Article Abstracts and Supplements
Rickwood Field: Grand Lady of Baseball
by Paige Wainwright
Rickwood Field has actually housed two teams since its opening day in 1910. From 1924 until 1962, the Birmingham Black Barons leased the stadium from creator and owner Rick Woodward and played on alternating weekends. It was home of pitcher Satchel Paige, who completed 184 strikeouts in 1929. Another rookie named Willie Mays also began his legendary career as a Black Baron. With the onset of the civil rights movement, the Barons decided "to fold rather than to integrate." In 1964, an integrated Barons team returned and played at Rickwood until 1987. At that time a new owner, Art Clarkson, moved the Barons to the team’s current home, the Hoover Met. In 1991, after the demolition of Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Rickwood became the oldest standing baseball stadium in the United States. In 1992, a nonprofit organization called "Friends of Rickwood" was organized to aid in the preservation and restoration of this historical site.
The Story of Johnny Mack Brown
by Philip D. Beidler
In 1926, the University of Alabama’s All-American halfback Johnny Mack Brown led the Tide to a 20-19 victory over the University of Washington in the Rose Bowl. However, by 1927 he had opted to trade his stardom on the football field for stardom on the movie screen. Eventually, Brown, known as the "Dothan antelope," became one of the most popular Western entertainers of his era: the "heyday of the Hollywood cowboy." He eventually appeared in more than 168 films. "In contrast to an array of jolly, happy-go-lucky singing cowpokes," writes UA English professor Philip Beidler, "Mack Brown’s character image was always one of a rough, tough, no-nonsense hero, eager to bring about justice with a quick fist or trigger finger."
Taming the Coosa
by Harvey H. Jackson III
One of the wildest rivers in the Southeast, the Coosa defied nineteenth-century efforts to tame her. Before hydroelectric dams turned it into a series of elongated lakes, the Coosa was really two rivers, one deep and navigable, another nearly one hundred miles of dangerous rocks and reefs. From the late 1860s until the early part of the 1900s, state and federally funded projects studied and improved the navigability of the Coosa River, creating a waterway for the expanding commerce of Alabama and Georgia. Harvey H. Jackson III, professor and head of the History Department at Jacksonville State University, details the Coosa’s history that parallels Alabama’s commercial development after the Civil War. This article is an outgrowth of Jackson’s research for Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Alabama, recently published by the University of Alabama Press.
Alabama’s Most Endangered Historic Places, 1995
by the Alabama Historical Commission and Alabama Preservation Alliance Endangered Historic Places Committee
This year's Most Endangered Historic Places include a school on the National Register of Historic Places, and an African-American cemetery which contains the graves of three of the young victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. As part of the effort to raise awareness of endangered properties around the state, the "Places in Peril" listing is published each year in the fall issue of Alabama Heritage. The 1995 "Places in Peril" are: Christian Science Church, Tuscaloosa; Osborne House, Mobile; the Eastern shore of Mobile Bay, Baldwin County; Snow Hill Institute, Wilcox County; Greenwood-Woodlawn Cemetery, Birmingham; Old Alabama State Penitentiary, Elmore County; Old Memphis and Charleston Railroad Depot, Scottsboro; "Old Stagecoach Inn" (Moore-Hill House), Lamar County; Aldrich Mines, Montevallo; Virginia City Mines, Hueytown; Cedar Haven, Marengo County; The Forks of Cypress Ruins, Lauderdale County; and Mt.Vernon Arsenal/Searcy Hospital Complex, Mobile County. Also included is the "Update on 1994 Endangered Historic Places."
DEPARTMENTS
THE NATURE JOURNAL – "Tulotoma, The Alabama Live-Bearing Snail" by L. J. Davenport
FROM THE ARCHIVES – "An Alabama Legacy: Images of a State"
by Alice Knierim
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