Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum, 1801 Jack Warner Pkwy, Tuscaloosa, AL (2026)

02/27/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport. This is the final post for February. ❤️ We hope you've enjoyed our community's contribution to Black History Month and it has provided some insight into our vast and varied local history.

Arlington L. Freeman Sr., known to most as A. L. Freeman, died in 2003 at 69.

Freeman was a Fayette County farm boy who dedicated his life to creating recreational opportunities for Tuscaloosa youths. For 37 years, until his 1996 retirement, Freeman worked in local recreation – first for the city of Tuscaloosa’s recreation department then Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority when it was created in 1969.

He headed the organization’s athletic leagues and youth programs for many years and worked for the development of two west Tuscaloosa parks, one at 18th Street and 30th Avenue, which was named for him after his retirement, and Palmore Park. His focus was squarely on increasing opportunities for west Tuscaloosa residents, a cause he advocated until his death.

The A.L. Freeman Park was renovated in 2002; it is now a 3-acre park and provides playgrounds and picnic areas, a shelter, rock walls, exploration in unique tubes and climbing loop ladders. There is also a recreational pool featuring a water play area.

Freeman’s efforts on behalf of inner-city neighborhoods earned him statewide acclaim and in 1991, he received a special service award from the state parks and recreation association.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/1098

02/25/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

Police line the sidewalk as civil rights activists approach the new Tuscaloosa County Courthouse, protesting the "whites only" signs over water fountains and restrooms.

The march came after T. Y. Rogers called a meeting at the First African Baptist Church on April 20, 1964. The march was part of the plan designed to fight the city's insistence on discriminatory signage specifically in the new courthouse.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/292

02/22/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

On June 11, 1963, Vivian Malone and James Hood arrived at the University of Alabama registration building. The building was guarded by 750 state troopers, local police, Alabama National Guardsmen, and George Wallace who stood at the doors to block entrance.

Wallace was given a 'cease and desist' order by Attorney General Katzenback sent by President Kennedy.

After much debate between Katzenback and Wallace, the two students were escorted to the front of the auditorium by Brigadier Genral Henry Graham of the National Guard.

Malone and Hood registered for classes that day, making Alabama the 50th state in the union to integrate its public school system.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/261

02/20/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

The Diamond Theater opened in 1946 at 621 23rd Avenue in Tuscaloosa and closed in 1967. The building accommodated 500 and was fitted with the most modern cinema equipment, attractively decorated and completely fireproof. The theater and Diamond Drugs next door were part of a group of businesses known as the Bluefront District that catered to African-Americans. The building was razed in 2007 to make room for the city's Intermodal facility.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/2437

02/18/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

Students Kathy Willis and Jeffrey Martin stand under the Druid High School advertisement for the last edition of the school's yearbook. The all-black school closed in 1979 and became Central High School West. Later, the building was razed to make way for a new school.

Druid High School for black students was called Industrial High School from 1935 to 1954 when it was renamed.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/357

02/15/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

Solomon Perteet, a free man of color, was an entrepreneur and businessman in Tuscaloosa prior to the Civil War (name also spelled Perteat and Petite).

Perteet died on Oct. 3, 1863, in Tuscaloosa at 76 years of age and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Tuscaloosa, Ala., among whites, breaking a tradition. He made a reasonable fortune and was able to buy a plot for himself and his family. His plot contains only one headstone, but a fence surrounds it and there are other graves, one said to be the burial site of the child of his daughter Martha.

His gravestone reads: "Solomon Perteat, a free man of color, born in Wilkes County Georgia, died at his home near this city, Oct. 3d.1863, aged 76 years. By an industrious, sober, frugal, and honest life, he earned and left to his wife and children a handsome and comfortable estate. He is not dead but sleeping."

According to Gary B. Mills, Department of History at the University of Alabama, Perteet was born in Wilkes County, Ga., in 1789, the illegitimate son of a white mother named Ruth Perteet, who was a member of a respectable family of small-scale slaveholders. At age 11, Solomon was bound out to Burwell Green to serve as an apprentice bricklayer until age 21. As a free adult, the married his first wife, a free woman of color named Diannah Rogers.

About the time of his arrival in Tuscaloosa, Perteet purchased Lucinda, the slave woman who became his second wife, together with her son William, born to her of a prior union. He then petitioned the legislature for permission to manumit (free) both.

In the 1850 census Perteet lists his occupation as plasterer. While he did work at this trade, even having a contract to do some work in the Capitol building, he made most of his money in real estate, buying and selling several pieces of property in Tuscaloosa during his lifetime.

As an entreprenuer in Tuscaloosa, Perteet not only loaned money to whites, but when they did not repay, took them to court with the juries ruling in Perteet's favor in every case.

In addition to manumitting several of the slaves he owned, Perteet provided the means for others to free themselves. He purchased slaves with the specific understanding that after they repaid him, they would be free.

Ned Berry, purchased under such an agreement, took only one year to repay the $700 to Perteet. Berry then began a very successful business hauling all manner of goods from one side of Tuscaloosa County to the other with his sturdy wagon and four good horses. Berry was later able to free his wife, Cynthia, and son Daniel under similar agreements.

Both Perteet and Berry owned holdings in Newtown that were damaged when the tornado of 1842 devastated the area.

One of the properties owned by Perteet when he died was the three-story building on University Boulevard next to the Kress building.

Information on Perteet can be found in the following Tuscaloosa News issues:

"Free Negroes Prospered in Land Deals,"The Tuscaloosa News, April 23, 1969, page 2D
"Successful Businessman helped many slaves," The Tuscaloosa News, Feb. 15, 1987, Black Heritage Supplement, page 9.
"More Information on Solomon Perteet," The Tuscaloosa News, Feb. 22, 1987, page 24A
"Free Blacks Thrived Before Civil War," The Tuscaloosa News, Feb. 9, 1992
"Entrepreneur Leaves Richly Shaded Legacy," Ben Windham, The Tuscaloosa News, Mar. 18, 2001

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/904

02/13/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

A historic marker erected on the banks of the Black Warrior River near the Hugh Thomas Bridge in Tuscaloosa reads:

"Born a slave in South Carolina in 1807, Horace King became a master bridge builder while working with John Godwin. With the aid of Tuscaloosan Robert Jemison, King was freed by act of the Alabama legislature in 1846. He went on to build many bridges and other structures across the South. Revered and respected for this organizational abilities, building skills and personal integrity, he formed the King Brothers Bridge Company with his family after the Civil War. After serving two terms in the Alabama legislature during Reconstruction, he died at LaGrange, GA, in 1885. John Godwin and Horace King built the first bridge across the Black Warrior River on this site in 1834. Alabama Historical Association."

However, it was discovered that it was Seth King, not Horace King, who built the first bridge across the Black Warrior. It was financed by Robert Jemison Jr. and Jemison charged a toll to users. The first bridge was burned by Croxton's raiders and it was rebuilt by Horace King in 1872.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/2341

02/11/2025

In honor of , TAVM will highlight African American people, places, and history for and Northport.

This early drawing of the Atlanta store shows the slave auction block at the corner. A lamppost stood beside the auction block. The site was at the corner of Greensboro Avenue and University Boulevard, approximately where a pole-mounted clock now stands in front of the 10-story bank building.

In 1988, Max Heine, a writer for The Tuscaloosa News, interviewed Maude Whatley, 80. "All my early childhood, it was there," she recalled, "It just sat there. It was years before we knew what it was. We never knew till some of our elders explained it to us." Miss Whatley's grandfather was a slave.

The drawing was in a booklet about the city published in the late 1800s by the Tuskaloosa Coal, Iron & Land Co.

The late Marvin Harper, head of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society at that time, said the picture is the only one he knew of that portrayed the auction block.

Both Harper and Whatley said they believed the block was removed when the Atlanta building, which house a general mercantile store at the current site of the bank building, burned and was replaced by a bank building. That would have been prior to 1930, when First National Bank merged with Merchants Bank and Trust Co. and moved into its building.

Neither Harper nor Miss Whatley said they knew where the block was taken.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/african-american-history/item/571

01/31/2025

This is our final post for the month highlighting "Our Communities" in the surrounding area!

Men meet at the Ralph Post Office to play dominoes around 1938.
Ralph is an unincorporated community in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, located near U.S. Route 11 and U.S. Route 43, 16.4 miles southwest of Tuscaloosa. Ralph has a post office with ZIP code 35480, which opened on March 3, 1900.
Ralph was originally known as Hickman, in honor of the first postmaster, William P. Hickman. In 1900, the name was changed to Ralph, either for Ralph Stewart, the son of the postmaster at the time, or Kathleen Ralf Stewart, the wife of the postmaster.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/2202

01/29/2025

We're continuing to highlight "Our Communities" in the Tuscaloosa area!

The Pickensville Stagecoach Inn was constructed about 1820 and located along the Old Columbus Road. It is thought to be the oldest surviving structure in the small town of Pickensville, the former seat of government in Pickens County, and once a thriving city. It had a large boat landing on the and it was the main port for most of the river commerce in the area. A stagecoach ran twice weekly between Columbus and Tuscaloosa, going through Carrollton, Reform, and Gordo also.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/672

01/24/2025

The theme for January is "Our Communities" in the surrounding areas!

Rural reformers developed tomato clubs for girls in the early 1900s. The club got girls interested in home economics which would benefit them when they became rural mothers. Keeping girls up to date with the latest advances relating to the home would in turn improve family life. These clubs led to 4-H Clubs.

And in honor of National Pie Day...Do you like tomato pie?? 🍅

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/269

01/22/2025

The theme is Tuscaloosa Area communities!

The historic Phoenix Hotel in Carrollton, Alabama, was built in 1841.

The hotel was a two-story, 27-room hotel located on the main street just across from the county courthouse. In the old days when transportation was a problem, men who served on the jury at the county spent the night in the hotel. There was a spring, called Johnny Woods Spring, located just a few blocks from the hotel and during the 1920s and 1930s, people would come to stay at the hotel just to visit the spring and drink the water.
The hotel was noted for its fine food served buffet-style on a large lazy-susan table. The table had been sold and was, in 1966, being used at a beach house on the Gulf Coast.
Benjamin F. Roper built the hotel, naming it the Phoenix because it arose from the ashes of the Roper house which had burned. A livery stable was built beside the hotel. Roper operated both the hotel and the livery stable for 12 years.
During the Civil War, Northern troops burned the courthouse, but spared the hotel and enjoyed the lodging there.
Olivia B. Sullivan purchased the hotel in 1945 and ran it until the early 1960s.
The hotel was typical of antebellum buildings with square nails and wooden pegs used in construction and much of the lumber hand-hewn heart pine lumber. An coat of white paint kept the building looking immaculate.
The Phoenix was demolished in 1966 to make room for a new county activities building. Probate Judge Robert H. Kirksey said the county had advertised to sell the building, but got no offers. The county finally gave the building to a Tuscaloosa man if he would tear it down and remove the materials.

🔗https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/2326

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