SEASON 6  | BOOK PROMO Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Alabama Short Stories Podcast! I’m your host, Shawn Wright. As always, it’s a pleasure to have you with me. I want to take a moment to remind you about something you might already be familiar with: my…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 10 Rickwood Field was built in 1910 so Rick Woodward would have a showplace for his baseball team, the Birmingham Barons. Little did he know that 114 years later, Major League Baseball would host a game on this field. The field has hosted concerts,…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 9 At the end of World War II, another war started, the Cold War. To win the minds and hearts of people around the world against the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department put together a show of modern art that was to tour the world. The show,…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 8 The University of Alabama accepted a bid to play in the 1926 Rose Bowl against powerhouse University of Washington. This was the first time a team from the South was invited to play in this historic event. The underdog Alabama team won the game…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 7 We have grown up hearing stories about the gold rush. But it’s always the California gold rush they are talking about. An event so huge that years later, San Francisco’s NFL team called themselves the ’49ers after the prospectors of the 1849 gold…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 6 Mrs. Irene, as she was known to neighbors, was born with a sixth sense. From a young age, she was able to find things, easter eggs, misplaced items, or the missing hunting dog. Her father tried to shield her from the scrutiny fortune tellers…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 4 Music is a vital part of our lives in Alabama and it covers all genres. This story is about one genre of music called Sacred Harp. It is named after the book of songs of the same name. at the beginning of the 20th century, these songs sounded…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 5 Zelda Sayre was born and raised in Montgomery, the daughter of a lawyer and politician. She was a socialite and caught the interest of young men from as far away as Atlanta. No one swept her off her feet until she met a young soldier stationed in…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 3 Spider Martin was a commercial photographer in Birmingham, Alabama, who billed himself with a little tongue-in-cheek as the “world’s greatest photographer.” He worked for corporate clients and earned his fair share of awards for his work. But his…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 2 Roads in Alabama go as far back as when indians followed the trails that animals had created. These trails would be widened and “improved” as more people and bigger vehicles used them. When the car came along, it was apparent that we must have…

SEASON 6  | EPISODE 1 Cudjo Lewis was a captive aboard the Clotilda when it entered Mobile Harbor, the last slave boat to the United States in 1860. The story was well known to locals in Mobile but two writers, Emma Langdon Roche and Zora Neale Hurston, went to find…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 10 Armistice Day was created at the end of what we now know as World War I. At the end of World War II, one Birmingham native felt a need to celebrate all veterans, and he set out to honor them. Raymond Weeks took his fight to Washington, D.C., and…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 9 When Alabama Power made plans for Lewis Smith Dam in a rural area of Northwest Alabama, they knew they had plenty of time to clear the basin of trees, buildings, and other potential obstructions before the lake filled. Then the rains came, and…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 8 What do you do when you have one of the largest buildings in Birmingham that feature a smooth glass finish with lights to illuminate each window. Create art, of course! Learn about how the Regions building changes light colors and has created…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 7 John Henry was a steel-driving man or maybe just a folk tale. John Henry died while competing against a steam drill in West Virginia, or did he? Some think this folk hero, or real-life hero, died here in Alabama at a tunnel south of Leeds close…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 6 Carrie Tuggle and her husband, John, moved to Birmingham in 1883 in search of better work opportunities and social life. They threw themselves into work and growing their family. They both actively participated in the Knights of Pythias, a…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 5 Harper Lee and Truman Capote are two of this country’s most celebrated writers. Lee for her Pulitzer Prize-winning “To Kill A Mockingbird,” and Capote for “In Cold Blood,” among others. Both writers got their start behind a battered old…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 4 Hugo Black was a U.S. Senator from Alabama who supported FDR’s New Deal. When an opening on the Supreme Court became available, the President knew he wanted an ally on the court, and Hugo Black was his first choice. If the President had done a…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 3 Yolande Betbeze was a college student at Mobile’s Spring Hill College when she saw an opportunity to help her get out of the South. She won the Miss Torch contest, which sent her to Miss Alabama and then to the Miss America Pageant, which she won…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 2 We all know someone who feels they are their team’s “number one fan.” They go to all the games, buy all the gear, and take the day off from work when their team loses. Many fans meet this description for the University of Alabama, but none can…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 1 A Russian immigrant moves to Selma and sees his first banana. He finds out they are shipped to the port of Mobile, and he hatches a plan. This small move to sell “unsellable” bananas sets off a career that will see Sam Zemurray become the leader…

SEASON 5  | EPISODE 0 Season 5 of the Alabama Short Stories podcast is just around the corner, and I can’t wait for it to get started. Hey, this is Shawn Wright, your host for another trip around the state of Alabama to learn about the characters that make Alabama,…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 10 Mardi Gras was started in Mobile, Alabama. Don’t let anyone from New Orleans tell you otherwise. After the civil war, one man is credited with getting it started again by dressing like a Chickasaw Chieftan and marching through the streets of…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 9 Terror has been used as a way to keep people in line for centuries. In Birmingham, with easy access to mining supplies, the klan used dynamite as their tool of terror. But they didn’t count on the resiliency of the citizens in the North…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 8 When conservators removed plaster to make sure the grand staircase in the state capital in Alabama were still safe, they were shocked to find out that they were built by a bridge builder. His name was Horace King. Born a slave, he became one of…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 7 John Lennon was giving a tour of his home to a reporter when he commented on the popularity of his band the Beatles. “We’re more popular than Jesus now.” This one innocuous line made it’s way across the ocean to the studios in a radio station in…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 18 Lonnie Johnson tinkered so much that the neighborhood kids called him “The Professor.” He won first place in a state wide science fair in high school and embarked on a career in the military. He later worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 5 A Japanese war bride who went by the name of Katie Parsons moved to Birmingham and fell in love with it. When she discovered she had an inoperable brain tumor, her dying wish was to have a garden created in her memory in Birmingham. Hear the…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 4 The daughter of Senator John H. Bankhead of Alabama. Tallulah would forge her own path in life on the stage and on the screen. This outspoken woman charmed audiences and shocked prudes with her talents and antics. Learn how this woman from…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 3 In 1986, the English goth band Siouxsie and the Banshees released their album Tinderbox and setoff to tour the United States. One of their venues was the unlikely Alabama Theater in downtown Birmingham. Find out about the goths and see if they…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 2 You see a lot of things driving up and down I-65 in Alabama. Broken-down cars,  the odd mattress, the remains of every conceivable animal, and the devil, Beelzebub himself. Yes, you read that right; the devil is holding court on I-65. Learn about…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 1 On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her bus seat to a white rider in Montgomery, Alabama. This episode is not about her. It is about a 15-year old high school student who sat down for her constitutional rights and was…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 0 Hey, this is Shawn Wright, the host of the Alabama Short Stories podcast. I am happy to announce that season 4 of the podcast is almost here. I capped off three great seasons by publishing the book “Alabama Short Stories, Volume 1.” Now I am…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 11 I am proud to announce that the book, Alabama Short Stories Volume 1, is now available at Amazon.com. It features the first three season stories of the podcast in book form. It’s a perfect gift for that friend or family member who just doesn’t…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 10 Kudzu covers every part of Alabama, and we assume it grows with wild abandon. Swallowing up parked cars and buildings that are in its path. In this Alabama Short Stories podcast episode, we learn about how it came to Alabama and how much more…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 9 Have you ever heard the phrase “Stars Fell on Alabama?” Of course, you have. If you grew up in Alabama, you can’t avoid it. You probably can’t remember the first time you heard it, but it has always been around. Is it a slogan, a song, a book, or…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 8 The USS Alabama, BB-60 was a South Dakota class battleship that served in the North Atlantic and Pacific during World War II. At the war’s end, she was mothballed and stored in the Pacific Reserve Fleet in Puget Sound outside Bremerton,…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 7 Alabama has its fair share of interesting town names. Of course, we would. A lot of cultures have passed through our state. The French, Spanish, and English all have left their mark. So did the different Indian nations. They left names we use…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 6    Cholera came to Birmingham in 1873 and hit the new town hard. By the end of the summer, over half of its citizens had fled the city. Only the sick, the physicians caring for them, and the prostitutes stayed behind. This Alabama Short Stories…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 5 Creating a single emergency number was tossed about for more than a decade before the FCC and AT&T worked together on a solution. On January 12, 1968, AT&T announced that 911 would be the emergency code in the United States. There was no…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 4     The outdoor board has been ubiquitous around the state of Alabama. Signs are found up and down the interstate, in our towns, on back roads, and in every imaginable place. But in New York City, specifically Times Square, the creativity and…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 3     What is a zoo without an elephant? That is precisely what Birmingham citizens thought when the zoo opened in Avondale Park. Park officials set out to find their elephant, choosing an Asian elephant from the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. She was…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 2   Alabama is known for its many aviators and astronauts. In this episode of the Alabama Short Stories podcast, you will learn about a woman who decided that if Charles Lindbergh could fly across the Atlantic, so could she. Ruth Elder left…

SEASON 3  | EPISODE 1 In the summer of 1976, Hollywood descended on Mobile, Alabama, to tell the story of a small child who aliens had abducted.  The Mobile economy had been suffering since the close of Brookley Field seven years earlier. But Hollywood needed what no…

SEASON 4  | EPISODE 0 Hey, this is Shawn Wright, the host of the Alabama Short Stories podcast. I am happy to announce that season 4 of the podcast is almost here. I capped off three great seasons by publishing the book “Alabama Short Stories, Volume 1.” Now I am…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 10 This is our third and final story featuring Red Mountain in Birmingham. The statue of Vulcan has been standing on a pedestal above lone pine gap on Red Mountain since 1939. Not long after that, he would be seen holding a green or red popsicle…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 9 Originally from North Carolina, William Rufus King would move to Alabama and become instrumental in the establishment of Alabama as a state, writing the first constitution and creating Alabama. He would also serve the country at the national…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 8 In season 1, we learned about a man from Germany who moved to Alabama to paint portraits. We also learned about a woman who painted on spider webs. In this episode of the Alabama Short Stories podcast, we learn about a man who painted on an…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 7 Andrew Jackson Beard was born a slave on a plantation near Pinson, Alabama. After gaining his freedom, he went on to become a farmer, millwright, and prolific inventor. Even though he could not read or write, Beard went on to own patents for…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 6 This is our second story about Red Mountain this season and it is about the actual mountain. For decades there had been talk about tunneling through the mountain to help travelers coming from Homewood, Mountain Brook, and towns to the south….

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 5 Tuscumbia native Tom Hendrix had learned about his relatives through the stories his grandmother would tell him. A trip to Oklahoma and a meeting with a woman named Minnie Long would change the course of his life. 8.5 million pounds of stone…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 4 What do you do when it’s December 31, 1999, and the end of the world is upon you? You celebrate at Birmingham’s iconic The Club of course, where the view of the apocalypse is unsurpassed. This is the story of the private club, “The Club” and the…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 3 John Pratt lived in the sleepy town of Centre, Alabama where he was a writer, lawyer, and teacher. He eventually owned and edited the local paper. Pratt wrote a lot in his many careers. So much so that in an effort to cut down on the writer’s…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 2 When you think of ice hockey, you don’t think of Birmingham, Alabama. At least you didn’t in the mid-1970s when the Birmingham Bulls of the WHA came to town. For the next few seasons, some of the greatest hockey players of all time would come to…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 1 What do Erskine Hawkins, Sun Ra and Cleve Eaton all have in common? They were all students of Fess Whatley, famed Birmingham band leader at A.H. Parker High School. Whatley would end up training musicians that would populate some of the largest…

SEASON 2  | EPISODE 0 We have another season of great Alabama short stories that you may not have learned about in your Alabama Civics class or read in books.  We have stories about the inventor of the typewriter and the Janney coupler used on trains. Both men were…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 10 Some of the people we will talk about on Alabama Shorts Stories are inventors. You may be surprised at all the items that were created right here in Alabama. The windshield wiper for instance. This simple idea was a game-changer and today we…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 9 Birmingham has its share of statues around town. There are statues of people in Kelly Ingram Park, Linn Park, the UAB campus, Samford’s Campus, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Five Points South, Rickwood Field, and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame….

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 8 In an earlier episode of the Alabama Short Stories podcast, we talked about the painter William Frye. An artist who learned the ways of the masters at Heidelberg University in Prague, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and painted on traditional…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 7 My parents have a set of portraits hanging in their living room of Ephraim H. Foster and his wife Susan A. Watkins. My third great-grandparents. Painted before the civil war, these portraits were passed down in the family to their daughter Bettie…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 6 Sylacauga is known for many things. Most famously for its fine white Madre Cream marble, which has is used in buildings all over the world. In Washington D.C. alone, it has been used in some form in the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument,…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 5 Not only do we get radio from towers located around the state, but we can also now get it from satellites. We can also get a form of radio as podcasts which you download to your phone or electronic device to listen to at your leisure. Some may…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 4 In 1974 Homewood High School and its football team were only three years old. The coach was only 26 years old. To think that a team this new, this young, could break into the Alabama State 4A football playoffs was unthinkable. But that was right…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 3 Alabama is lucky to have its share of astronauts who were born in Alabama or while working with NASA, lived here for a time, specifically in Huntsville. There is a chance you could run into an astronaut in Alabama. It’s a slim chance but still a…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 2 Thirty short years after the first basketball game was played in Springville, Massachusetts, Greenville High School’s basketball season was just getting started. Sports fans in Greenville knew this team was special and that they would go far. The…

SEASON 1  | EPISODE 1 Leo Wright was a creative director at the advertising agency Luckie (also know as The Robert Luckie Company, Luckie & Forney, Tucker Wayne/Luckie, Luckie & Company and maybe others) in Birmingham, AL, where he spent his entire career. He…

SEASON 1  | TEASER EPISODE Hi, my name is Shawn Wright, the host, and creator of Alabama Short Stories. The podcast that was created to celebrate those stories about Alabama that you don’t hear about often, if ever. They are the stories that were not shared in your…