BOOKS RELATING TO HALE COUNTY, ALABAMA.
This is not a comprehensive bibliography, more of a quick-and-dirty look at what is available. There are many more books available that concern William Christenberry, James Agee and Walker Evans, Moundville Archeological Park and the Rural Studio and I have selected only a few as examples.
Agee, James. Cotton Tenants: Three Families. Photographs by Walker Evans. Melville House, 2013. (Agee’s 1936 submission to Fortune magazine for an assignment on sharecroppers in the Deep South. Rejected and unpublished, the typescript was rediscovered in 2003 by Agee’s daughter in her deceased father’s Greenwich Village home. It is the original version of what became “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”)
Agee, James. James Agee rediscovered: the journals of Let us now praise famous men and other new manuscripts / edited by Michael A. Lofaro and Hugh Davis. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, c2005. (A new and unique perspective on this Agee. Untarnished and unfettered collection of previously unpublished manuscripts of an author who wrote a major work involving Hale County.)
Agee, James. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families. Text by James Agee, photographs by Walker Evans, with an introduction to the new edition by John Hersey. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1988, c1969. (A classic work. For some tastes, including mine, the prose has not worn as well as the photographs, which are magnificent.)
Benners, Augustus, 1819 or 1820-1885. Disunion, war, defeat, and recovery in Alabama: the journal of Augustus Benners, 1850-1885. Rdited by Glenn and Virginia Linden. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2007.
Blitz, John H. Moundville (Alabama The Forge of History). Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2008. (A short guide to Moundville, it does a good job of reporting not only the facts, but also some of the history of the site, the key researchers over the years, and how archaeologists develop an understanding of the people and the place.)
Boyd, Gregory A. Family Maps of Hale County, Alabama. Arphax Publishing Co., 2010. (Contains newly created maps of original landowners (patent maps) in what is now Hale County, Alabama, gleaned from the indexes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. For each township in the county, there are two additional maps accompanying the patent map: a road map and a map showing waterways, railroads, and both modern and many historical city-centers and cemeteries. Included are indexes to help you locate what you are looking for, whether you know a person's name, a last name, a place-name, or a cemetery.)
Causeyl Donna R. Some Descendants of JAMES CRAWFORD (1789-1839) Hale County, Alabama. Donway Publishing, 2012. Available only as Amazon Kindle edition.
Christenberry, Daniel Pinkney. The semi-centennial history of the Southern university, 1856-1906, by Daniel P. Christenberry. Greensboro, Ala., D. P. Christenberry, 1908.
Christenberry, William. William Christenberry: Kodachromes. Aperture, 2010.; William Christenberry: Working from Memory: Collected Stories. Steidl, 2008. (The book showcases a large body of previously unknown work that Christenberry shot on 35-mm. Kodachrome film between 1964 to 2007. Freed from his usual, bulkier large-format camera, Christenberry explores the rural Deep South, specifically around Hale County, Alabama.); William Christenberry: Disappearing Places. Richter Verlag; Bilingual edition. 2002; William Christenberry's Black Belt. Tuscaloosa, University Alabama Press, 2007. ("In many ways the early art of William Christenberry is the fusion of two worlds: the familiar folkish landscape of his Hale County grandparents, and the elite world of expressionism that Prof. Mel Price ushered him into at the University of Alabama. Through both artistic styles and varied mediums Christenberry captured a world beyond lens and object, a world both disappearing and reappearing in altered form, as if two dimensions of time and history in Alabama's Black Belt were colliding, each vying for supremacy. This is an important reflection on the region by one of America's foremost artists." — Wayne Flynt) NOTE: This is but a small sampling of works by Christenberry, perhaps the most significant artist to emerge from Hale County. You will find more on Amazon and other book websites.)
Dorr, Lisa Lindquist, Editor. Alabama Women: Their Lives and Times (Southern Women: Their Lives and Times Ser.) Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2017 (Includes section on Julia S. Tutwiler.)
Frears, Andrew. Rural Studio at twenty: designing and building in Hale County, Alabama, by Andrew Freears and Elena Barthel, with Andrea Oppenheimer Dean ; photography by Timothy Hursley. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014.
Fuller, Berenice May. Two May families of Hollow Square, Greene County, Alabama: Including some May-Windham-Harrison-Dargan ancestors and descendants
Gayle, Sarah Haynsworth; The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827–1835: A Substitute for Social Intercourse. Edited by by), Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins and Ruth Smith Truss. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 3012. (The first complete transcription of this 19th-century Alabama woman's journal. Gayle was the wife of prominent Alabama politician and eventual governor John Gayle. While her husband worked in politics, Sarah Gayle managed the family household in Claiborne and later Greensboro, raising their six children and overseeing the family's slaves. Isolated and lonely, Gayle found solace in her journal, which she never intended strangers to read. Her candor openly reveals her struggles with bearing and raising children, slave management, health issues, acquaintances, and being wife to an absent husband.)
Hale County, Alabama, 2018 : land atlas & plat book, Rockford, Ill. , Rockford Map Publishers, 2018.
Heritage of Hale County, Alabama. Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2001.
Hubbs, G. Ward. Guarding Greensboro: a Confederate company in the making of a Southern community. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c2003.
Maharidge, Dale. And their children after them : the legacy of Let us now praise famous men, James Agee, Walker Evans, and the rise and fall of cotton in the South. Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson; with a foreword by Carl Mydans. New York : Pantheon Books, c1989.
Mansell, Jeff. Hale County, Alabama: An Inventory of Significant and Historic Resources. Cahaba Trace Commission, 1992. “This inventory of historic and architecturally significant buildings and structures in Hale County is the second in a series of reports to be compiled for the Cahaba Trace Commission.”
Moore, Andrew. Blue Alabama, photographs and text by Andrew Moore, preface by Imani Perry, essay by Madison Smartt Bell. Damiani Editore, Bologna 2019. Forthcoming in September 2019. (A poetic evocation of Alabama's Black Belt with portraits of people and photographs of details of landscape and architectural structures, a number of the photographs taken in Hale County.)
Nathans, Sydney, A mind to stay: White plantation, Black homeland. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017. (In 1844, North Carolina planter Paul Cameron bought 1,600 acres near Greensboro, Alabama, and sent out 114 enslaved people to cultivate cotton and enlarge his fortune. In the 1870s, he sold the plantation to emancipated black families who worked there. Drawing on thousands of letters from the planter and on interviews with descendants of those who bought the land, Nathans unravels how and why the planter’s former laborers purchased the site of their enslavement, kept its name as Cameron Place, and defended their homeland against challengers from the Jim Crow era to the present day.)
Reynolds, John. The fight for freedom: a memoir of my years in the civil rights movement. Bloomington, IN : Author House, 2012. (One section is set in Greensboro.)
Steponaitis, Vicas P Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: An Archaeological Study at Moundville. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1983.
Theroux, Pauli. Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads. Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. (Intriguing glimpses of Greensboro and Hale County, with insights and commentary not always palatable to local residents.)
Visions of the Black Belt: A Cultural Survey of the Heart of Alabama by Robin McDonald Author, Photographer) and Dr. Valerie Pope Burnes Ph.D. (Author). Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2015. (No mere coffee table book full of pretty pictures; it is a profound and intriguing piece of scholarship examining the overarching shadow of the past in a region uniquely defined by its heritage.)
Voices from Company D: diaries by the Greensboro Guards, Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia / edited by G. Ward Hubbs. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c2003
West Alabama Planning and Development Council. Greensboro, Alabama. West Alabama Planning & Development Council. [Alabama?] : The Council, [1983?]
Wilson, Gregory D. The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2008.
Yerby, William Edward Wadsworth. History of Greensboro, Alabama from its earliest settlement. Montgomery, Ala., The Paragon press, 1908. (The ur-history of the town.)
Agee, James. James Agee rediscovered: the journals of Let us now praise famous men and other new manuscripts / edited by Michael A. Lofaro and Hugh Davis. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, c2005. (A new and unique perspective on this Agee. Untarnished and unfettered collection of previously unpublished manuscripts of an author who wrote a major work involving Hale County.)
Agee, James. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families. Text by James Agee, photographs by Walker Evans, with an introduction to the new edition by John Hersey. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1988, c1969. (A classic work. For some tastes, including mine, the prose has not worn as well as the photographs, which are magnificent.)
Benners, Augustus, 1819 or 1820-1885. Disunion, war, defeat, and recovery in Alabama: the journal of Augustus Benners, 1850-1885. Rdited by Glenn and Virginia Linden. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2007.
Blitz, John H. Moundville (Alabama The Forge of History). Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2008. (A short guide to Moundville, it does a good job of reporting not only the facts, but also some of the history of the site, the key researchers over the years, and how archaeologists develop an understanding of the people and the place.)
Boyd, Gregory A. Family Maps of Hale County, Alabama. Arphax Publishing Co., 2010. (Contains newly created maps of original landowners (patent maps) in what is now Hale County, Alabama, gleaned from the indexes of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. For each township in the county, there are two additional maps accompanying the patent map: a road map and a map showing waterways, railroads, and both modern and many historical city-centers and cemeteries. Included are indexes to help you locate what you are looking for, whether you know a person's name, a last name, a place-name, or a cemetery.)
Causeyl Donna R. Some Descendants of JAMES CRAWFORD (1789-1839) Hale County, Alabama. Donway Publishing, 2012. Available only as Amazon Kindle edition.
Christenberry, Daniel Pinkney. The semi-centennial history of the Southern university, 1856-1906, by Daniel P. Christenberry. Greensboro, Ala., D. P. Christenberry, 1908.
Christenberry, William. William Christenberry: Kodachromes. Aperture, 2010.; William Christenberry: Working from Memory: Collected Stories. Steidl, 2008. (The book showcases a large body of previously unknown work that Christenberry shot on 35-mm. Kodachrome film between 1964 to 2007. Freed from his usual, bulkier large-format camera, Christenberry explores the rural Deep South, specifically around Hale County, Alabama.); William Christenberry: Disappearing Places. Richter Verlag; Bilingual edition. 2002; William Christenberry's Black Belt. Tuscaloosa, University Alabama Press, 2007. ("In many ways the early art of William Christenberry is the fusion of two worlds: the familiar folkish landscape of his Hale County grandparents, and the elite world of expressionism that Prof. Mel Price ushered him into at the University of Alabama. Through both artistic styles and varied mediums Christenberry captured a world beyond lens and object, a world both disappearing and reappearing in altered form, as if two dimensions of time and history in Alabama's Black Belt were colliding, each vying for supremacy. This is an important reflection on the region by one of America's foremost artists." — Wayne Flynt) NOTE: This is but a small sampling of works by Christenberry, perhaps the most significant artist to emerge from Hale County. You will find more on Amazon and other book websites.)
Dorr, Lisa Lindquist, Editor. Alabama Women: Their Lives and Times (Southern Women: Their Lives and Times Ser.) Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2017 (Includes section on Julia S. Tutwiler.)
Frears, Andrew. Rural Studio at twenty: designing and building in Hale County, Alabama, by Andrew Freears and Elena Barthel, with Andrea Oppenheimer Dean ; photography by Timothy Hursley. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014.
Fuller, Berenice May. Two May families of Hollow Square, Greene County, Alabama: Including some May-Windham-Harrison-Dargan ancestors and descendants
Gayle, Sarah Haynsworth; The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827–1835: A Substitute for Social Intercourse. Edited by by), Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins and Ruth Smith Truss. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 3012. (The first complete transcription of this 19th-century Alabama woman's journal. Gayle was the wife of prominent Alabama politician and eventual governor John Gayle. While her husband worked in politics, Sarah Gayle managed the family household in Claiborne and later Greensboro, raising their six children and overseeing the family's slaves. Isolated and lonely, Gayle found solace in her journal, which she never intended strangers to read. Her candor openly reveals her struggles with bearing and raising children, slave management, health issues, acquaintances, and being wife to an absent husband.)
Hale County, Alabama, 2018 : land atlas & plat book, Rockford, Ill. , Rockford Map Publishers, 2018.
Heritage of Hale County, Alabama. Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2001.
Hubbs, G. Ward. Guarding Greensboro: a Confederate company in the making of a Southern community. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c2003.
Maharidge, Dale. And their children after them : the legacy of Let us now praise famous men, James Agee, Walker Evans, and the rise and fall of cotton in the South. Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson; with a foreword by Carl Mydans. New York : Pantheon Books, c1989.
Mansell, Jeff. Hale County, Alabama: An Inventory of Significant and Historic Resources. Cahaba Trace Commission, 1992. “This inventory of historic and architecturally significant buildings and structures in Hale County is the second in a series of reports to be compiled for the Cahaba Trace Commission.”
Moore, Andrew. Blue Alabama, photographs and text by Andrew Moore, preface by Imani Perry, essay by Madison Smartt Bell. Damiani Editore, Bologna 2019. Forthcoming in September 2019. (A poetic evocation of Alabama's Black Belt with portraits of people and photographs of details of landscape and architectural structures, a number of the photographs taken in Hale County.)
Nathans, Sydney, A mind to stay: White plantation, Black homeland. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017. (In 1844, North Carolina planter Paul Cameron bought 1,600 acres near Greensboro, Alabama, and sent out 114 enslaved people to cultivate cotton and enlarge his fortune. In the 1870s, he sold the plantation to emancipated black families who worked there. Drawing on thousands of letters from the planter and on interviews with descendants of those who bought the land, Nathans unravels how and why the planter’s former laborers purchased the site of their enslavement, kept its name as Cameron Place, and defended their homeland against challengers from the Jim Crow era to the present day.)
Reynolds, John. The fight for freedom: a memoir of my years in the civil rights movement. Bloomington, IN : Author House, 2012. (One section is set in Greensboro.)
Steponaitis, Vicas P Ceramics, Chronology, and Community Patterns: An Archaeological Study at Moundville. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1983.
Theroux, Pauli. Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads. Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. (Intriguing glimpses of Greensboro and Hale County, with insights and commentary not always palatable to local residents.)
Visions of the Black Belt: A Cultural Survey of the Heart of Alabama by Robin McDonald Author, Photographer) and Dr. Valerie Pope Burnes Ph.D. (Author). Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2015. (No mere coffee table book full of pretty pictures; it is a profound and intriguing piece of scholarship examining the overarching shadow of the past in a region uniquely defined by its heritage.)
Voices from Company D: diaries by the Greensboro Guards, Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia / edited by G. Ward Hubbs. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c2003
West Alabama Planning and Development Council. Greensboro, Alabama. West Alabama Planning & Development Council. [Alabama?] : The Council, [1983?]
Wilson, Gregory D. The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2008.
Yerby, William Edward Wadsworth. History of Greensboro, Alabama from its earliest settlement. Montgomery, Ala., The Paragon press, 1908. (The ur-history of the town.)
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