class visits L & N Railroad Station

This class got a real treat today. We did a tour of the downtown area to learn more about how Tuscaloosa fits into the story of emerging urban life. Lo and behold, the doors were opened at the old Louisville & Nashville Railroad station, which opened in 1912. Bill Lloyd, the owner, was kind enough to give us a tour. He and his wife are renovating the station into a restaurant named 301, which opens in three weeks. It's so cool seeing a new food spot in the area and one with historic value, too. See a video of our visit on my Vimeo page (You Tube is cranky, today). And to see last year's class peeping into the windows of the L & N station, see their music video below. Finally, check out a chronology of railroads in Tuscaloosa in an earlier blog entry. Roll Tide!

exploring the issue of mobility and power in an urbanizing America

This past Wednesday, the students visited Manderson Landing here in Tuscaloosa. There, on the banks of the Black Warrior River, they saw remnants of the L & N Railroad line. This visit figures into a lesson on transportation, mobility and power in the nineteenth century. With the arrival of the steamboat, which moved along inland waters, people and products began to move through space in an urbanizing world. Railroads are a part of this narrative. The students were also made aware of how people of African descent, even ones enslaved, participated in these technological advancements.

Using David Cecelski's study on black watermen in antebellum North Carolina, they begin to see how even oppressed groups had the skills to navigate waterways. Robert Smalls, an enslaved boat pilot and later, Congressman, even escaped slavery on a vessel he piloted for the Confederates.

Notably, Horace King, an enslaved bridge builder, constructed bridges throughout the south. He was of huge assistance to Alabama Sen. Robert Jemison Jr., whose many business interests included building bridges and turnpikes during the antebellum period.

After my lecture and the visit, the students wrote reflections on these and other issues. Wrote Adams, "With the emergence of the 19th century city, some men learned skills that will translate into power, skills that even privileged white men did not possess at the time." Added Lin, "I was really surprised [to learn about men like] Horace King who were able to do thing that ...other black people...would not have been able to accomplish." Chance made connections between oppressed minorities in other settings, among them, ones residing in Turkey, who are able to gain control simply because they moved through space. Wrote William, "Space define[d] a relationship between man his quest for power." Morgan homed in on how information, not just people and products, trave[ed]  faster with advancements in technology.

These short reflections are worth 25% of the students' overall grade. I think they are off to a great start. When we meet on September 30, we will tackle the issue of civility in an urbanizing world. We will be attentive how people had to learn how to behave in public settings as an middle class urban population began to emerge in the United States during the nineteenth century.

prepping for 2015-16 school year

I miss Tide football. 

The t-shirt my mom gets next week.

But I also miss teaching. Cures for both woes are on the horizon. Regarding the latter, I had a great time today thinking about the possibilities for both "The Nineteenth Century City" and "Antebellum America" courses in the coming 2015-16 school year. It all began when Ian Crawford, House Manager at the Jemison Van de Graff Mansion, and Katherine Richter-Edge, Executive Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society,  met me at the Old Tavern Museum.

Me and the wonderful Katherine Richter-Edge and Ian Crawford.

Our mission: photograph three diplomas for two young women who graduated from female academies in this state for a possible student project.

One of the diplomas in question.

Why? Well, whenever I mention the experiences of American students in the antebellum, bellum and postbellum periods, I notice that some of my students pay very close attention. This is especially true for female students. I have wondered if it is because something specific about the past resonates with them. 

I am still thinking it through, but I have decided that it might be a good idea to explore the experiences of nineteenth century students as a class. In other words, we can put on our detective hats, look at old records -  letters, diplomas, church documents, Census data, etc. - and make a discovery or two.

Who wore this dress and what all did she see?

There were several female academies in the area during the nineteenth century. One opened even before the University of Alabama opened in 1831. Take a look at this late 19th century Tuscaloosa map and you will see mention of some of them.

Some of the possible questions ahead: 

How many of the students before us were daughters of the founding families of Tuscaloosa? 

Where did these young women study? 

How many of them went on to marry and have families. How many did not? 

How do the experiences of young white women and those of young African American women, among them, the mixed race descendants of white slaveholders who studied in the North, differ? Which circumstances contributed to young women studying in or outside of Alabama? My own research suggests possible answers to these last two questions.  

What do these women's collective experiences teach us about how higher education plays a role in an urbanizing America? 

It is my hope that the answers to these questions will help us learn more about a particular population and the world they inhabited. 

Along with mentally preparing for this project, which may have a multimedia prong similar to projects produced in earlier versions of both courses, I had a chance today to simply walk around the Old Tavern, which was built in 1827 and  moved to its present spot near Capitol Park in 1966. I wondered about the many conversations that took place here between politicians before the state capital was moved to Montgomery 20 years later. 

Was this the tavern that Nathaniel Kenyon, a Union officer with the 11th Illinois Infantry, mentioned in a copy of a diary at the University of Alabama's Hoole Library? At the time, he was a POW. When I told Ian and Katherine that Kenyon's diary mentions an African American woman who sold pies in Tuscaloosa, Ian immediately offered up a name for this woman. His response and our time together today were reminders of how much I love history. I am excited about the coming school year - even with all of the work still ahead.

Old Tavern Museum in Tuscaloosa.

A developing downtown Tuscaloosa.

I loved this old shoe, which is housed in the tavern.

Tavern patrons likely ate in this room.

This old rug would make a great wall hanging.

One of several quilts hanging in the tavern.

end of an era at Bryce

Bryce Hospital demolition is happening now.

I could not help but share this photo of Bryce Hospital. I took it a couple of days ago while walking on the University of Alabama's campus. The hospital opened in 1861. At the time, it was near the university, which now owns it.

Another view of the demolition.

The stories concerning this facility are as complex as any other topic in the United States before the war. Before the Civil War, Alabama Senator Robert Jemison saw the value in lobbying for its construction here as a means of revitalizing Tuscaloosa after the state capital moved to Montgomery in the 1840s. Peter Bryce, the first superintendent of the then-Alabama Insane Asylum, reportedly wanted to stay out of sectional politics and thus the first African American patient was admitted into the hospital, which was a segregated institution like most of the South for several decades.

As I looked at this hospital,  I thought of how my  "Antebellum America" students (and grads in a separate course) are presently learning about young southern womanhood via Anya Jabour's study on the subject. I invited them to think about whether Louisa Garland, wife of UA's President at the time Union soldiers arrived in April 1865, was one of "Scarlett's sisters." In other words, was she as headstrong as Scarlet O'Hara character in the 1939 film "Gone with the Wind"?

Mrs. Garland certainly felt like one of those southern women who went against the grain of others' expectations when she reportedly left the dome of Bryce where she and her husband had been hiding during the Union raid. She rushed across campus to the President's Mansion and reportedly asked the Union soldiers to put out the fire they'd started in their attempts to burn the mansion (I am unsure of whether they had also targeted the slave quarters behind it). Most of the rest of the campus was already in flames.

Bryce Hospital circa 1907.

Bryce and the University fit into the narrative of an industrializing and urbanizing Tuscaloosa as the century closed. It's worth it to think about the hospital, which is now relocated off campus, in this context in the months ahead as renovations continue.

It is the end of an era, or perhaps several, and the beginning of a new one. The university plans to save some of the structure for use as an arts facility.

slideshow of images from "Druid City: A Music Video" Premiere at Jemison Mansion

Here's a slideshow of photos from our December 3, 2014 premiere of "Druid City: A Music Video" featuring the music of local band Bible Study. Special thanks to Courtnee "Voni" Cook, a student enrolled in "The Nineteenth Century City" during the Fall 2014, for sharing these photos with us.

A Look at Tuscaloosa's Past with Katherine Richter

I am now prepping for the Spring 2015 semester while also resting. As promised, however, here are images from my recent visit to the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society's  office in the basement of Jemison Mansion in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There, Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the society, was kind enough to share some of the many archival documents in this building with me. I look forward to incorporating some of them into my teaching in the year ahead.

Druid City...the actual video (finally!)

Finally. Here's the music video of the short doc/music video that premiered last night at Jemison Mansion. Special thanks to everyone who made the event a great one.  Steve Davis, Bryce Hospital Historian, was among the guests. One aside: I stopped by Jemison this morning to pick up the student photographs offered in the silent auction and was happy to visit the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, which is on the bottom floor. Katherine Richter, Director of TCPS, shared numerous photos and maps of old Tuscaloosa with me. I already know what I want next year's The Nineteenth Century City class to document (visually or otherwise): the history of women in education here in Tuscaloosa! Speaking of which, stay tuned here for photographs of the images I took this morning while hanging out with Katherine. What a great week. Thanks, Tim Higgins (and Ian Crawford) of Jemison, for everything.

three days until the music video premiere

Still of clock in downtown Tuscaloosa

Still of student Rae Mann in Edelweiss, a local coffee shop.

Now that we've won the Iron Bowl against Auburn, we can turn toward completing the rest of the school year in fine fashion. The "world premiere" of the students' music video is just three days away.   It features not only the video itself, but a documentary of the students "discovering" the nineteenth century city in Tuscaloosa. Here are two still photographs from the project, which runs about 13 minutes.

The premiere happens 5:30-6:30 pm this Wednesday, December 3, at Jemison Mansion, 1305 Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Robert Mellown, Associate Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Alabama, will be our guest speaker. There will be a silent auction of the students'  photography and refreshments.

Tim Higgins and Emily Dozier-Ewell, two members of the band Bible Study (whose music is featured in the video), will be present. Kori Hensell, composer of "Druid City," the song around which the video and documentary are deployed, will be there in spirit as she is now in Fairbanks, Alaska, pursuing an MFA. Talk about tensions between the frontier and the city!

Meanwhile, the students should also be studying for their final exam, which will take place December 9. Until then, Roll Tide!

downtown Tuscaloosa field trip was amazing

The students listen to my digital lecture during our recent field trip.

The students and I had a good time visiting downtown Tuscaloosa this past Wednesday. We gathered footage for our music video featuring the sounds of local folk band Bible Study. The  "world premiere" of the  video will be held at 5:30 pm December 3 at Jemison Mansion in Tuscaloosa.

Also, on November 3, four students enrolled in this course this semester and one student enrolled last fall will accompany me and Dr. John Beeler to the Tuscaloosa County's Preservation Society's Annual Awards Banquet at Christ Episcopal Church (this church was featured in "Tuscaloosa: The Nineteenth Century City," the final student project from last fall).

On Wednesday, we did a tour that featured this church among other sites (I recorded my lecture-tour on how signs of emerging urban life manifest in present-day Tuscaloosa the night before and uploaded it to Vimeo.com. Doing as much allowed the students to hear me while they walked, permitting me to capture footage of them along the way).

One aside: I just curated a couple of dozen photographs that the students have taken in and outside of Tuscaloosa. These images bring to mind some of the ideas and topics we have been discussing about emerging urban life. Some of these photographs will be on display at the December 3 event. For now, we thank Ian Crawford and Tim Higgins of Jemison  (and Bible Study) well as Katherine Richter, Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, and finally, music critic/author  Ann Powers for their role in helping us document Tuscaloosa's starring role in nineteenth century urban history this fall! Roll Tide!

Next week, we turn to our final course reading. We will learn about the ways in which the experiences of  nineteenth century geologist Clarence King epitomize the across time tensions between urban life and the frontier. What new things can King's disdain for New York City and love for mapping the West for the U.S. government teach us? How do the Civil War, Gilded Age and rising Jim Crow practices expand our knowledge of urban life? Finally, how do race, gender and class aid our ability to find meaning in an industrializing America?

PS Music by the Junkyard Kings, another local band, was also considered for the video. We are desperately trying to help them get access to our university's new recording studio on the old Bryce Hospital property so they can make a demo. Their song "Roses" is as wonderful as Bible Study's "Druid City." Thank you, Louise Manos, for introducing us to this band.

students to visit downtown tuscaloosa

DePalma's was once a bank and Adrian's, a department store.

Tuscaloosa's Kress 5-10-25 Cent store opened in 1937.

The students and I will travel to downtown Tuscaloosa tomorrow and reflect on what we have learned about emerging life in America. Our attention to this subject has pushed us to think about a variety of topics including the arrival of department stores, leisure time and women in public spaces. We might think deeply about these developments as we insert Tuscaloosa into this narrative. The city was founded in 1819 and served as the state capital from 1826 to 1846. Its gradual rise as an important city in West Alabama coincides with the life of Cincinnati-based hairdresser Eliza Potter who traveled widely. Some of her travels took her as far as Europe, but also to New Orleans (although if memory serves, following her uncle's advice, this woman of mixed race  never entered Alabama). But what if she had? Given that she styled the hair of wealthy whites on both sides of the Atlantic, which occasions would have presented her an opportunity to do as much? How easily would Potter have walked around our downtown area, which has grown considerably over the years after some decades of decline when shoppers turned to McFarland Mall. It is worth it to think about such things as we walk by many buildings including the Bama Theatre, which opened in 1938. Though it is safely outside the window of emerging urban life (1820s to 1910, give or take a decade, according to historian Gunther Barth), this theatre allows us to see yet another example of how an increasingly modern world found people not only working, but also enjoying leisure moments first in vaudeville houses and later, motion picture theatres. One aside: while we are downtown, we will gather footage for our class project: a music video with Tuscaloosa in the starring role. Along the way, we will stop by Edelweiss, a German coffee shop.

pondering emerging urban life via department stores and vaudeville

Receipt from a turn of the century Tuscaloosa department store.

Tomorrow we will examine how department stores and vaudeville houses fit into emerging urban life in America. It will be the last time we turn to Gunther Barth's study of modern urban culture. Then again, maybe not. For sure, we will want to keep in mind so much of what we have learned over the past eight weeks and put it to good use as we read excerpts from Martha Sandweiss' examination of nineteenth century geologist Clarence King and the memoir of nineteenth century Cincinnati hairdresser Eliza Potter, among other readings.

For now, we may collectively wonder how the vaudeville house  allowed urban dwellers to see something about themselves onstage in the same way that the metropolitan press permitted the same group to do something similar. What did audience members see onstage? What made them laugh?

We may also reflect on more basic questions, among them: How did newspapers help department stores? Or why were vaudeville and department stores inviting spaces for women and children? 

Then again, questions that possibly lead to troubling conversations may have answers worth pursuing, too. Indeed, how does the diversity in department stores and vaudeville encounter the heterogeneous public to which Barth turns to describe nineteenth century American urban dwellers? 

Who enters these spaces? Who cannot? 

How did technology contribute to both developments becoming big business?

Turn of the century vaudeville sheet music.

Finally, what legacies did vaudeville and department stores leave us? It's worth it to think about such an idea. Today, so much entertainment comes through a smartphone or Netflix or Youtube. Shopping is done online or elsewhere (However, I do remember when 1960s and 1970s variety televisions were quite popular. I loved Hee Haw and any show featuring the Jackson Five including The Carol Burnett Show, which definitely builds on the foundation of vaudeville. I also remember when my mother shopped at stand-alone department stores like Burdines in downtown Miami in the 1970s. In time, we - like everyone else - headed to malls).

Burdines began as a Bartow, FL, dry goods store.

While we think over possible answers and even new questions, I invite you to take a look at two images from the University of Alabama's digitized Hoole Collection. The first: a 1914 receipt from from Tuscaloosa's Savage Department store. The store must have had quite a following as five years earlier, The Tuscaloosa News featured a store advertisement announcing the arrival of fall and winter hats, which were the "very latest" from New York and Paris. 

However, lest the "ladies of Tuscaloosa and West Alabama" thought the prices at Savage, which was located at 612-614 Greenburg Avenue, were out of reach, the store promised a shopper of modest means that she could have "a new style, nobby and attractive fall hat" at a "small cost."

Who were the patrons of this store owned by "J.A. Savage & Son?" Where did they wear such fancy hats? How were their lives different and similar to say the women described in bigger cities such as New York and Chicago?  While these are questions for which we have no likely answers, we might think them through just the same if for no other reason than the opportunity to once more situate Tuscaloosa into the narrative of emerging urban life.

Similarly, a search of the Hoole archive also turned up vaudeville sheet music composed in 1921 by Jeff Branen and Lloyd Evans (Seeing as Barth says emerging urban life is between the 1830s and 1920, give or take a decade, both primary sources are within range). 

Was this music in the household of a former Tuscaloosa resident or relative of a former resident? Was the music ever performed publicly? If so, where and for whom? 

Finally, why do things like baseball and vaudeville - which begin in cities - resonate with people who live in rural spaces; and vice versa; why are television shows about Alaska - Northern Exposure was a big favorite of mine during the 1990s - or the Great American Country network so popular to urban dwellers? Is this another instance when we can see how the frontier and countryside things are things for which we yearn no matter how "modern" and "urban" we become?