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An engaging history of The University of Alabama President’s Mansion

As part of The University of Alabama’s 175th anniversary celebration (2006), the new edition of A Mansion’s Memories includes details of the tenures of the four presidents who have served since the Mathews term. Profusely illustrated with 69 black-and-white and 17 color photographs, this classic is sure to be welcomed anew by alumni and friends of the University and all lovers of fine old buildings that still function in their original capacities.

The story of how a university, a city, and a movement opened the door to change in the American South.

Opening the Doors is a wide-ranging account of the University of Alabama’s 1956 and 1963 desegregation attempts, as well as the little-known story of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s, own civil rights movement. While E. Culpepper Clark’s The Schoolhouse Door remains the standard history of the University of Alabama’s desegregation, in Opening the Doors B. J. Hollars focuses on Tuscaloosa’s purposeful divide between “town” and “gown,” providing a new contextual framework for this landmark period in civil rights history. 

The image of George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door has long burned in American consciousness; however, just as interesting are the circumstances that led him there in the first place, a process that proved successful due to the concerted efforts of dedicated student leaders, a progressive university president, a steadfast administration, and secret negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department, the White House, and Alabama’s stubborn governor. 

In the months directly following Governor Wallace’s infamous stand, Tuscaloosa became home to a leader of a very different kind: twenty-eight-year-old African American reverend T. Y. Rogers, an up-and-comer in the civil rights movement, as well as the protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. After taking a post at Tuscaloosa’s First African Baptist Church, Rogers began laying the groundwork for the city’s own civil rights movement. In the summer of 1964, the struggle for equality in Tuscaloosa resulted in the integration of the city’s public facilities, a march on the county courthouse, a bloody battle between police and protesters, confrontations with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a bus boycott, and the near-accidental-lynching of movie star Jack Palance. 

Relying heavily on new firsthand accounts and personal interviews, newspapers, previously classified documents, and archival research, Hollars’s in-depth reporting reveals the courage and conviction of a town, its university, and the people who call it home.

Dramatic accounts of every University of Alabama National Championship football season recounted by noted sports writers, players, and Alabamians.

Dating back to 1925, when Wallace Wade coached the Crimson Tide to an undefeated season and earned a spot in the Rose Bowl, the driving goal of every University of Alabama football season has been a national championship. A winning team surfaced that very next year, when Hoyt “Wu” Winslett’s squad sealed the national championship at the Rose Bowl for a second time. Winning seasons and bowl games culminating in the coveted crown followed again in 1930, 1934, 1941, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979, 1992, 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2015—more championships than any other college team in the nation.

Sixteen and Counting features a chapter highlighting each of these championship seasons and collects the legendary stories of many of the outstanding coaches and players on the University of Alabama’s championship teams. College football legends such as Wallace Wade, Wu Winslett, Johnny Mack Brown, Pooley Herbert, Frank Thomas, Dixie Howell, Don Hutson, Jimmy Nelson, Holt Rast, Pat Trammel, Sam Bailey, Lee Roy Jordan, Harry Gilmer, Bill Lee, Ken Stabler, Joe Namath, Gary Rutledge, Randy Billingsley, Barry Krauss, Clem Gryska, Gene Stallings, Paul “Bear” Bryant, and, of course, Nick Saban all make prominent appearances.

A seventeenth chapter is included that looks at the uncrowned teams commonly referred to as “the other five,” who were considered national champions by at least one national ranking service at the end of the season. Every glorious milestone and high point in Alabama football history is included here: “Mama called,” the wishbone formation, “The Goal Line Stand,” the Million Dollar Band, the coaching tower, the Davis kicking dynasty, the Notre Dame box, Coach of the Year, Team of the Decade, and two Heisman trophy winners.

Traces the little-known story of the bitter contest for the fate of the University of Alabama after the Civil War.

In The Battle for the University of Alabama, William Warren Rogers Jr. gives a fascinating account of the fierce struggle over the nature of the University of Alabama after the Civil War. Union forces reduced the campus to ruins as the war ended, and the university did not reopen until 1869. In the interregnum, powerful forces shifted the trajectory of the school. Alabama Republicans authored an egalitarian state constitution that delivered oversight of the university to the Republican Party. That set the stage for turmoil and confrontation. This book tells the story of that conflict.

In the next few years, Democrats charged Republicans with turning the university into a “radical” institution. They alleged that a handful of unqualified individuals had gained faculty positions because of their political allegiance, which resulted in the university’s academic desecration. Professors were bitterly denounced in the state newspaper press and quite personally in Tuscaloosa. Administration of the university became part of the fratricidal political debate in the state. Political violence and questions concerning race, specifically the possible integration of the university, illuminated the controversies of the Reconstruction years. Many of these questions resonate even today.

This authoritative account sets events at the University of Alabama against the backdrop of what occurred at other state universities in the Reconstruction South. The University of North Carolina experienced controversy similar to Alabama’s. At the University of Georgia, however, calm prevailed. This story of the incendiary events at Alabama’s flagship university charts new ground and provides a revelatory look into the extraordinary partisanship that characterized the South after the Civil War.