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ALABAMA'S TRAILFEST 2013
EVENTS
Click on a town below for Trailfest
event information in that area. Hartselle and Decatur Demopolis Montgomery Mobile Tuskegee Monroeville Birmingham
Opens Friday, February 15, 2013 through March 30, 2013
The racial injustice of the trials attracted international attention and influenced generations of American writers, reporters and historians including Ralph Ellison ("The Invisible Man") and Dan T. Carter ("Scottsboro, A Tragedy of the American South"). Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" depicts the same pattern of courtroom racism and bigotry that marked the South for decades. In 1931, the Scottsboro Boys were tried in Decatur, Alabama. Fred Hiroshige was a local photographer of Japanese American heritage who worked for Decatur's only professional studio in the 1930s. From Hiroshige's estate in 1995, the Morgan County Commission purchased nearly two hundred negatives from the first and most important of the local Scottsboro Boys trials. As an exclusive event for Trailfest 2013, an exhibit of the photographs - which have never been publicly viewed - is being presented at the Carnegie Visual Arts Center by the Morgan County Archives with the title: "The Scottsboro Boys: Outside the Protective Circle of Humanity." On Friday, February 15, Southern Literary Trail State Director Carol Puckett and Morgan County Archivist John Allison will conduct a lunch and learn session about the photographs at the Carnegie at 12 noon, followed by a "Fridays at 5" (Fri@5) members reception at 5 p.m. Place: The Carnegie
Visual Arts Center, 207 Church Street N.E., Decatur, Alabama,
Monday, February 18, 2013 Local scholars Susan Puckett and Carol Puckett will conduct a "lunch and learn" session about the Scottsboro Boys trial and the exhibit of photographs on-view in nearby Decatur. The session will be hosted by Hartselle's William Bradford Huie Library, named for the Trail novelist and writer who reported many of the South's injustices during the Civil Rights Era. Place: The William
Bradford Huie Library, 152 Sparkman St. NW, Hartselle, Alabama
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Place: The Carnegie
Visual Arts Center,
Friday, February 15, 2013
Finally the two award-winning educators and writers will speak about Demopolis and the influence of segregated times on Southern writers. Local partners for this program are the Marengo County Historical Society and the Marengo County History and Archives Museum. A free champagne reception after the program will honor Dr. Arrington and Dr. Hitchcock. Place: The Marengo
County History and Archives Museum, 101 North Walnut Avenue,
Demopolis, Alabama
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Edwina's diary entries as researched by Professor Emeritus Stephen Pieschel of Mississippi University for Women reveal rigid rules of courtship for young couples of the Victorian Era. Even the clothes of courtship followed a strict code. Pieschel talks about Edwina's diary in the parlors of Gaineswood where he is joined by costume design professor Donna Meester and Women's History expert Lisa Dorr of the University of Alabama. Moderator Bert Hitchcock recalls the great romances from Southern Literature. A champagne reception concludes the program. Local partners are Gaineswood and the Friends of Gaineswood. Place: Gaineswood,
805 South Cedar Ave., Demopolis, Alabama
Saturday, April 13, 2013 and Sunday, April 14, 2013
Place: Originates at
Bluff Hall, 407 N. Commissioners Ave., Demopolis, Alabama
Saturday, April 13, 2013 Demopolis was founded in 1817 by French immigrants - exiled followers of the deposed Napoleon - with a goal to transform their plot of American soil into a Vine and Olive Colony for wine production. Grapes and olive trees refused to grow in the chalky Tombigbee soil, but the city's French founders left a storied legacy that inspired a 1937 novel, "Some Plant Olive Trees" by Emma Gelders Sterne, and a Hollywood script by George Waggner for a John Wayne movie in 1947: "The Fighting Kentuckian." The French legacy continues with the Historical Society's annual Wine Festival and Art Show during its pilgrimage weekend. Place: The Coplin
Building, 201 West Washington Street, Demopolis, Alabama
Sunday, April 14, 2013 Esteemed New Orleans professor and writer Ken Holditch visits Demopolis for the Southern Literary Trail to talk about the food writings of Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams, both of whom he knew, in a classic southern setting at Lyon Hall. Holditch co-authored both "Dinner with Tennessee Williams" and "Galatoire's, Biography of a Bistro" that includes recipes from the French Quarter restaurant. Holditch will speak about the literary legacy of Galatoire's where he often shared the table with playwright and poet Tennessee Williams. Local partner for this program is the Marengo County Historical Society. The audience will be invited to stay for champagne after Dr. Holditch's talk and to indulge in tastings of recipes from his books and from "Eating Together" by Lillian Hellman and Peter Feibleman. Place: Lyon Hall on
South Main in Demopolis, Alabama
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 Alabama Humanities Foundation Road Scholar Joyce Cauthen will celebrate the traditions, besides food alone, that punctuate a Southern family's table at the Demopolis Public Library. Trail writer Lillian Hellman said that her mother Julia Newhouse of Demopolis taught her "how to cook Alabama." The famed writer's final publication was a cookbook entitled "Eating Together." Cauthen's talk underscores the food and folklore of cooking Alabama. A champagne reception follows Cauthen's program at the Library. Place: The Demopolis
Public Library, 211 East Washington Street
With respect for the storytellers and their tales, Ruby Pickens Tartt carefully collected the stories of African-Americans in her native Sumter County during the years spanning the Great Depression through World War II. She committed them to writing in Life Histories she composed for the Federal Writers' Project, a branch of the W.P. A. created to provide employment for educators and scholars. Tartt's manuscripts encountered criticism by W.P.A. officials who did not understand her use of dialect and slang in her folklore writings. Some of her work was even destroyed by a tornado in 1945. It was the same year that three of Tartt's short stories were published in the volume, "The Best American Short Stories of 1945," a validation of her remarkable accomplishments and talents as a writer and a listener. Tartt's stories will be brought to life on stage by her niece Jody Tartt, a Demopolis High School educator and frequent director for the Canebrake Players. This stage production is supported by a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and presented as part of the Sucarnochee Folklife Festival. Place: Demopolis
High School Auditorium
Friday, May 17, 2013
During World War II, Arthur Mayer served in Italy. Afterwards he became a distributor of Italian films in America. Mayer is responsible for bringing the classics "Rome, Open City" and "The Bicycle Thief" to the States. The entrepreneur wrote books about the movie business and always began his bios with the line: "I was born in the metropolis of Demopolis, Alabama." At age 78, Mayer started another career by teaching film at universities such as Dartmouth, Stanford, and the University of Southern California.
The Southern Literary Trail, the Marengo County History and Archives
Museum, the Marengo County Historical Society, and the Two Rivers
Arts Council collaborate to celebrate Arthur Mayer's story with an
event saluting Jewish History Month.
The evening concludes with a champagne screening of the 1975 short film "Arthur and Lillie" that chronicles the lives of Arthur Mayer and his wife Lillie, as they travel from college to college where he teaches and inspires film students. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and will be making its Demopolis debut on May 17, exclusively through arrangements by the event's sponsors. Place: The Marengo
Co. History and Archives Museum, 101 North Walnut Ave., Demopolis,
Alabama
Wednesday and Thursday, February 27 and 28, 2013 Beyond the pages of his novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald attempted to make the movie screen one of his "canvases." His screen writing career never proved to be successful and he was fired from the team that penned the film script for "Gone With The Wind." Arguably Scott's wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald created more enduring canvases with her water color paintings and paper dolls. Over the days leading up to the 19th Annual Gala of the Fitzgerald House Museum in Montgomery on Saturday, March 2, 2013, the Museum and the Southern Literary Trail will partner with the Capri Theatre and Stonehenge Art Gallery to celebrate the art of Zelda and to examine the Fitzgeralds on film. The "Canvases" series is supported by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and by the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Place: The
Fitzgerald House Museum, 919 Felder Ave., Montgomery, AL and
Stonehenge Art Gallery and The Capri
Theatre, 1045 East Fairview Avenue, Montgomery, AL
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Place: Stonehenge
Art Gallery and Capri Theatre, 1045 East Fairview Avenue,
Montgomery, Alabama
Woody Allen's contemporary classic "Midnight in Paris" (2011) time travels Owen Wilson to the Jazz Age Paris of the Fitzgeralds and Ernest Hemingway. The popular film received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The cast includes Kathy Bates and Marion Cotillard. Place: The Capri
Theatre, 1045 East Fairview Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama
Paramount's version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" took liberties with the storylines of the novel for this rarely seen movie with Alan Ladd as Gatsby from 1949. The film will be shown after an art auction at the Capri to benefit the Fitzgerald House Museum. Fitzgerald scholar Kirk Curnutt of Troy State University introduces the Capri's exclusive showing of the film. Place: The Capri
Theatre, 1045 East Fairview Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama
In the Old Cloverdale home once occupied by America's iconic Jazz Age couple, the 19th annual Fitzgerald Museum Gala salutes Zelda and Scott with an evening of food, dancing and music by the Lo-Fi Loungers under a tent on the lawn of the house. Fine art and decorative objects by local artists are offered for silent auction. This ticketed event captures the spirit of the 1920s with a premiere social occasion for Trailfest celebrants and visitors. Place: The
Fitzgerald House Museum, 919 Felder Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama
Sunday, March 3, 2013 To conclude the Fitzgerald Canvases Series, the Alabama Readers Theatre will present dramatically (or comedically) F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories about Pat Hobby, a Hollywood screenwriter reduced to a hack in an alcoholic haze. With mocking self-humor, Fitzgerald used his own misadventures in Hollywood as source material for the hapless Hobby. The cast includes APT "Bookmark" host Don Noble, Alabama poet Jennifer Horne and novelist Billy Cobb. The stories will be presented under the Gala tent on the lawn of the Fitzgerald House Museum and will also include Fitzgerald's "Crazy Sunday." Place: The
Fitzgerald House Museum, 919 Felder Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama
Friday, April 19, 2013
Place: The Alabama
Department of Archives and History
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Place: Old Alabama
Town, 301 Columbus Street, Montgomery, Alabama
Saturday, April 20, 2013, at The Alabama Book Festival
Place: Old Alabama
Town, 301 Columbus Street, Montgomery, Alabama
The annual Historic Mobile Preservation Society's Homes Tour invites visitors into the parlors and onto the grounds of Mobile's most intriguing homes. Many of the places along the Tour route inspired Southern Literary Trail writers Albert Murray, Eugene Walter and William March ("The Bad Seed"). Walter lived in the Cox-Deasy House on the atmospheric grounds of Oakleigh, a grand mansion opened year-round and the starting point for a fascinating tour. Place: Originating
at Oakleigh and various Tour locations
Saturday, March 16, 2013 From the porch of the Cox-Deasy House where Eugene Walter lived, Broadway actor Joel Vig ("Hairspray") joins Mobile scholars John Hafner and Sue Walker, the co-authors of "Literary Mobile," to read from Walter's memoirs. The cast performed a porch play at Cox-Deasy during Trailfest 2011, and the audience demanded a 2013 encore. Walter said, "For me, every morning on the front porch was Carnival." Audience members may join the cast for champagne after the reading, a feature of the Historic Mobile Preservation Society's Homes Tour. Place: The Cox-Deasy
House at Oakleigh
As another showcase for the Historic Mobile Preservation Society's Homes Tour, Broadway actor Joel Vig talks about his experiences in the debut cast of "Ruthless!," a musical about an ambitious child actress and inspired by William March's "The Bad Seed." The presentation is highlighted with performances of songs from the show's score. "Ruthless!" transforms "Seed" into hilarious riffs on cut-throat young actors and their relentless stage mothers. Place: Oakleigh
Sunday, March 24, 2013 In partnership with
the Mobile Arts Council and the Mobile Public Library, the Southern
Literary Trail is proud to present a celebration of Mobile writer
Mary McNeil Fenollosa and her novel "The Dragon Painter" during an
afternoon of activities in
Eastman House preservationist Anthony L'Abbate will appear for a screening of the film. He is joined by Dr. Joanne Bernardi of the University of Rochester, New York, who adds her expertise in Japanese culture to a discussion of the sweeping Asian-American themes within "The Dragon Painter." The panel includes Mobile's Jacqlyn Kirkland who catalogued the Mary McNeil Fenollosa Collection for the History Museum of Mobile. Place: Bernheim Hall
at the Mobile Public Library on Government Street
Monday, March 25, 2013
Place: The Dean's
Conference Room in the University of South Alabama Humanities
Building
Monday, March 25, 2013 Preservation Officer Anthony L'Abbate from the Motion Picture Department of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, details a history of its activities to preserve and restore motion pictures. L'Abbate will discuss the restorations undertaken by the House from the film prints of the 1950s ranging through the digital processes of today. In addition to "The Dragon Painter," the Eastman House's collection contains over 30,000 film titles. Eastman House has preserved the personal film collections of directors Kathryn Bigelow ("Zero Dark Thirty") and Martin Scorsese ("The Departed"), among others. Presented by the Mobile Arts Council and the University of South Alabama Department of Communications in partnership with the Southern Literary Trail and the Alabama Humanities Foundation. Place: The
University of South Alabama Library Auditorium
Monday, April 22, 2013
Place: Gulf City
Lodge, 601 State St.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013 In his popular Time-Life cookbook, "American Cooking: Southern Style," Eugene Walter recalled the dining practices of his Mobile family: "Friday was fish day, and my grandfather would sometimes telephone that he had found good red snapper at the waterfront fish market, which would change all plans for the midday meal." James Beard Award winner John T Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance will inaugurate an annual Eugene Walter Lecture Series that examines Walter's love of Southern foods and the South's mealtime traditions. Presented with the Historic Mobile Preservation Society. Place: Oakleigh
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 The Ralph Ellison Lecture features distinguished scholars and writers who present critical examinations of significant intellectual, philosophical and aesthetic issues. Novelist Colson Whitehead presents the 2013 Ralph Ellison Lecture at Tuskegee University. Walter Kim of Time magazine praised Whitehead's novel "The Intuitionist" as the "freshest" racial allegory since Ellison's "Invisible Man." His 2003 book of essays, "The Colossus of New York," was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Place: The Kellogg
Conference Center at Tuskegee University
Wednesday, April 24, 2013 "Rifftide" editor and collaborator Paul Devlin brings the taped conversations between jazz drummer Papa Jo Jones and Tuskegee University alumnus Albert Murray to the campus for playbacks and discussion. He is joined by fellow Murray essayist Jay Lamar ("Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation") for the event at the Tuskegee University Archives. Place: The Tuskegee
University Archives and Museum
Thursday, April 18, 2013 to Saturday, May 18, 2013 The Mockingbird Players of Monroeville present the 23d season of their stage production of "To Kill A Mockingbird" from Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This season showcases the newly landscaped Georgia-Pacific amphitheater as a home for the popular play on the grounds of the Old Courthouse Museum in the heart of Monroeville, regarded as the model for Maycomb in the novel. During the famous trial scenes of "Mockingbird" when Atticus Finch defends falsely accused Tom Robinson, the drama moves into the actual courtroom where Lee's father practiced law. Annually this production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" attracts audience members from around the world. Place: The
Georgia-Pacific Amphitheater at the Old Courthouse Museum
Thursday, April 25, 2013, to Saturday, April 27, 2013 Literary Alabama is distinguished by writers who weave stories like threads and fabrics into unique, colorful compositions. The Alabama Writers Symposium for 2013 features the theme of literary quilts: a patchwork of memoir, fiction and poetry. For two days, celebrated writers and book enthusiasts convene in the Alabama hometown of Harper Lee and Truman Capote. The Symposium is a project of the Alabama Center for Literary Arts and is sponsored by Alabama Southern Community College with support from the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the City of Monroeville. Place: Alabama
Southern Community College
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Place: The Old
Courthouse Museum at Monroeville
1963 proved to be pivotal for the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham: the year of the Children's Crusade and a letter from the Birmingham jail by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At 10:22 a.m. on September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church. The lives of four innocent girls were cut short and a nation's conscience was shaken. Decades later, two Birmingham area high schools - one black in Fairfield and the other white in Mountain Brook - collaborated on a theatrical version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" from Harper Lee's novel of childhood innocence shattered by bigotry.
Place: The Carver
Theatre, 1631 4th Ave. North, Birmingham, Alabama |
On
March 25, 1931, two white women Victoria Price and Ruby Bates
falsely accused nine African-American young men, aged 12 to 19, of
raping them on a freight train passing through northern Alabama.
Over the next seven years, the defendants became known as "The
Scottsboro Boys" and endured a series of trials they could not win
before all-white juries. 
THE
SCOTTSBORO BOYS: A LUNCH-AND-LEARN AT THE WILLIAM BRADFORD HUIE
LIBRARY OF HARTSELLE
Dan
T. Carter's book "Scottsboro, A Tragedy of the American South" is
considered the definitive history of the Scottsboro trials.
Originally published in 1970, it was published again in 2007 with a
new introduction. The Education Foundation Professor at the
University of South Carolina and a recipient of the Lillian Smith
Award, Dr. Carter will deliver the keynote address for the
Carnegie's exhibit of Scottsboro trial photographs after a lecture
to the students of Hartselle High School. 
Renowned
educators Dr. Bert Hitchcock of Auburn University and Dr. Cecelia
Arrington of Merritt College in Oakland, California, are both
natives of Demopolis, Alabama. They graduated from high school
within two years of one another, but they have never met. Until now.
They attended separate schools in Demopolis during the days of
segregation, an era that influences Dr. Arrington's poignant
chapters about life in the town within her book, "The Life and
Confessions of a Black Studies Teacher." 
The
mother of Tennessee Williams, Edwina Dakin of nearby Columbus,
Mississippi, was courted by Demopolis native Gaius Whitfield, a descendant of General
Nathan Bryan Whitfield who built the Greek Revival mansion Gaineswood. Edwina's archival records reveal a post card of
Gaineswood sent to her by Gaius in 1905.
Happily
Trailfest coincides with a pilgrimage of homes and vintage sites
hosted every second year by the Marengo County Historical Society.
The Society operates two museums in Demopolis, the ante-bellum Lyon
Hall and Bluff Hall. The mansions will be featured on the tour route
in addition to architectural treasures rarely opened to the public.
Demopolis and its diverse history have influenced generations of
writers, historians and visitors.
AT
TABLE WITH LILLIAN AND TENNESSEE
PASS THE FOLKLORE: FAMILY AND COMMUNITY TRADITIONS IN THE KITCHEN
AND AROUND THE DINNER TABLE
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Born
in Demopolis in 1886 to a founder of the famous Mayer Brothers
Department Store, Arthur Mayer worked for motion picture tycoon
Samuel Goldwyn during the silent screen era in New York City. After
talkies arrived, he operated his own movie theatre, the Rialto, in
the heart of Times Square.
Keynote speaker Stuart Rockoff
of the Goldring/Waldenburg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in
Jackson, Ms., will talk about the successes of Southern Jews in
Hollywood. The history of Mayer Brothers Department Story and a
gallery of vintage store photos will also be presented.
THE
CANVASES OF SCOTT AND ZELDA FITZGERALD: A TWO DAY ART AND FILM
FESTIVAL
Local
art works inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald's paintings will be displayed
at the Stonehenge Art Gallery, adjoining the classic Capri Theatre
in the Old Cloverdale section of Montgomery. Before a screening of
Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" at the Capri, Dr. Graham Boettcher
of the Birmingham Museum of Art will speak about the artistry and
life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald with a talk he has entitled, "The
Legend of Zelda, Alabama Artist and Jazz Age Muse." Boettcher is the
Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Wednesday,
February 27, 2013
Thursday,
February 28, 2013
THE ALABAMA READERS THEATRE PRESENTS F. SCOTT FITZGERALD'S PAT HOBBY
STORIES: "TEAMED WITH GENIUS"
The
fight for racial equality defined Virginia Durr, the forthcoming
subject of Lillian Hellman biographer Deborah Martinson ("Lillian
Hellman, A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels"). Durr and Hellman were
emotionally and culturally driven by experiences within their
Alabama families. The title for the writer's book about Durr says it
all: "Virginia Durr: Southern Radical Come Hell or High Water."
Martinson discusses both these powerful women and the family
experiences affecting their lives and igniting their activism during
her talk at the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
The
Southern Literary Trail and its tri-state organizers annually host a
popular tent at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery's historic
Old Alabama Town. Free brochures and publications about the Trail,
its literary landmarks and festivals will be shared under the tent.
The Southern Literary Trail will also sponsor a remarkable
discussion of Harper Lee's campus journalism at the University of
Alabama by the Alabama Readers Theatre. 
Years
before the publication of her groundbreaking "To Kill a
Mockingbird," Harper Lee fearlessly attacked the dictates of Jim
Crow separatism as a student journalist at the University of
Alabama. At the Alabama Book Festival, the Alabama Readers Theatre
including Don Noble (APT's "Bookmark") and novelist Billy Cobb, a
recipient of the Harper Lee Award, present Lee's acerbic one act
play from her student writings at the University's campus newspaper
"The Rammer Jammer." It is entitled "Now Is The Time for All Good
Men," a satirical send-up of literacy tests at the voting booth and
the bigoted politicians who supported them. Presented in
collaboration with the Alabama Center 
Friday,
March 15, 2013 and Saturday, March 16, 2013
EUGENE
WALTER, AT LARGE: A PORCH PLAY
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Bernheim Hall at the main library on
Government Street. Fenollosa traveled extensively in Japan and loved
its artistic culture. Her romantic "Dragon Painter" was made into a
1919 cinematic masterpiece, recently restored by the George Eastman
House of Rochester, New York.
In
keeping with the Southern Literary Trail's examination of Japan's
influence on Mobile writer Mary McNeil Fenollosa, Joanne Bernardi
from the University of Rochester, New York, talks about modern
viewpoints of Japan and its place in the world with a focus on the
first half of the 20th Century. Bernardi says that her program
engages "the human act of travel and the production and exchange of
objects and images to investigate changing perceptions of Japan."
The audience will look at Japan through the lens of western
postcards, tourist brochures, and amateur travel films. Presented by
the Mobile Arts Council and the University of South Alabama
Humanities and Social Science Colloquium in partnership with the
Southern Literary Trail and the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
FILM
RESTORATION AT THE GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE
A jazz luminary,
Alabama-born Papa Jo Jones dazzled his audiences with innovative
drumming and a bigger-than-life personality. The intrigued included
Mobile writer and music essayist Albert Murray. In 1977, Murray
began to record his conversations with Jones, and their taped
sessions continued for eight years. Murray collaborated with New
York writer Paul Devlin to edit the conversations into a book, "Rifftide,
The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones." The Southern Literary Trail
partners with Mobile's Mystic Order of the Jazz Obsessed (MOJO) to
bring Devlin to Mobile for live playbacks of the taped conversations
and for live jazz.
THE EUGENE WALTER LECTURE BY JOHN T EDGE
THE
RALPH ELLISON LECTURE FEATURING COLSON WHITEHEAD
ALBERT MURRAY, PAPA JO JONES
AND THE CREATION OF A JAZZ DRUMMER'S BIOGRAPHY
"TO
KILL A MOCKINGBIRD" PERFORMED BY THE MOCKINGBIRD PLAYERS
THE
16TH ANNUAL ALABAMA WRITERS SYMPOSIUM
For
a matinee before the Gala evening performance of "To Kill a
Mockingbird" in Monroeville on Saturday, May 4, the Alabama Readers
Theatre including Harper Lee Award winning novelist Billy Cobb ("A
Walk Through Fire") and Don Noble of APT's "Bookmark" presents
Harper Lee's witty one-act play from her student writings in the
University of Alabama's campus newspaper "The Rammer Jammer." It is
entitled "Now Is The Time for All Good Men," a satirical send-up of
literacy tests at the voting booth and the bigoted politicians who
supported them. They are joined by poet Jennifer Horne and writer
Loretta Cobb ("The Ocean was Salt") who comment on other newly
revealed writings of Harper Lee during her days as a college
journalist. Presented in conjunction with the Alabama Center for the
Book.
Sunday,
April 28, 2013
Filmmaker
Sandy Jaffe filmed the students as they gathered for rehearsals and
other events. Their story is woven through "Our Mockingbird" along
with insights from teachers, lawyers, actors, and writers who weigh
in on how this classic novel is a lens to look at race, class,
gender, and justice - then and now. For the fiftieth anniversary of
the 16th Street Baptist Church tragedy, the Birmingham Chapter of
Hadassah presents "Our Mockingbird" with Sandy Jaffe as a special
guest. She will be joined by a panel including some of the young
actors from the Fairfield-Mountain Brook play. Supporters for the
film include the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
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