Page i Stars Fell on Alabama Page ii Page iii Stars Fell on Alabama Carl Carmer Introduction by J. Wayne Flynt Illustrated by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa & London Page iv COPYRIGHT 1934 BY CARL CARMER COPYRIGHT RENEWED 1961 PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY IN 1934 BY FARRAR AND RINEHART INTRODUCTION COPYRIGHT © 1985 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS UNIVERSITY, ALABAMA 35486 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THIRD PRINTING <><><><><><><><><><><><> Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Carmer, Carl Lamson, 1893– Stars fell on Alabama. 1. Alabama—Social life and customs. 2. Alabama— Description and travel. 3. Folklore—Alabama. 4. AfroAmericans—Alabama—Social life and customs. 1. Title. F326.C275 1985 306'.09761 858107 ISBN 0817302360 (alk. paper) ISBN 0817302352 (pbk. : alk. paper) Page v For ELIZABETH BLACK Page vii CONTENTS Introduction xi by J. Wayne Flynt Foreword xix Author's Note xxi Part I. Tuscaloosa Nights I 3 I Arrive II 11 Tuscaloosa III 18 Black Rituals 1. Golf Course Cabin 2. Shoutin' in Moonlight IV 28 Flaming Cross Part II. In the Red Hills I 35 Ladies Bow, Gents Know How II 49 Allday Singing III 58 Footwashing IV 66 Sweet William Came from the Western States V 74 Court Week VI 79 Birmingham Part III. Black Belt I 85 Greene County Rally II 93 Big House 1. Thorn Hill 2. Rosemount 3. Gaineswood and Bluff Hall Page viii III 106 Plaisant Pays de France IV 112 Front Gallery 1. The Tale of the Gilded Mirror 2. The Tale of the Wedding Ring 3. The Tale of the White Dove 4. The Tale of the Stud Nigger V 122 The Tombigbee Outlaws 1. Railroad Bill 2. The Outlaw Sheriff of Sumter County 3. Rube Burrow: Alabama Robin Hood VI 142 God in the Canebrake 1. Ben Delimus 2. The Sims War 3. The Prophetess of Eutaw VII 159 White Man's Nigger: I VIII 169 Miss Polly IX 176 Brer Rabbit Multiplies X 184 Lynching Part IV. Conjure Country I 195 Twotoe Tom II 204 A Good Man to Work For III 208 Processional IV 212 White Man's Nigger: II V 215 Conjure Woman VI 223 Reminiscence Part V. Mobile and the Bayou Country I 233 Mobile II 242 Coq d'Inde III 246 Dauphin Island Page ix Part VI. Cajan I 255 Citronelle II 264 The Hellraisin' III 267 Twilight of the Races Afterword 270 From the Author's Notebook 275 Page xi INTRODUCTION J. Wayne Flynt Carl Lamson Carmer was a strange candidate to write a book about Alabama folkways. Born at Cortland in upstate New York on October 16, 1893, he was essentially a New Yorker, or as he preferred to be called, a "York State man" so as to escape any identification with New York City. His family moved early in his childhood to the ancestral home at Dryden, where Carmers had farmed since the time of his Dutch greatgreatgreatgrandfather. As a boy he ran to fires beside the volunteer fire company, played baseball and tennis for his home town, and earned a fiddle by loading apples and selling them at a cider mill. He attended Hamilton College where most of his male ancestors had earned their degrees. There he was a halfmiler on the track team and an avid tennis player, who also loved to dance, sing folk songs, and scratch out ballads on his fiddle. After graduation in 1914 he earned his M.A. at Harvard, then taught English briefly as Syracuse and the University of Rochester before taking leave to serve as a gunnery officer in France during the First World War. 1 When he returned from Europe, he obtained a job teaching English at The University of Alabama. The six years he spent in Tuscaloosa would profoundly influence his life. He had already begun to write but had shown a decided preference for poetry over prose. As a professor at the University, he especially devoted his energies to English 13, a poetry class. Most Northerners would have fared poorly in a small Alabama town in the early 1920s but Carmer had special liabilities. The first night in Tuscaloosa he discovered that he did not like cornbread, okra, or collards. Shortly afterward University of Alabama students let him know that they did not appreciate a "missionary of Eastern culture,"

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