-page photographic prologue featuring archival reproductions of Evans's classic images, this historic edition offers readers a window into a remarkable slice of American history.