History: Alabama History

A thorough, balanced compilation, this book is the first comprehensive annotated bibliography on Alabama since 1898. Four authors provide an interdisciplinary approach representing the fields of history, geography, political science, literature, American studies, and library science. Although political, military, and socioeconomic history are well represented, numerous entries on agriculture, art, education, environment, folklore, law, literature, medicine, newspapers, religion, and travel are also included. The bibliography is arranged chronologically by periods in Alabama history with topical subdivisions under each period. Concise but descriptive annotations supplement the titles to delimit the time, place, and topical focus of the individual entry.

Alabama's capital has roots all over the state. It first emerged in St. Stephens in 1799, a small fort acquired from the Spanish atop a tall limestone bluff overlooking the Tombigbee River. Next came Huntsville in the Tennessee Valley, where the state constitution emerged. Cahawba was the capital to receive a visit from the Marquis de Lafayette, the last surviving general of the American Revolution. In 1826, Tuscaloosa took the reins for twenty years before the final move to Montgomery. Discover the leaders and events that established the state and the fates of each dynamic governmental center as author Jim Lewis traces the history of Alabama's lost capitals.

The name 'Alabama' comes from the Choctaw word meaning "clearers of the thickets," inspiring the title of this fascinating new book. It examines Alabama's early history, beginning with the era of European colonization and culminating with the state's controversial secession from the Union-after just 41 years as a state (recognizing, of course, that the actual history began long before, with Native American civilizations). In so doing, the author traces how Alabama emerged from a raw frontier of European settlement into a fully functioning state that provided much-needed order to its new citizens. - The book begins by exploring the colonial period during which three European powers-Spain, France, and Great Britain-continually vied for control of what was to become part of Alabama. Each culture, along with the Native American communities that lived throughout most of the region, contributed to the development of the emerging territory and left its enduring stamp. Later chapters examine Alabama's territorial period, the Creek War of 1813-1814, the Constitutional Convention of 1819 and statehood, the first years of state government in Cahaba, removal of the capital to Tuscaloosa, King Cotton and the ignominy of slavery, further relocation of the capital to Montgomery as secession loomed, and social and economic advances during the antebellum period that were interrupted and stunted by the tragedy of secession and war. - "'Clearing the Thickets' is narrative history in the grand old style-a spirited effort to make sense of the ideas, human beings, and events that came together to shape Alabama's first tumultuous decades. ... Anyone interested in antebellum Alabama will be grateful for what Lewis has accomplished." -Paul Pruitt, Jr., Special Collection Librarian, University of Alabama; author of 'Taming Alabama: Lawyers and Reformers, 1804-1929' (2010)

Another addition to the Southern Women series, Alabama Women celebrates women's histories in the Yellowhammer State by highlighting the lives and contributions of women and enriching our understanding of the past and present. Exploring such subjects as politics, arts, and civic organizations, this collection of eighteen biographical essays provides a window into the social, cultural, and geographic milieux of women's lives in Alabama. Featured individuals include Augusta Evans Wilson, Maria Fearing, Julia S. Tutwiler, Margaret Murray Washington, Pattie Ruffner Jacobs, Ida E. Brandon Mathis, Ruby Pickens Tartt, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Sara Martin Mayfield, Bess Bolden Walcott, Virginia Foster Durr, Rosa Parks, Lurleen Burns Wallace, Margaret Charles Smith, and Harper Lee. Contributors: -Nancy Grisham Anderson on Harper Lee -Harriet E. Amos Doss on the enslaved women surgical patients of J. Marion Sims -Wayne Flynt and Marlene Hunt Rikard on Pattie Ruffner Jacobs -Caroline Gebhard on Bess Bolden Walcott -Staci Simon Glover on the immigrant women in metropolitan Birmingham -Sharony Green on the Townsend Family -Sheena Harris on Margaret Murray Washington -Christopher D. Haveman on the women of the Creek Removal Era -Kimberly D. Hill on Maria Fearing -Tina Naremore Jones on Ruby Pickens Tartt -Jenny M. Luke on Margaret Charles Smith -Rebecca Cawood McIntyre on Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and Sara Martin Mayfield -Rebecca S. Montgomery on Ida E. Brandon Mathis -Paul M. Pruitt Jr. on Julia S. Tutwiler -Susan E. Reynolds on Augusta Evans Wilson -Patricia Sullivan on Virginia Foster Durr -Jeanne Theoharis on Rosa Parks -Susan Youngblood Ashmore on Lurleen Burns Wallace

Alabamians in Blue offers an in-depth scholarly examination of Alabama?s black and white Union soldiers and their contributions to the eventual success of the Union army in the western theater. Christopher M. Rein contends that the state?s anti-Confederate residents tendered an important service to the North, primarily by collecting intelligence and protecting logistical infrastructure. He highlights an underappreciated period of biracial cooperation, underwritten by massive support from the federal government. Providing a broad synthesis, Rein?s study demonstrates that southern dissenters were not passive victims but rather active participants in their own liberation. Ecological factors, including agricultural collapse under levies from both armies, may have provided the initial impetus for Union enlistment. Federal pillaging inflicted further heavy destruction on plantation agriculture. The breakdown in basic subsistence that ensued pushed Alabama?s freedmen and Unionists into federal camps in garrison cities in search of relief and the opportunity for revenge. Once in uniform, Alabama?s Union soldiers served alongside northern regiments and frustrated Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest?s attempts to interrupt the Union supply efforts in the 1864 Atlanta campaign, which led to the collapse of Confederate arms in the western theater and the eventual Union victory. Rein describes a ?hybrid warfare? of simultaneous conventional and guerilla battles, where each significantly influenced the other. He concludes that the conventional conflict both prompted and eventually ended the internecine warfare that largely marked the state?s experience of the war. A comprehensive analysis of military, social, and environmental history, Alabamians in Blue uncovers a past of biracial cooperation in the American South, and in Alabama in particular, that postwar adherents to the ?Myth of the Lost Cause? have successfully suppressed until now.

Cradle of Freedom puts a human face on the story of the black American struggle for equality in Alabama during the 1960s. While exceptional leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, and others rose up from the ranks and carved their places in history, the burden of the movement was not carried by them alone. It was fueled by the commitment and hard work of thousands of everyday people who decided that the time had come to take a stand. Cradle of Freedom is tied to the chronology of pivotal events occurring in Alabama the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, Bloody Sunday, and the Black Power movement in the Black Belt. Gaillard artfully interweaves fresh stories of ordinary people with the familiar ones of the civil rights icons. We learn about the ministers and lawyers, both black and white, who aided the movement in distinct ways at key points. We meet Vernon Johns, King's predecessor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, who first suggested boycotting the buses and who wrote later, "It is a heart strangely un-Christian that cannot thrill with joy when the least of men begin to pull in the direction of the stars." We hear from John Hulett who tells how terror of lynching forced him down into ditches whenever headlights appeared on a night road. We see the Edmund Pettus Bridge beatings from the perspective of marcher JoAnne Bland, who was only a child at the time. We learn of E. D. Nixon, a Pullman porter who helped organize the bus boycott and who later choked with emotion when, for the first time in his life, a white man extended his hand in greeting to him on a public street. How these ordinary people rose to the challenges of an unfair system with a will and determination that changed their times forever is a fascinating and extraordinary story that Gaillard tells with his hallmark talent. Cradle of Freedom unfolds with the dramatic flow of a novel, yet it is based on meticulous research. With authority and grace, Gaillard explains how the southern state deemed the Cradle of the Confederacy became with great struggle, some loss, and much hope the Cradle of Freedom.

Alabama the River State: A Collection of Historical Essays Exploring Alabama Rivers edited by Todd Keith. Beth Maynor Young and Mac Dean, photographers. Guy Arello, designer and publisher, 35pp, 1998. The state of Alabama has 10,000 miles of inland waterways, and this unusual book combines numerous photographs, maps and historical material about the rivers.