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WINNER OF THE GULF SOUTH HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S MICHAEL V. R. THOMASON BOOK AWARD

Family, influence, and the making of Southern power.

From Reconstruction through the end of World War II, the Bankheads served as the principal architects of the political, economic, and cultural framework of Alabama and the greater South. As a family, they were instrumental in fashioning the New South and the twentieth century American political economy, but now the Bankhead name is largely associated only with place names.

Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama is a deeply researched epic family biography that reflects the complicated and evolving world inhabited by three generations of the extremely accomplished—if problematic—Bankhead family of northwest Alabama. Kari Frederickson’s expertly crafted account traces the careers of five members of the family—John Hollis Bankhead; his sons, John Hollis Bankhead Jr. and William Brockman Bankhead; his daughter, Marie Bankhead Owen; and his granddaughter, Tallulah Brockman Bankhead.

A Confederate veteran and son of a slaveholder, John Hollis Bankhead held political office almost continuously from 1865 until his death in 1920, first in state-level positions and ultimately in Congress–in the House then in the Senate–for thirty-three years. Two of his three sons, John Jr. and William, followed in their father’s political footsteps. John Jr., a successful corporate attorney, was elected to the state legislature and then to the US Senate in 1930; William was elected to the House of Representatives in 1916 and chosen Speaker of the House in 1936. Together, father and sons played key roles in crafting and maintaining a conservative political culture, legal code, and economic system that facilitated economic opportunities for cotton farmers, coal barons, and emerging industries in Alabama and across the South while perpetuating White supremacy. 

Daughter Marie Bankhead Owen extended the family’s cultural power during her thirty-five-year tenure as director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. From this position and through her work with groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, she embraced and disseminated a historical narrative steeped in Lost Cause mythology that validated the power and privilege of White elites and naturalized the second-class status of African Americans. William’s daughter, actress Tallulah Bankhead, benefited from her family’s rich political bloodlines and in turn lent them a touch of glamour and made the Bankheads modern. Frederickson’s meticulously researched examination of this once-powerful but now largely forgotten southern family is a sweeping and complex story of the region and its relationship with the wider world over the course of eight decades, from the wreckage of the Civil War to the dawn of the nuclear age.
 

An illustrated guidebook documenting the history and sites of the state’s origins

Alabama’s territorial and early statehood years represent a crucial formative period in its past, a time in which the state both literally and figuratively took shape. The story of the remarkable changes that occurred within Alabama as it transitioned from frontier territory to a vital part of the American union in less than a quarter century is one of the most compelling in the state’s past. This history is rich with stories of charismatic leaders, rugged frontiersmen, a dramatic and pivotal war that shaped the state’s trajectory, raging political intrigue, and pervasive sectional rivalry.

Many of Alabama’s modern cities, counties, and religious, educational,  and governmental institutions first took shape within this time period.  It also gave way to the creation of sophisticated trade and communication networks, the first large-scale cultivation of cotton, and the advent of the steamboat. Contained within this story of growth and innovation is a parallel story, the dispossession of Native groups  of their lands and the forced labor of slaves, which fueled much  of Alabama’s early development.

Early Alabama: An Illustrated Guide to the Formative Years, 1798–1826 serves as a traveler’s guidebook with a fast-paced narrative that traces Alabama’s developmental years. Despite the great significance of this era in the state’s overall growth, these years are perhaps the least understood in all of the state’s history and have received relatively scant attention from historians. Mike Bunn has created a detailed guide—appealing to historians and the general public—for touring historic sites and structures including selected homes, churches, businesses, government buildings, battlefields, cemeteries, and museums..

From the home front to the front lines—Alabama’s pivotal role in shaping victory in World War II.

Alabama and its people played a conspicuous role in World War II. Not only were thousands of servicemen trained at military facilities in the state—at Fort McClellan, Camp Rucker, Camp Sibert, Maxwell Air Field, and Tuskegee Army Air Field—but Axis prisoners of war were interned in camps on Alabama soil. The state of Alabama held a significant number of these prisoners, over seventeen thousand in four camps across the state: Camp Aliceville, Camp Opelika, Fort McClellan, and Fort Rucker. This study focuses on Camp Aliceville and Camp Opelika which provide a sample that frames and highlights the national prisoner of war program. Through this example, one can see the lasting legacy of the prisoner of war program and its role in transforming the United States and forever changing the lives of thousands of prisoners, guards, and local citizens. An analysis of the Alabama camps also reveals how memory is constructed and how one narrative can ultimately emerge as the dominant story. In addition, a survey of the landscape reveals the importance of place and its role in the process of remembering and forgetting.
 

The only comprehensive statewide study of the institution of slavery in Alabama

Since its initial publication in 1950, Slavery in Alabama remains the only comprehensive statewide study of the institution of slavery in Alabama. Sellers concentrates on examining the social and economic aspects of how slavery operated in the state. After a brief discussion of slavery under imperial rulers of the colonial and territorial periods, Sellers focuses on the transplantation of the slavery system from the Atlantic seaboard states to Alabama.

Sellers used the primary sources available to him, including government documents, county and city records, personal papers, church records, and newspapers. His discussions of the church and the slave, and his treatment of the proslavery defense, deepen the comprehensiveness of his study. His two sections of photographs are special touches showing former slaves and churches with slave galleries.

An in-depth study of non-elite white families in Alabama—from the state’s creation through the end of the Civil War

The Failure of Our Fathers: Family, Gender, and Power in Confederate Alabama examines the evolving position of non-elite white families in Alabama during one of the most pivotal epochs in the state’s history. Drawing on a wide range of personal and public documents reflecting the state’s varied regions and economies, Victoria E. Ott uses gender and family as a lens to examine the yeomanry and poor whites, a constituency that she collectively defines as “common whites,” who identified with the Confederate cause.

Ott provides a nuanced examination of how these Alabamians fit within the antebellum era’s paternalistic social order, eventually identifying with and supporting the Confederate mission to leave the Union and create an independent, slaveholding state. But as the reality of the war slowly set in and the Confederacy began to fray, the increasing dangers families faced led Alabama’s common white men and women to find new avenues to power as a distinct socioeconomic class.

Ott argues that family provided the conceptual framework necessary to understand why common whites supported a war to protect slavery despite having little or no investment in the institution. Going to war meant protecting their families from outsiders who threatened to turn their worlds upside down. Despite class differences, common whites envisioned the Confederacy as a larger family and the state as paternal figures who promised to protect its loyal dependents throughout the conflict. Yet, as the war ravaged many Alabama communities, devotion to the Confederacy seemed less a priority as families faced continued separations, threats of death, and the potential for starvation. The construct of a familial structure that once created a sense of loyalty to the Confederacy now gave them cause to question its leadership. Ott shows how these domestic values rooted in highly gendered concepts ultimately redefined Alabama’s social structure and increased class distinctions after the war.
 

The Federal Road was a major influence in settlement of the Mississippi Territory during the period between the Louisiana Purchase and removal of the Creek Indians

One man’s remarkable account of nation‑building, Native diplomacy, and the making of the early American South.

The Reminiscences of George Strother Gaines: Pioneer and Statesman of Early Alabama and Mississippi, 1805–1843 offers one of the most vivid, irreplaceable firsthand accounts of the American Southeast during its most transformative decades. Edited and expertly contextualized by historian James P. Pate, this volume gathers Gaines’s dictated memoirs, rare letters, early newspaper publications, oral-history interviews, and extensive editorial notes to illuminate a world on the cusp of monumental change. 

George Strother Gaines was no ordinary frontier figure. Trusted by U.S. officials and Choctaw leaders alike, he played central roles as federal factor at the Choctaw Trading House, a key intermediary during treaty negotiations, a primary organizer of the first Choctaw removal, a banker and state senator in newly formed Alabama, and later a driving force behind the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. His reminiscences reveal intimate knowledge of the region’s political development, frontier economy, Native diplomacy, and daily life. They are written in a strikingly elegant “Addisonian” style praised even in his own lifetime. 

This edition’s special features—including detailed maps, illustrations, genealogical material, and a robust scholarly introduction—make it the most comprehensive and authoritative presentation of Gaines’s writings ever published. It not only preserves his voice but situates him within the broader historical forces reshaping the Gulf South and Native nations in the nineteenth century. 

Ideal readers include: 

• Historians of Alabama, Mississippi, and the early American South 
• Scholars of Native American and Choctaw/Chickasaw history 
• Readers of frontier, antebellum, or political history 
• Genealogists and local-history enthusiasts 
• Anyone seeking an engaging, elegantly written window into the early Southeast 

This is a foundational text for understanding the region’s past—and a compelling story told by one of its most influential witnesses.