Kudzu Twines Journal

On Veterans Day, AHF Board of Directors chairman Jim Noles travelled to Pine Hill, Alabama, to speak at the town’s third annual Veterans Day celebration.  Pine Hill is a small town with a population of approximately 400 people, in Wilcox County, about two and a half hours south of Birmingham.  The following are Jim’s remarks.

I thank you all for the privilege of speaking at today’s event.  I am humbled that you would ask me to do this and I only hope that I do you, and the men and the families that we honor, justice.

When Chester McConnell asked me for a title for my talk, I realized that I could do no better than the words inscribed at our nation’s World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.  Those words are:  “Here we mark the price of freedom.”  Read more »

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There are two weeks left in October, two weeks more of National Arts and Humanities Month. As the president said in 2009, “Throughout our nation’s history, the power of the arts and humanities to move people has built bridges and enriched lives, bringing individuals and communities together through the resonance of creative expression. It is the painter, the author, the musician, and the historian whose work inspires us to action, drives us to contemplation, stirs joy in our hearts, and calls upon us to consider our world anew.”

This is the time to celebrate your favorite author, filmmaker, artist or historian. This is the time to pass on to a friend your favorite book, or recommend a beloved song. This is the month to pull close your children or grandchildren and tell them about your family’s history. Take this month to explore your hometown, or a new town you’ve never visited in Alabama. Learn about the structures there, the culture, the people…learn more about your history as an Alabamian.

Take the time to learn more about the humanities…and more about yourself.

Filed under: Alabamians, Art history, Culture, Education, Film, Folk life, History, Hometown, Mission, Support | No Comments »

To say that The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth helped change the face of Alabama would diminish the impact of this civil rights leader. The Rev. Shuttlesworth helped change the face of this nation.

Last year, the Alabama Humanities Foundation honored The Rev. Shuttlesworth with a resolution, applauding “his lifetime of dedication and service to humankind and his unwavering belief and courage in upholding the dignity of all human beings…” Below is the full resolution, presented to The Rev. Shuttlesworth on September 13, 2010.

We invite you to share your comments about this courageous civil rights leader. Or submit a blog post sharing your thoughts to: jdome@ahf.net.

A Resolution Honoring the Reverend Fred Lee Shuttlesworth

WHEREAS, Fred Shuttlesworth has helped shape Alabama and American history through his tireless advocacy for civil liberties and struggle against racial discrimination.  He marched for justice and equality with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., organized boycotts and Freedom Rides, founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and

WHEREAS, a loving servant of God, Fred Shuttlesworth began his 58-year ministerial career in the rural Alabama church, prior to accepting the call for leadership at Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, where the Movement for change began, and

WHEREAS, his historical legacy has been memorialized in two scholarly biographies, Step by Step and A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, and

WHEREAS, he has received numerous awards and citations including the Presidential Citizen’s Award in 2001, induction into the International Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2005, and the renaming of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in 2008, and

WHEREAS, Fred Shuttlesworth has generously given of his time, energy, abilities, and resources to better the world around him.  We note that it is through the efforts of public-spirited individuals such as he, who are dedicated to preserving the inalienable rights and freedoms of all citizens, that our nation continues to grow and prosper.  We applaud him on his lifetime of dedication and service to humankind and his unwavering belief and courage in upholding the dignity of all human beings; therefore be it

RESOLVED That we, the members of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, in adopting this Resolution, honor Fred Shuttlesworth for his exemplary record of public advocacy that embodies the values and perspectives of the humanities.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this Resolution be formally presented to Reverend Fred Lee Shuttlesworth on this day, September 13, 2010.

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There’s been much ado about memorials of late, many which, sadly, draw people to opposing sides and defeat their intended purposes. So it was refreshing recently to experience a memorial not embedded with controversy, not erected for profit, not seeking the glamour of fame. This opportunity arose when, once again, my wife dragged me reluctantly, along with our 10-year-old grandson, Wesley, on one of her intently planned journeys. The miles we drove were few but the three-day adventure carried me an untold distance.

The first evening we attend a family reunion in Colbert County, Alabama—a gathering of descendents of Colonel George Colbert (aka, Tootemastabbe, Chickasaw Chief) my wife’s third great-grandfather. We share a covered dish supper and fascinating conversation with these Chickasaw-Scots and with Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Choctaws visiting from Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Alabama and Texas, to name a few, whose ancestors survived or perished on the Trail of Tears. Read more »

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Wayne Flynt, Emeritus professor of history at Auburn University and recipient of the 1991 Alabama Humanities Award, recently published his memoir with the University of Alabama Press titled Keeping the Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives. In it he describes Auburn’s work—often through AHF’s vital support—in reaching out to the state’s communities through public programming in the humanities. Here, we bring you an excerpt from Keeping the Faith:

“My own contribution to outreach probably received more recognition than it deserved because others were due most of the credit for our success. Nevertheless, in 1989, I received a University Extension Certificate of Merit. That same year, the Alabama Humanities Foundation (AHF) asked me to write a piece to celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, centering on the work of AHF in strengthening community life through public programming. Despite a variety of deadlines, I agreed. “Habits of the Heart in the Heart of Dixie” was my attempt to place AHF’s outreach effort into broad social context.

Rural and small town migration patterns, urban complexity, and the atomization of American life threatened venerable traditions of community life. Books as divergent as The Different Drum:  Community Making and Peace by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck and Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Community in American Life by Robert N. Bellah and others had placed the issue front and center on the nation’s agenda.

The age of air conditioners, the disappearance of front porches, the decline of church revivals, and the vanishing court and market days were locking us into progressively smaller cubicles, rooms, offices, and other stifling spaces, largely away from one another. Folks no longer learned so easily about the needs of others. Modern society might produce less small town gossip and petty intrigue. But it most certainly contained less neighborliness and willingness to be bothered by someone else’s troubles. This pulling away from community, this decreasing ability to connect meaningfully, to share important common symbols, had fractured and weakened social relationships and communal identity.

Rebuilding a sense of community is no easy matter. It first requires explaining what it means to be human. Such definitions emerge from religion, philosophy, literature, music, art, drama, speech, and history. This public redefinition requires that practitioners of the humanities occasionally take leave of their classrooms, where many of their seeds fall on the hard, sterile ground of career-building and degree-chasing anyway (or sometimes on adolescents not even that serious). We have to engage the community of adults who do not take our importance for granted. The larger community is not so much hostile to us as it is preoccupied with more urgent concerns: earning a living; nurturing families; preserving neighborhoods; coping with divorce, sickness, and death. Ordinary people do not perceive that humanists (a term they generally don’t understand anyway) have much to contribute to their prosaic comings and goings, their quality of life, or the stability of the places where they live. Nor do we make much effort to persuade them of our relevance. Our efforts in AHF, Auburn’s History and Heritage Festivals, Reading Alabama, and other Humanities Center programs had been but halting first steps at opening that dialogue.”

How has humanities programming touched your life?

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Main Street in Alexander City is exactly what you would expect a town’s Main Street to be: charming, welcoming. A small street lined with shops and government buildings and a real soda fountain at Carlisle Drug.

It is here, in this storied town’s center, where the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit “Journey Stories” is housed in the United Way building at 19 Main Street. Walking in the door this Wednesday, I was happy to see a group of students from William L. Radney Elementary School, a sixth-grade class, listening intently to Terry Jones, a volunteer with the Main Street organization, tell the story of our country, how our ancestors traveled here and how they journeyed west across the continent, looking for a better life.

“Journey Stories” is a Museum on Main Street exhibition, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Alabama Humanities Foundation. The exhibit examines the intersection between modes of travel and Americans’ desire to feel free to move. The stories are diverse and focus on immigration, migration, innovation and freedom. “Journey Stories” uses engaging images with audio and artifacts to tell the individual stories that illustrate the critical roles travel and movement have played in building our diverse American society.

Right now, “Journey Stories” can be seen in Alexander City through Sept. 23. It will then move on to:

Marion — Sept. 28-Nov. 10
Mobile — Nov. 16-Dec. 27
Eufaula — Jan. 6, 2012-Feb. 15
Arab — Feb. 24-April 5

Watching the children view the exhibit panels, and seeing them explore Alexander City’s own complementary exhibit across the street in the lobby of City Hall, you can see their minds whirling. They are making connections between the settlers and their own ancestors. They are understanding why people come to America to seek out a better life. Perhaps they are contemplating their own “Journey Stories”—trips taken with parents and grandparents to Mt. Rushmore, Civil War battlegrounds, or Yellowstone National Park.

We all have a journey story to tell. Come see America’s “Journey Stories” in Alexander City or an Alabama town near you! And, if you would like to tell your own journey story here on AHF’s blog, please email it to: jdome@ahf.net.

We look forward to taking the journey with you!

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In Part I, described a trip that my wife, Lida, and I took to St. Francisville, LA, Natchez, MS, and Mer Rouge, LA, in July. Mer Rouge is the hometown of Lida’s great-grandmother, Eliza Davenport, (Click here to view her portrait.) but we had never been there. We knew little about Eliza and even less about the town. In Part II, I described our discovery of the rich history of Lida’s family in Mer Rouge, based on memoirs of its early days written by Eliza’s brother, C.C. Davenport. Eliza eventually came to Birmingham in the late 19th century, where Lida’s family has remained ever since.)

Christopher Columbus (C.C.) Davenport, Eliza’s brother, originally published Looking Backward: Memoirs of the Early Settlement of Morehouse Parish in 1911, as a compilation of weekly columns he’d had written while serving as editor of the Mer Rouge Democrat. Lida’s second cousin, Tommy Davenport Rankin, gave us copies of the memoirs, which the local Lions Club had recently reprinted in pamphlet form. Tommy still farms cotton and soybeans on lands that the Davenport family has held for nearly 200 years in Morehouse Parish.

As reminiscences of early life on the Louisiana frontier and as a record of Lida’s family history, C.C.’s memoirs by themselves would be a wonderful treasure of local history and genealogy. But the final chapter reveals why they are so much more than that. Read more »

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The Alabama Humanities Foundation’s annual awards luncheon is just around the corner! Monday, Sept. 26, 2011, at noon at the Wynfrey Hotel, we hope you will join us to hear our keynote speaker, Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the new president of Birmingham-Southern College.

General Krulak served 35 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. His last position was as Commandant of the Marine Corps and as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He commanded a platoon and two rifle companies during two tours of duty in Vietnam and then held a variety of command and staff positions. These included deputy director of the White House Military Office, Commanding General, 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade during Desert Storm, Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, and Commanding General, Marine Forces Pacific. During his military service, General Krulak was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star Medal, the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V” and two gold stars, the Purple Heart with gold star, the Meritorious Service Medal, the French Legion d’Honneur Commandeur rank, and many other decorations and medals.

Upon his retirement from the Marine Corps, General Krulak joined MBNA America Bank as Vice Chairman and Chief Administrative Officer and subsequently as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MBNA Europe Bank, Ltd. After four years in this position, he returned to the United States and served as Vice Chairman, MBNA America Bank as Head of Corporate Development, Mergers and Acquisitions. General Krulak retired from MBNA in June 2005.

Today, General Krulak is the President for Birmingham-Southern College, a liberal arts college located in Birmingham. In addition, General Krulak currently sits on the Board of Directors of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Corporation where he is a member of the Public Policy and Personnel Committees and the Board of Directors of Union Pacific Railroad Corporation where he is a member of the Finance and Audit Committees. He sits on the Board of Regents forthe Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He sits on the Board of the CEO Forum and serves as Director with Aston Villa Football Club in the United Kingdom. He is an advisor to the Center for Naval Analysis and Human Rights First. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

General Krulak is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has a master’s degree in labor relations from George Washington University.

Join us on Sept. 26 to hear this accomplished man speak, and to congratulate this year’s award winners:

• Elaine Hughes, recipient of the 2011 Alabama Humanities Award
• Wells Fargo, recipient of the 2011 Charitable Organization in the Humanities

To order tickets and for more details, please click here.

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In Part I, I described a trip that my wife, Lida, and I took to St. Francisville, LA, Natchez, MS, and Mer Rouge, LA, in July. Mer Rouge is the hometown of Lida’s great-grandmother, Eliza Davenport, but we had never been there. We knew little about Eliza and even less about the town.

We arrived in Mer Rouge on a blistering hot afternoon. Our first stop was the small Episcopal church, where we hoped to find some of Lida’s family names—Davenport, Cotten, Douglass—on the handful of nearby cemetery monuments. No luck there. But then I noticed that the main street was Davenport Avenue, on which stood Davenport Insurance and, on the brick wall of another building, a mural depicting figures under a sign for the Davenport cotton gin. We were in the right place.

The helpful clerk in the main street pharmacy directed us to the local library, where she thought we could obtain a copy of a book about the early history of Mer Rouge and Morehouse Parish. She then phoned Tommy Davenport Rankin, whom she thought would have a copy too. Remarkably, we were there the one day of the week the library was open, and she reached Tommy on the first try. The town patriarch, Bill Davenport, was in a bank board meeting, but we met up with him in the two-seat barber shop later. Tommy and Bill turned out to be Lida’s second cousins.

Christopher Columbus (C.C.) Davenport, Eliza’s brother, originally published Looking Backward: Memoirs of the Early Settlement of Morehouse Parish in 1911, as a compilation of weekly columns he’d had written while serving as editor of the Mer Rouge Democrat. Tommy eagerly gave us copies, which the local Lions Club had recently reprinted in pamphlet form. Read more »

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Since mid-July I have been experiencing something that must be quite rare in marriages: a growing fascination with the genealogy of my ancestral in-laws. Before she died in 2010, my mother had compiled a detailed family tree of her Wheeler and Glass lines. My half-brother, Carl Stewart, Jr., is now the official keeper of the family stories from the Stewarts and Wilsons on my father’s side. We even have photographs, letters and other memorabilia for the most recent generations. But most of the information prior to 1900 consists only of names, dates of births and deaths, marriages and the like. There’s little detail left to flesh out the actual lives of anyone before my grandparents. So it has been a remarkable revelation for this wannabe antiquarian and genealogist to discover the rich details of my wife Lida’s family history. Lida Davenport Beaumont Stewart to be precise, with the emphasis on the Davenport. Let me explain.

On July 10 Lida and I attended the opening reception for AHF’s SUPER institute at Spring Hill College in Mobile on “The Alabama Coast: A Sense of Place.” We decided to take a few days to explore areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that we had never visited together, including the charming antebellum Mississippi River towns of St. Francisville, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. But our ultimate destination was to be the tiny northeast Louisiana community of Mer Rouge. On the first leg we visited historic Oakley Plantation outside St. Francisville, where John James Audubon spent several months working on his “Birds of America” masterpieces. (Oakley is an impeccably restored and interpreted Federal-style home and outbuildings deep in semi-tropical forest. I highly recommend it.) From there we drove along famed Highway 61 to Natchez, where we toured magnificent Stanton Hall (1858) and, from our hotel room at night, watched tugs push long barges up the river. Read more »

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