grandmother knew "Barbara Allen" and that the African Americans on her father's plantation sang spirituals, but not like the version in the class text. Such experiences convinced mold that Alabama was a state full of folksong, whose riches had nor been explored systematically.
Less than two weeks after Byron Arnold joined the music faculty of the University of Alabama, he was taken to a Sunday "foot-washing" at an African American church in Northport. The chant-like singing and the religious fervor of the singers as they moved to the rhythm and flow of the music deeply stirred the Eastman School of Music graduate. During that fall of 1938, he was impressed with some old folk tune hummed by a friend as she prepared dinner and he encountered a student in his elementary school music class who said chat her
grandmother knew "Barbara Allen" and that the African Americans on her father's plantation sang spirituals, but not like the version in the class text. Such experiences convinced mold that Alabama was a state full of folksong, whose riches had nor been explored systematically.
This year marks a year-long centennial celebration of the Rosenwald rural school building program. This program has been described as “one of the most ambitious school building programs ever witnessed in the United States.” And it all began in Alabama as a collaboration between a nationally renowned educator and a prominent businessman.
My wife had news when I called her from the Best Western in Monroeville, Alabama. I was attending a literary conference, where writers pondered, among other things, how being Southern had shaped who they were and what they wrote. Such ruminative gatherings are a minor industry for our region, and the local community college was eager to capitalize on Monroeville's claim to Harper Lee and other notable local writers.
Not so long ago, scores of country stores were scattered across rural Alabama—at dusty crossroads or along a lonely stretch of blacktop knifing through fields and tangled woodlands, or huddled beside an isolated railway crossing. Mostly they were humble, expedient buildings, devoid of pretension, built to serve a plain agrarian society while enriching the coffers of some enterprising local merchant.
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