Memories Are Made Of This – Fall 2011

SouthFirst Bank Lecture Series/Fall 2011
Memories Are Made Of This
Stories that Enrich Our Lives
Refreshments 11:00 am – Program 12:00 noon
Harry I. Brown Auditorium

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 – Wayne Flynt
“Memories and Memoir”

Rick Bragg characterizes Dr. Wayne Flynt’s just-off-the-press historical memoir – Keeping the Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives – as “a lovely memoir by a boy born between the Great Depression and a great war, to imperfect but never dull people, between love and hate, and faith and whiskey.” Harper lee said, “Dr. Flynt is one of our finest writers. Keeping the Faith tells us why.” Flynt will focus on the phenomena of memory and how we shape our past by what we remember; how we disagree about it; how we preserve, protect, reconstruct and sometimes alter it to suit new times and reality – memory and how it enriches our lives.
Wayne Flynt studied theology at Samford, has a Ph.D in history from Florida State University, and served as Distinguished Professor of History at Auburn University. He is the author or coauthor of 11 books and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Online Encylopedia of Alabama.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 – Leah Rawls Atkins
“Quail Hunting in Alabama: Lewis Bergman Maytag and Sedgefields Plantation of Bullock County”

In 1928, when Lewis B. Maytag came to visit his brother-in-law in Prattville, he found the abundance of quail in southeast Alabama. Recently retired as president of the Iowa-based Maytag Company, which was known for manufacturing washing machines, Maytag was taken to Union Springs to see his first field trial event. After a small pointer found “eleven coveys in something like seventeen minutes.” Maytag “went into town to start buying land.” Eventually, he owned a 13,000-acre quail hunting plantation, which in the 1950’s, was recognized throughout the hunting world for its stewardship of the land and its birds and for its large number of coveys. For almost the next half-century, the Maytag family owned Sedgefields Plantation and supported field trial competition as the host of numerous field trials.
Leah Atkins taught history at Auburn University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Samford University and established the Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University where she serves as Director Emeritus. Her books deal with the history of Alabama; she is presently working on a history of Sedgefields Plantation.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 – Jay Lamar
“Alabama Treasures: A Century of Great Writers”

Many native Alabama writers have their rightful place on the list of best southern writers and an amazing number of prominent national writers credit spending their formative years in Alabama as an experience that helped shape them as people and as writers. Jay Lamar is on a first name basis with most of Alabama’s current authors and she is knowledgeable about Alabama’s literary heritage. She indicated that she will focus on writers who have shaped our memories, saying, “Some are still writing and some are now gone, but all share on thing in common – their work helped put our lives in perspective.”
Jay is the Director of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University. She is former editor of First Draft: The Journal of the Alabama Writer’s Forum; served as editor-in-chief for Alabama: the History, Georgraphy, Economics, and Civics of an American State; has been a freelance editor and writer for numerous scholarly and educational publications; and is the co-author of The Remembered Gate: Memories by Alabama Writers. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Auburn University.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 – Charles Israel
“Before the Scopes Trial: Religion and Education in the New South”

The 1925 trial of Tennessee school teacher John T. Scopes is one of the most famous trials in America history, largely because it was used as the basis for the popular film Inherit the Wind. But what was really going on in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 and throughout the South in the decades before the trial? Dr. Israel’s talk will consider developments in southern society in the decades before the trial, focusing especially on the evolving relationships between families, government, and religion between the Civil War and 1925.
Charles A. Israel, associate professor and chair of the department of history at Auburn University, teaches courses in the history of American religion and history of the American South. He earned the B.A. from Sewanee; The University of the South and the M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Rice University. He is the author of Before Scopes: Evangelicals, Evolution, and Education in Tennessee, 1875-1925 (U. Georgia Press, 2004). His continuing research addresses the social engagement of southern evangelical Christians at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 – Kathryn Braund
“Tecumseh and the Beginning of the Creek War”

The Shawnee statesman Tecumseh traveled through the southern Indian nations two hundred years ago carrying a message of Indian unity and resistance to white expansion. Since then, his visit has been closely associated with earthquakes, comets and misguided religious fanaticism among the Creeks. He is largely credited with instigating the Red Stick war. Dr. Braund will explore the myths and mysteries surrounding Tecumseh’s visit to the creek town of Tuckabatchee in late September of 1811.
Dr. Kathryn H. Braund is a Professor at Auburn University; she received an M.A. from Auburn and Ph.D. from Florida Sate University. She is a respected historian whose research and writing has focused on the ethno history of the creek and seminole Indians in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Dr. Braund has published several books and many articles for the American Indian quarterly Journal of Southern History.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 – Warren Trest
‘Wings of Denial: The Bay of Pigs Invasion: The Secret Story of the CIA’s Involvement”

After nearly four decades of government denial, the deeds of four Alabama Air National Guardsmen who died at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, were made public in 2008 and their names memorialized at the CIA’s Wall of Honor in Langley, Virginia. Their stories were told for the first time in Wings of Denial, which used recently declassified documents and personal interviews to piece together the heretofore secret story of the Air National Guard’s role in the Bay of Pigs invasion. The book is co-authored by Warren Trest and Don Dodd.
Trest, former senior historian with the USAF Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, has authored and co-authored more than 50 military histories and studies. He is the author of Nobody But the People: The Life and Times of Alabama’s Youngest Governor, the authorized biography of Governor John Patterson. Dodd, formerly assistant director of the Southern Museum of Flight, is Professor Emeritus of History at Auburn University at Montgomery.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 – Dolores Hydock
“Soldiers in Hoop Skirts: Spies, Nurses, and Other Fighting Women of the Civil War”

Dolores Hydock will tell the story of tough, resourceful women on both sides of the conflict who did their part for the Civil War effort. They were spies, soldiers, nurses, and supporters from the home front. This program looks at the efforts during the Civil War of some of these intrepid women who fought, snooped, toted, and nursed, risking their life and fortune for a cause they loved.
Hydock, originally from Pennsylvania, is an award winning actress and story performer whose work has been featured in concerts and festivals throughout the United States. She serves as a touring artist for the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Alabama Humanities Foundation. Dolores lives in Birmingham, Alabama and in her spare time, teaches Cajun and zydeco dancing.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 – Frances Robb
“Kathryn Tucker Windham and the Power of Memory”

Renowned Alabama storyteller, Kathryn Tucker Windham, was also a superb imagemaker. Her photographs, taken between 1929 and the mid-1980’s for pleasure and as a journalist, capture Alabama’s people and places with warmth and humanity. Frances Robb – who has known Kathryn for as long as she can remember – said, “Memory was a major component of Kathryn’s stories and of her relationship with people. Keeping her work visible will help ensure her legacy.”
Frances Robb is an art historian and museum consultant with a special interest in social history and the history of photography. A native of Birmingham, she was educated at Birmingham-Southern College and the University of Wisconsin. She holds Master of Arts degrees from the University of North Carolina and Yale University. Robb has presented hundreds of lectures, programs and workshops and has just completed a book on the history of photography in Alabama.

Call the the library for more information: 256 249-0961