Following the devastating tornadoes that ripped through our state in April, the Alabama Humanities Foundation (AHF) was awarded a $30,000 emergency grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to launch Project Turn the Page, an initiative to help provide free books for damaged public libraries and schools.

AHF requested the emergency grant from NEH Chairman Jim Leach following the April 27 storms in order to help the affected communities. Public libraries suffered significant damage in Pratt City, White Hall, and Ragland, while schools were damaged in at least six different locations, including Jefferson County, Tuscaloosa County, Franklin County, Marion County and DeKalb County.

As part of Project Turn the Page, AHF plans to compile a list of books, including those focusing on Southern and Alabama history and fiction, as well as award-winning young adult titles. The libraries and schools will be invited to choose titles from the list that they wish to receive, up to a determined dollar amount. The books will be ordered by AHF and stored at the foundation’s Birmingham offices until the libraries and schools are prepared to receive their requested volumes.

“Our building was completely demolished in the April 27 tornadoes,” says Mary Schellhammer, librarian at Alberta Elementary in Tuscaloosa. Reading has always been very important at our school. We can’t have enough books. The library is the center of the school and the school is sort of the hub of Alberta City. So it’s important that we get our school back and an active library back.”

A portion of the grant monies will expand AHF’s new Literature and Health Care reading-and-discussion seminar at the VA Hospital in Tuscaloosa. Sessions will now include the impact of the tornado on the surrounding areas and how the hospital staff and patients are coping with the storms’ aftermath. Another portion will help the town of Cordova participate in AHF’s upcoming Museum on Main Street exhibit “Journey Stories.” The Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibit can be viewed at the Bankhead House and Heritage Center in neighboring Jasper beginning June 25. Cordova was scheduled to be a part of Walker County’s celebration of the exhibition until the storms came through in April.

AHF previously received an emergency grant from the NEH following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Those monies were used to purchase books for the Bayou La Batre Library, repair damages to exhibitions at the Museum of Mobile, aid the USS Alabama and send students from Alma Bryant High School to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery.

If you would like to support Project Turn the Page, please call Paul Lawson at (205) 558-3992.

(Monetary donations only, please. Used books or new books cannot be accepted.)

All proceeds will benefit the Alabama Humanities Foundation and its programs.

Send letter and payment to:
Alabama Humanities Foundation
c/o Paul Lawson
1100 Ireland Way, Ste. 101
Birmingham, AL 35205

About Cotton Mary
“Mary Christine Tarley’s story is typical of many under-educated Southern women who were attracted to jobs in cotton mills in the 1930s, only to find themselves bound to the mill by the same threads they wove into cloth.”
—Bob Whetstone, AHF Board member and author of Cotton Mary, writes in the acknowledgements of his new historical fiction novel

Mr. Whetstone’s new book offers an inside look at the company-owned textile mill villages. The book’s protagonist, Mary, is “lured into dime-an-hour wages in a mill,” away from her family farm, only to find that she must rely on “every ounce of her coping skills to survive.”

The woman came down from a field of red clay,
And her cohorts were teeming with cotton and hay;
And the gleam in their eyes was like stars in the sky,
To work for a wage was their victorious cry.

(With due respect to Lord Byron’s The Destruction of Sennacherib)

Sixteen-year-old Mary Frances Tapley defies her daddy’s wishes, deserts his scraggly field of cotton that has fought to break through the stubborn, red, Alabama clay. She turns her back on the sparse field of plump white bolls that have victoriously survived and leaves them unpicked to find work at a cotton mill in the nearby town of Alexander City. Though the Great Depression has not quite tightened its tortuous talons around the South, the boll weevil, the searing drought, and poor land management have already ravaged most of the cotton crops in East Alabama leaving most farmers desperate.

Mary is familiar with the hard times now descending again like a tornado on her sharecropper family. Scores of men and women, like Mary, are leaving farms, lured to dime-an-hour wages in a mill which devours bales of cotton that for eight-hour shifts sucks the sweat and dreams from its victims, releasing them only to begin again the next day turning out the finished denim and mattress ticking. The town folk call them “lint-heads” behind their backs but willingly accept their money every two weeks in exchange for just enough supplies to get by, with no hint of remorse. Rick Bragg refers to these share-croppers-turned-mill hands in The Prince of Frogtown, “There is little photographic memory of them and they left few letters or diaries, but look into the faces of the people of the mill villages and you will find them there. Look a little deeper and you will see the ghosts of people who were here before.” Mary soon finds a husband and has three babies by age 21. Aside from boiling diapers in the backyard wash pot and baking hot biscuits daily in a wood-fired stove, beyond conjuring up herbal remedies for sick kids, washing the family’s clothes on a washboard and ironing her husband’s shirts and khakis—she rarely misses one of her six days a week, eight-hour shifts at the cotton mill. A delicate ninety-pound image camouflages the guts of steel within this woman who draws upon every ounce of her coping skills to survive. Yet Mary is able to see beyond all this and doggedly refuses to pass her mill-hand legacy on to her progeny and relentlessly urges them, “You will leave this village, go on and get your education and make a better life for yourself.”

Cotton Mary lived to witness the demise of the cotton mill that had supported her family long enough to set their children on career paths that would not require the stoop labor that had left her bent like the crescent moon. Her sadness at seeing the permanent closing of the mill in the 1980’s was soon overshadowed by her relief in knowing that the “ghosts” of her three kids would never haunt its silent, cavernous rooms.

Written by Bob Stewart, AHF’s executive director

I was fortunate to finish my k-12 education in Tuscaloosa as desegregation was well under way—and largely without any serious incidents—throughout the city school system. My classes had included black students since about my 8th-grade year in 1966-67.

Nevertheless, when I arrived at Amherst College in 1971, I encountered a far more open educational environment than even the most progressive ones in Alabama. The staunch abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher co-founded the college in 1821. Edward Jones, a free biracial man from Charleston, South Carolina, graduated from the college in 1826 and went on to serve as a missionary in the colony of Sierra Leone. All the campus fraternities had integrated in the 1960s, many of which lost their national affiliation in so doing. Racial integration was fundamentally established in policy and practice (if not in large numbers of African-American students).

Yet I recall that the most prominent African Americans at that time in the surrounding Pioneer Valley were not at Amherst College, but instead a couple of miles up the road at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. I just missed the chance to be in the same building with one of them; I was privileged to be in the same classroom with the other. Both were named Julius.

Julius Erving was born and raised in Roosevelt, New York, where he played basketball and reportedly received the nickname “Doctor” or “Dr. J” from a high school friend. Erving enrolled at UMass in 1968, though he didn’t finally earn his bachelor’s degree until 1986. In two varsity seasons at UMass, he averaged 32.5 points and 20.2 rebounds per game, becoming one of only five college players in history to average more than 20 points and 20 rebounds per game. His basketball feats were legendary. Too bad he left for the professional ranks the year before I arrived in Amherst.

But in 1974 I had the opportunity to attend a class at UMass on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance, taught by the multi-talented black intellectual and cultural icon, Julius Lester. Lester had already achieved fame in New York as a teacher, folk singer and television host. As a member of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) he participated in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. In 1966 he traveled as a photographer to North Vietnam and as a companion of Stokely Carmichael and Fidel Castro in Cuba. But his interests lay more in art, music and writing than in politics. By the time I enrolled in his seminar, Lester had converted to Judaism and was a distinguished faculty member. He had also launched a prolific writing career. He eventually published dozens of books ranging from fiction to folk tales to children’s books.

Dr. J’s accomplishments on the basketball court are etched forever in the record books, the Basketball Hall of Fame and ESPN film archives. I really wish I had had the chance to see him play in college. But maybe one day someone will start handing out MVPs in the humanities. When that happens I will be proud to say that for one semester I indeed had the chance to share the “bench” with an all-star in his own right—the other African American in town named Julius.

My first year here, friends and I visited several must-sees: Vulcan Park, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Whistlestop Café in Irondale, the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Florence, the Helen Keller Festival in Tuscumbia and the Sidewalk Film Festival. Recently I also had the privilege of visiting Harper Lee’s hometown, also where Truman Capote spent his childhood years, in Monroeville, and an interesting tour of Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. A great start to touring Alabama, don’t you agree?

But there’s still so many sites in this rich state to see. Here’s my Top 10 “Bucket List” for 2011:

1. Chilton County peaches—I may buy dozens of peaches during the summer at the Pepper Place Saturday Market, but this year I want to go to the source. And I want peach ice cream.
2. U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville—I’ve always been interested in planes and spaceships, maybe because I grew up as an Air Force brat. From what I’ve heard, this space center rivals the Air & Space Museum in D.C., and I can’t wait to visit.
3. Cheaha State Park—simply because I hear it’s beautiful. I love to hike, and used to do so frequently as a child with my grandfather at Lake George in upstate New York. Do you know of any good trails at Cheaha?
4. Mobile—the whole city. Period. I recently raveled there for AHF and I’m so enamored with the architecture, food and people. I want more time to explore! Luckily AHF is hosting one SUPER institute, and one SES institute, in the Mobile area this summer. And both institutes focus on the great culture of the Gulf Coast region. Check out ahf.net in the upcoming weeks for all the details.
5. The Hank Williams Museum—It’s The Year of Alabama Music and I plan to celebrate with Hank, The Temptations, Jimmy Buffet and all the greats. Who is your favorite Alabama musician?
6. Auburn—Now this isn’t to put down Tuscaloosa! I’ve spent a lot of time in T-town and found the downtown charming, the campus beautiful and the local restaurants tasty. It’s time to see what the other football town has to offer too!
7. Jasper—this town in Walker County is home to a beautiful old house where a Hollywood starlet, Tallulah Bankhead, once got married. Now the Bankhead House and Heritage Center, this will be the site of this year’s Museum on Main Street exhibit, “Journey Stories,” a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institute and AHF. I am so excited to hear Alabamians’ own journey stories and to see the exhibit travel to five other host sites: Alexander City, Marion, Mobile, Eufaula and Arab.
8. Alabama Book Festival—I am a book nerd, there’s no doubt about it. So when I heard this festival was held at Old Alabama Town in Montgomery, I was thrilled at the chance to combine two of my passions: books and history.
9. The Kentuck Festival—More than 250 artists in downtown Northport on a beautiful October weekend? Sign me up!
10. Selma—The Bridge Crossing Jubilee in March at the Edmund Pettus Bridge remembers sad events in our history that, while hard to face, should not be forgotten. But it also brings light to the determination of the protesters during the Civil Rights Movement and the good they stood for.

What other sites in Alabama should I see? What’s on your Alabama “Bucket List” for 2011?

Most folks admire roses. Thorns and all.

I love to hear “Remember the Rose Bowl, we’ll win then”…tears to my eyes, sweet music to my ears.

“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, 1594.

History reveals that Native Americans used to give their children the name they had earned. Thus, a young girl might become Laughing Water, Sunshine or Timid One. A young boy might be named Running Feet, Wise Owl or Hawkeye.

As Christmas approaches, suppose we still followed that custom in 2010? Some would be Generous Heart, Helping Hand, Faithful Teacher and Lively Stone. But unfortunately, others of us would be Evil Tongue, Shirker, Unreliable and Stingy Giver.

We are fortunate that AHF has a family of donors with the same name: Engaged. Thanks to these valued and interested Alabamians, AHF can provide services and offer programs that widely increase awareness of our mission.

Psychologists tell us that one of the deepest urges in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. So, to make those whose lives touch yours really happy, tell them often and how much you appreciate them and the things they do.

Dolores Hydock’s one-woman performance of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory is a Christmas tradition in Alabama. The young boy, Buddy, and his elderly cousin Sook with their dog, Queenie, prepare their annual gift of fruitcakes. They exchange their precious gifts of handmade kites and fly them in a clear blue sky on Christmas. Sook says that God and heaven must be like this.

This story reminds us of our special Christmas memories. My father also grew up in a small town—Greenville, Georgia—and discovered a world of imagination and books through his Aunt Winnie. Books opened up a window to life beyond the few streets in his hometown. As an English professor in the military, he wrote his redhead, maiden aunt every day from all over the world. Another aunt sent us a canned fruitcake every Christmas for 30 years. The family joke was that the fruitcakes stacked up in the pantry since no one ate them, except for my husband who drowns his cake in rum and pecans.

Every Christmas Santa gave me a book that I now cherish as a memory of my father’s shared love of books: from Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha,” to travel books to the classics. I now continue the Christmas tradition and give books. It was the week before Christmas when I began my job with Alabama Humanities Foundation. Now, five years later, I am leaving my position as grants director for a new position of executive director for the Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) in Atlanta. So, I must say farewell to my humanities “buddies” in Alabama.

The courtroom inside the Monroe County Heritage Museum, looks exactly as I expected, but was still awe-inspiring. The rows of pews, the balcony, the tin ceiling. What you see in the movie, which plays on a TV by the grand jury’s seats, was inspired by that upstairs room.

As we here at AHF get ready for our springtime special event, Capote’s Black & White Ball, inspired by Truman Capote’s own 1966 celebration of the publishing of “In Cold Blood,” a trip to Monroeville to see where Harper Lee and Truman Capote began their writing careers was essential. Stay tuned for more info about the springtime event!

Besides Harper Lee and Truman Capote, what other Alabama authors do you enjoy? What is your favorite Truman Capote book or short story?

Our recent blog “assignment” was to write about a work of art or literature that made a significant impression on us at a young age. I put off this “assignment” because my childhood favorites seem juvenile for the scholarly AHF blog. But here are the works that I read and reread, looked at again and again.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was my favorite childhood book. The orphaned Mary Lennox is sent from India to England to live with her rich uncle at Misselthwaite Manor where she finds a walled garden and friendship. I dream of finding a secret garden like the one pictured in the book and believe in the healing power of nature. I have given this book to every girl in my family at age eight since I won the award for reading the most books (or for being the nerd) in the third grade when I read it.

The first book that I loved was The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward. The little country girl bunny dreamed of growing up and becoming one of the five Easter bunnies. The big, white, male rabbits laughed at the little Cottontail and told her to go back to the country. Cottontail grows up to be a mother of 21 bunnies and is chosen to be the special Easter bunny because she is wise, kind and swift from teaching her bunnies to take care of themselves. As a working mother, Cottontail has inspired me to teach my children to be independent and to pursue their dreams.

With an art teacher and English professor as parents, I was exposed to great works of art and literature at a young age. At the National Gallery of Art, my favorite artwork was Whistler’s “Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl.” The innocent young woman stands on the skin of a bear. The girl’s red hair is a statement of empowerment in the “symphony in white.” As a kindergartner flipping through art books, my favorite picture was the young Infanta Margarita in Velázquez’s “The Maids of Honor.” I see my own daughter as Velázquez’s princess around whom the family revolves.

In reflection on my childhood favorites, I realize that each work focused on a female character. These female images have empowered me as a woman.

Next year marks the 45^th anniversary of the publication of two novels by authors who were born in Alabama but who made their literary reputations elsewhere. I first read them as an undergraduate at college far away from the state. There, ironically, I learned much about the South’s rich literary tradition. Let me tell you why I plan to reread both of them soon.

I read In Cold Blood by Monroeville native Truman Capote for a course on “Violence in America.” Most of the non-fiction readings in the class dealt with issues of violence surrounding the Vietnam War, presidential assassinations, and urban riots. But Capote’s powerful account of the random murders of a Kansas family in 1959 struck at a deeper psychological element in American culture. I don’t recall that it especially captivated me as a young student, as I was more attuned to the larger social and political topics found in the other course readings. But as a middle-aged family man today, who watches TV shows such as “Criminal Minds,” I’m looking forward to diving into it again.

Interestingly, Capote celebrated the publication of his very dark masterpiece with a high-profile, high-society party at New York’s lavish Plaza Hotel. Called the Black and White Ball, it featured a sparkling coterie of celebrities, politicians, literary types, and fashion mavens. In 2011, AHF hopes to create a 45^th anniversary reprise of the ball here in Alabama—but with the serious intent to raise funds for worthy educational and cultural groups and projects. Watch for details later this fall.

For a course on “Cervantes and the Picaresque Tradition in Literature,” I read The Last Gentleman by Birmingham-born Walker Percy. Percy lived most of his adult life in Louisiana, but his work was partially shaped by strong family traditions in Alabama and the Magic City. (For a fascinating depiction of Birmingham and its wealthy families such as the Percys at the turn of the 20^th century, read the first chapter of Jay Tolson’s 1992 biography of Walker Percy, Pilgrim in the Ruins.) The main character in The Last Gentleman suffers from aimless detachment from his family roots in Birmingham and dead-end relationships. Though I haven’t started my reread, I couldn’t help peeking at one passage to share here. It deals with the protagonist, young Will Barrett, watching golfers on the course next to his suburban family home whence he has returned.

Whereupon he dismounted the telescope through which he and Jamie had studied the behavior of golfers who hooked their drives from number 5 tee into the creek. Some cheated. It was with a specific, though unidentified pleasure that one watched the expressions of the men who stood musing and benign and Kiwanian while one busy foot nudged the ball out of the water.

As a Kiwanian I am offended! I’m not saying that none of us would ever cheat at golf. (Actually I don’t play despite having a brother who is a professional golfer.) But we are men and women of action; we are neither “musing” nor “benign” as community leaders and philanthropists! Nor would we ever intentionally get our shoes wet! Just for that, Mr. Percy, I think I’ll have another go at your book—and pairing you with Mr. Capote will serve you right!