Category Archives: Montgomery Alabama History

Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War Series

The Montgomery City-County Public Library will host a free five-part reading and discussion series called Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War. In commemoration of the Civil War sesquicentennial, the series encourages participants to consider the legacy of the Civil War and emancipation.

The program Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War consists of group discussion events held at the library on the following works:

The series is open to the entire community and surrounding areas (registration is required) and is led by Dr. Ben Severance, Associate Professor of History at Auburn University Montgomery and author of Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama during the Civil War which is coming out later this year.

Dr. Ben SeveranceDr. Ben Severance
Associate Professor of History, Auburn University Montgomery, and Civil War Historian has been teaching at Auburn University Montgomery since 2005.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His book entitled, Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Alabama during the Civil War is coming out later this year.

Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War series is developed by the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Local support for the series is provided by the Alabama Humanities Foundation.

Register Now.

Need Help? Contact us at tberry@mccpl.lib.al.us or (334) 240-4999.

Schedule

Part One – Imagining War March 8, 2012
Part Two – Choosing Sides March 22, 2012
Part Three – Making Sense of Shiloh April 5, 2012
Part Four – The Shape of War April 19, 2012
Part Five – War of Freedom May 3, 2012

TIME: 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
WHERE: Auditorium in the Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial of the Montgomery City-County Public Library.

Reading List

Part One: Imagining War

  • Geraldine Brooks, March [2005]
  • Readings from America‘s War[2012]
    • Louisa May Alcott, “Journal kept at the hospital, Georgetown, D.C.” [1862]

Part Two: Choosing Sides

  • Readings from America‘s War[2012]
    • Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” [1852]
    • Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown” [1859]
    • Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address [March 4, 1861]
    • Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone” speech [March 21, 1861]
    • Robert Montague, Secessionist speech at Virginia secession convention [April 1-2, 1861]
    • Chapman Stuart, Unionist speech at Virginia secession convention [April 5, 1861]
    • Elizabeth Brown Pryor, excerpt from Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through his Private Letters [2007]
    • Mark Twain, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” [1885]
    • Sarah Morgan, excerpt from The Diary of a Southern Woman [May 9, May 17, 1862]

Part Three: Making Sense of Shiloh

  • Readings from America‘s War[2012]
    • Ambrose Bierce, “What I Saw of Shiloh” [1881]
    • Ulysses Grant, excerpt from the Memoirs [1885]
    • Shelby Foote, excerpt from Shiloh [1952]
    • Bobbie Ann Mason, “Shiloh” [1982]
    • General Braxton Bragg, speech to the Army of the Mississippi [May 3, 1862]

Part Four: The Shape of War

  • James M. McPherson, Crossroad of Freedom: Antietam [2002]
  • Readings from America‘s War[2012]
    • Drew Gilpin Faust, excerpt from This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War [2008]
    • Gary W. Gallagher, “The Net Result of the Campaign was in Our Favor: Confederate Reaction to 1862 Maryland Campaign” [1999]

Part Five: War and Freedom

  • Readings from America‘s War[2012]
    • Abraham Lincoln, address on colonization [1862]
    •  John M. Washington, “Memorys [sic] of the Past” [1873]
    •  Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation [1863]
    • Frederick Douglass, “Men of Color, To Arms!” [March 1863]
    • Abraham Lincoln, letter to James C. Conkling [1863]
    • Abraham Lincoln, letter to Albert G. Hodges [1864]
    • Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address [1863]
    • James S. Brisbin, report on U.S. Colored Cavalry in Virginia [Oct. 2, 1864]
    • Colored Citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, Petition to the Union Convention of Tennessee Assembled in the Capitol at Nashville [January 9, 1865]
    • Margaret Walker, excerpt from Jubilee [1966]
    • Leon Litwack, excerpt from Been in the Storm So Long [1979]
    • Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 1865

Download a Registration Form.

Download an Information Packet.

Download the Essay Booklet.

Commemorating the life of a Montgomery Librarian and Civil Rights Pioneer

A historic marker commemorating the life of Montgomery Librarian and Civil Rights Pioneer Juliette Hampton Morgan will be unveiled at Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial Library (The old ‘Main Library’) at 245 High Street, Montgomery, Thursday, April 17, 2008, at 10:00 a.m.       

The public is invited to attend. 

Juliette Hampton Morgan Biography

 

“Juliette Hampton Morgan, a native of Montgomery, was the daughter of Frank Perryman Morgan, a traveling dry goods salesman with political ambitions, and Lila Bess Olin, a liberated Southern belle whose circle of friends included Zelda Fitzgerald, Sara Powell Haardt and Tallulah Bankhead.

“Morgan attended Montgomery’s finest schools and graduated from Sidney Lanier High School. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Alabama in 1934. She worked as a librarian in Montgomery’s Carnegie Library and became director of research at the Montgomery Public Library in 1952.

“Morgan used the public forum of the local newspaper to write many articles about the rise of totalitarianism in Europe in the late 1930s and about her fear that a segregated America was as guilty in denying the rights of many of her citizens. She courageously opposed the White Citizens Council, which had been set up to resist Brown vs. Board of Education. She was the first, and for a time the only, Caucasian woman to oppose the Council, though she was a third generation Alabamian and a seventh generation Southerner.

“With no thought to her own safety, she expressed outrage at injustice during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and during the integration of her alma mater, the University of Alabama. On January 14, 1957, the editor of The Tuscaloosa News published a letter written by Morgan in which she praised him for his criticism of the WCC. She wrote: “There are many Southerners … who know the Southern Way of Life must inevitably change. Many of them are eager for change, but they are afraid to express themselves — so afraid to stand alone … Everyone who speaks as you do, who has the faith to do what he believes is right in scorn of the consequences, does great good in preparing the way for a happier and more equitable future for all Americans.”“Within six months, Morgan had lost friends and resigned her job after the mayor withheld municipal funding for the library, though the superintendent and trustees refused to fire her.

“Morgan’s courage and bravery against the evils of her day and her persistence in speaking out serve as a worthy model for men and women today.”
Source: Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame