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.

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.

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.

The next day we drive into the woodlands adjoining the Natchez Trace and here, just above the “Devil’s Backbone,” my wife introduces Wesley and me to Tom Hendrix, descendent of the ancient Native American Yuchi tribe. The three of us sit under the canopy of hardwoods near a meandering stone wall, listening. For a couple of hours we remain entranced by his words—the stories that have traveled across generations are now shared with us and we see why his Yuchi people call him “Stonetalker.” Three decades past, Tom felt an urgent need to find some way to tell the journey story of Te-lah-nay, his Yuchi great-great-grandmother, born in the Shoals. We learn that in the 1830s, 13-year-old Te-lah-nay, having just witnessed the murder of all her family, is forced to walk with thousands of Creek, Chickasaws, Choctaws and Cherokees, the many miles of hardships, sickness and deaths, to the West. Even before reaching Oklahoma Territory she yearns for her home on the “Singing River” in Colbert County so much that she determines to return. Shortly after the group reaches their destination, she manages to escape the Indian Territory West, and travels alone for three years, finally reaching home to hear the music of her beloved “Singing River.”  This lone remnant of the Yuchis marries and produces a daughter who passes this story on to her descendents, eventually reaching the ears of her great-great-grandson, Tom Hendrix.

After much reflection, Tom formulates a plan—a way to keep alive the story of his great-great-grandmother’s long and difficult journey west far from her birthplace, and her valiant trek out of exile, back to Alabama’s Tennessee River. He would build a wall of stone gathered from the nearby shoals, the shoals that sang the songs beckoning Te-lah-nay back home.

He drives down to the river bank, loads his truck with river rocks and begins laying the wall in his woodland front yard. A half-ton of rocks does not make much of a wall, so Tom continues his frequent treks to the river bed. Three decades later, after wearing out three trucks and dozens of pairs of gloves, Tom has laid 9,300,000 pounds of rocks to build the wall honoring Te-lah-nay. But it is not finished. He explains that he personally has laid almost every single stone that forms the wall using no mortar. Only on a few rare occasions has Tom allowed anyone else to place a rock. “Every stone,” he says, “represents a footstep taken by one of the people forced from their home on the westward march.” When Tom learns that our grandson’s blood flows with Chickasaw and Cherokee blood, he invites Wesley to select a rock from his truck and place it on an unfinished section of the wall, a defining moment for us all. The construction continues.

Visitors have come from all over the U. S. and from across the world to leave memorabilia on the Wichapi Wall (meaning “like the stars”). Guided by the wall, they wind through the woods, frequently moved to spontaneously pause for meditation.

It is appropriate that Te-lah-nay’s memorial is near Tuscumbia for two reasons. First, the Shoals area is her birthplace and, second, during that horrendous “Trail of Tears” in the 1830s, the citizens of Tuscumbia noted the conditions of the Indians as they waited to be transported across the Tennessee River and came to their aid. The compassionate Tuscumbians are still remembered for their acts of kindness providing food, clothing and blankets to the starving and ill-clothed native tribes.

One can view this magnificent memorial wall by going to www.ifthelegendsfade.com or better still, arrange a visit by emailing Tom Hendrix at stonetalker@comcast.net. It is a compelling journey into the depths of Alabama history.

For more information on AHF’s “Journey Stories” exhibit, now in Marion through Nov. 10, please visit www.ahf.net/journeystories.

“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?

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!

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.

AHF would like to cordially invite you to our annual awards luncheon, held this year at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham on September 26, 2011 at noon.

Our keynote speaker will be Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the new president of Birmingham-Southern College. We will award the Alabama Humanities Award to Elaine Hughes and the Charitable Organization in the Humanities Award to Wells Fargo.

For more information about the luncheon, and to purchase tickets, please see our luncheon website.

Prior to the luncheon, five teachers will receive Jenice Riley Memorial Scholarships to help fund projects they submitted in the areas of history and civics. The award winners are:

• Rebecca J. Davis of Cahawba Christian Academy, Centreville, Ala.
• Debbie Redden and Tammy Quillin of Montgomery Catholic Prepatory, St. Bede Campus, Montgomery, Ala.
• Mallory Richardson of Edgewood Elementary School, Homewood, Ala.
• Stephane Nicole Singleton of Harlan Elementary School, Florence, Ala.

For more information about the Jenice Riley Memorial Scholarship, please visit our website.

We hope to see you on September 26 for this festive occasion!

Essay by Jeremy Buckner on the resiliency of Bayou La Batre, written at the University of South Alabama, Mobile, institute.

A Resilient Chameleon in a Big Forest
The past of Bayou La Batre is filled with much devastation, but the small community remains resilient. The community is overcoming the aftermath of two of the most notable disasters in the illustrious history of the United States. However, much like the adaptation of a lone chameleon in a rabidly threatening forest, the people of this community are beginning to acclimate to their circumstances in order to remove their obstacles and to advance in life. With Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill in mind, the Bayou La Batre community shows a wondrous willingness toward and open desire to change.

Bayou La Batre communities, particularly those of Vietnamese culture, aspire toward leadership and the freshness of the youthful generations. For example, Vinh Tran, a man who works with Vietnamese communities in Bayou La Batre through the efforts of Boat People SOS (BPSOS), has recently been voted as president for the Vietnamese communities (Hicks 40)—essentially, as the voice for these people. Vinh Tran himself, though a grown man, is younger than most typical Asian leaders. Generally, the leader of an Asian community is an elder who is knowledgeable about archaic traditions and ideals. David Pham (another man who works with BPSOS) reported that the youth are inexperienced but full of brand new ideas (Buckner 17). This is for what the Vietnamese communities are searching—brand-new ideas.

It seems apparent that these Vietnamese communities are not progressing as efficiently as they can and should. It is time for new ideas—it is time for those with little experience to come enter the role of leader and to take the reigns. The idealism and sheer energy of the youth are quite momentous in the desire to incorporate the youth into roles of leadership. These people are not necessarily exposed to the corruption and misdeeds of the world (at least not on the typical level of the older generations). In a manner of speaking, the youth are innocent and clumsy in their ways. It is a learning experience for everyone, but it is one that shall provide new insight, hopefully in a manner befitting that of exponentially positive changes.

Moving beyond the Vietnamese communities, Bayou La Batre in general has seen a boost of passion toward the idea of the youth taking a grasp on the world (or at least on the local area). Following Hurricane Katrina, high school students dropped out of school in order to help provide for their families and to assist in building ships. Therefore, the drop-out rate had exceeded 50% because of this overwhelming desire. However, with the rapidly severing recession, ships became undesirable. As ships became undesirable, work began to dwindle and to cease. Teenagers, now out of work and without a real high school education, desired to re-enroll in high school. The rate of enrollment has risen quite dramatically through the past decade, and though the recession was positively devastating in its own many ways, this rise in education owes itself to the recession.

Folktales are simple tales from which a reader may find connections and easily deduce a solid and clear meaning. In the folktale “The Farmer and the Donkey,” a donkey falls into a well without any hope of escaping. The farmer decides to fill the well, thereby ending its pitiful, helpless cries; the farmer dumps shovel after shovel full of sand into the well, but the donkey merely shakes off the sand and climbs up. Much like the message of the donkey’s perseverance, the Bayou La Batre community used the catastrophes as an opportunity to shake off their problems and move on. Hurricane Katrina in particular had been a terrible disaster, but when the BP oil spill occurred, it was as though metaphorical dirt merely continued to pile on the community without any sign of arrest. However, neither Hurricane Katrina nor the BP oil spill halted its advances. The people do not sit around waiting for some sort of assistance that may or may not ever come.

Even people from outside the community (or at least those not directly affected by either disaster, whether they are from the community or not) participated in the recovery process through donations, labor, and emotional support. Take Amy Beach, for example: as a resident of Mobile, Alabama, she experienced some effects from Hurricane Katrina and then immersed herself into the community of Bayou La Batre, a neighboring community, in order to provide emotional support and to aid in the rebuilding process. Brian Grady, who wrote “10 Learnable Traits for Building Resilience,” said, “After a disaster we don’t need psychiatrists running around talking with people. What helps is having family members and close friends share the experience with victims, because very few people can go it alone” (Grady). The Bayou La Batre residents have begun to work together, to the best of their abilities, to rebuild their community or to support one another. The people of the Bayou La Batre community don’t need to express their woes: they need a connection—they need to know that people are there, and they actually need for them to be there.

After the BP oil spill (from which many are still recovering more than a year later), work in Bayou La Batre became quite difficult to acquire. It became necessary to find different types of jobs, such as those involving new technical skills, in order to become more occupationally competitive and to support their economy. BPSOS began to provide classes and training for these new technical skills, as David Pham discusses (Buckner 15). Though quite strange when compared to ordinary jobs found in Bayou La Batre, these new opportunities are welcomed and appreciated.

As Mary Engelbreit once said, “If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” Evidently, the residents of the Bayou La Batre community display a great willingness toward accepting current changes and an awesome and enthusiastic desire for potential changes. New jobs, particularly ones that require technical skills, assume the empty holes in the community: because the seafood and shipbuilding industries fell rapidly, the residents find other work. The Vietnamese and South Asian communities incorporate the youth into leadership roles, and the rate of enrolled high school students rises. Following Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, Bayou La Batre residents continue to climb admirably and resiliently toward the direction of recovery.

The first week of the 1933-34 school year their eighth-grade teacher makes an announcement that turns Alton inside out: “During the year each pupil will take a turn giving the morning devotional.” As the days of September move too quickly, John’s turn comes before Alton’s. He confidently delivers a reading from the Bible, makes a brief comment and whispers to Alton as he takes a seat, “You see, nothing to it.” But Alton’s anxiety is not assuaged.

Alton’s day of dread has arrived. The school bell rings, students assemble in their desks—but Alton’s seat in the back of the room remains empty. Just as the tardy bell sounds, Alton slips quietly into the classroom, a guitar slung across his shoulder. A loud buzz punctuated by periodic giggles fills the room, until the teacher silences the sounds with a snap of her fingers and announces, “Alton has decided to sing a hymn as his devotional and you will give him and his message all due respect.” As his sweating fingers strum the opening chords, the harmony bolsters his courage, dissolves his tension, and steadies his shaky voice, “As I travel through this pilgrim land, there is a friend who walks with me. . .” The gospel hymn, “Jesus, Hold My Hand,” seems only too appropriate.

My Uncle Alton played guitar, bass and saxophone in my father’s “hillbilly” band throughout my childhood and entertained us kids with snappy little ditties until he answered Uncle Sam’s call to duty in WWII. However, this self-taught musician never mentioned those unique eighth-grade musical devotionals. In a recent conversation I had with 90-year-old Governor John Patterson, he firmly recalled my uncle’s friendship and music and he related the morning devotional incident with amazing clarity. Gov. Patterson also remembered how the two friends had to say goodbye shortly after eighth grade when John’s father, Albert Patterson, made the fateful decision to move his family to Phenix City and enter Alabama’s political arena.

The official 2011 state theme for Alabama is The Year of Music. The thread that binds together much of this state’s cultural history is its music and stories, like those told by John Patterson, some of which enriched my own personal history with stories of my musically talented, late Uncle Alton Whetstone.

Read our latest article in The Birmingham News here.

Or click here to see a video clip of AHF on ABC 33/40′s “Talk of Alabama” program.

For more information about Project Turn the Page, and to learn how you can contribute, visit our website.