| Summary: | The following segments are included:
0:00:01: Silent footage of a meeting of the Macon County Abolition Committee, which was created by a constitutional amendment in December 1957 and met for the first time on January 6, 1958. Membership consisted of state representatives and senators from Bullock, Elmore, Lee, Macon, Montgomery, and Tallapoosa Counties; among those visible here are Senator Sam Engelhardt (chairman) and Senator Vaughan Hill Robison. This footage was likely shot in early August 1958, after the body recommended the creation of a permanent committee to monitor civil rights activity in the county. (For the text of the 1959 resolution establishing the Macon County Standby Committee, see Act No. 17 at https://archive.org/details/alabama-acts-1959_v1/page/n39.)
0:00:52: Senator Sam Engelhardt reporting on the final recommendation of the Macon County Abolition Committee on August 4, 1958: "The committee finds that conditions in Macon County are very serious due to activities of certain elements at the Tuskegee Institute and the Tuskegee Veterans Hospital. We find that these conditions continue to exist, that serious trouble or, rather, dissolution of the county is imminent. The main part of our recommendations today is the establishment of a permanent Macon County committee to watch conditions in Macon County and contiguous counties very closely. As I said before, the, if this trend continues, the only answer is to dissolve Macon County."
0:01:42: Attorney General John Patterson with Grady Rogers, Macon County registrar, during a hearing of the United States Commission on Civil Rights at the Federal Building in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 8, 1958. Grady was one of several county officials who refused to be sworn in or testify during the two-day hearing, which was held to investigate voting rights violations in Alabama. The six commission members can also be seen a various points in the segment (left to right): Doyle E. Carlton, J. Ernest Wilkins, John A. Hannah (chairman), Robert G. Storey, John S. Battle, and Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh.
0:02:28: Voting tallies for Autauga County, Alabama, during the Democratic primary election on May 6, 1958. The following candidates are listed along the top of the chalkboard: James A. Rice (incumbent) and W. B. Dominick for probate judge; Ellie Chambliss, Norris Champion, W. E. Evans, George Grant (incumbent), James Stanfield, and Obie C. Thompson for sheriff; Louis Coker, E. A. Grouby (incumbent), Leon Pearson, and Walter O. Summerville for state representative; Joe W. Graham and Alex Hayes for state senator; and James A. Golson and J. H. Bruce (incumbent) for county board of education. The footage is silent.
0:02:41: Montgomery attorney Frank Mizell, a proponent of states' rights, criticizing the ongoing use of oaths pledging loyalty to the national Democratic Party, a measure endorsed by Roy Mayhall, chairman of the State Democratic Executive Committee: "As a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, I believe the allegiance and duties of this party governing body are owed absolutely to the Democrats of our state and not to some in-state manipulators and out-of-state party dictators who, through the political device of the loyalty gag rule would pawn the ballot of every free Alabama Democrat to national candidates unnamed and unknown, delivering the Alabama Democratic electorate like cattle into a Chicago political stockyard."
0:03:20: Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, arriving at Dannelly Field in Montgomery, Alabama, on October 24, 1958. A large group of supporters from the Montgomery Improvement Association and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church were waiting at the airport to welcome the couple home. (King had been recuperating in New York, where he was stabbed by a woman in a store on September 27.) The footage is silent.
0:03:35: Statement by Senator John Sparkman defending states' rights in the wake of ongoing federal efforts to promote civil rights and integration, particularly through U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
0:04:36: Statement by Senator Lister Hill predicting Democratic victories in the upcoming election on November 4, 1958, as well as the presidential election of 1960. The segment begins with a silent clip of Hill addressing the Alabama Labor Council conference at Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery on October 28.
0:05:08: On-the-street interviews with voters about a statement made by a Democratic party official, possibly Roy Mayhall, who was head of the State Democratic Executive Committee in 1958. Each response is vague but negative, and the segment ends with the following comment: "Oh, I don't think that's very brilliant for a man that's head of the party. That's about all I have to say about it. Maybe we should have a third party down here."
0:05:59: Footage of several wrecks and accidents, including a crushed automobile on a highway, a crashed plane in a wooded area, and a derailed train on a rural stretch of track. Also included is a shot of highway patrolman performing a "courtesy check," which was a traffic safety program instituted by the Alabama Department of Public Safety in 1958. The footage is silent.
0:07:16: Installation of new equipment at the U.S. Weather Bureau station at Dannelly Field in Montgomery. The footage is silent.
0:07:28: Dogs from Kilby Prison being led by law enforcement officers and African American inmates, possibly in search of a suspect or an escaped inmate. The footage is silent.
0:07:48: Bill Lyerly, director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, making a statement about the return of murder suspect Byron Scroggins on March 30, 1958. Scroggins, who was accused of killing pharmacist Jamie Long Meigs in Centreville on February 12, had been arrested by police in Columbus, Mississippi.
0:08:50: Footage of various satellite and Air Force missile launches in 1958. Also included are interviews with a brigadier general on the future of space flight: "The next would be a man-carrying vehicle which would go around the moon and return to Earth without landing. And, of course, the important one that everybody hopes to see is the man lunar landing, stay a short while and return to Earth, and I emphasize, safely. . . . I expect to see it. I think ten years seems to be a conservative estimate of when this will be possible to put a man on the moon and get him back.."
0:10:39: Silent footage of a groundbreaking ceremony, possibly for a church in Montgomery.
0:10:50: Exterior and interior shots of the new Montgomery County courthouse on Washington Avenue. Construction was completed in late 1957, and county officials and staff moved into the building on January 2, 1958. The footage is silent.
0:10:59: Opening of the East Montgomery YMCA on Pelzer Avenue on January 15, 1958. The footage is silent.
0:11:10: Governor James P. Coleman signing legislation authorizing Mississippi's participation in the Tombigbee-Tennessee Waterway Development Compact in a ceremony at the First Christian Church of Columbus on May 2, 1958. Seated with him are Lieutenant Governor Carroll Gartin of Mississippi and Governor Jim Folsom of Alabama. The compact, first approved by the Alabama Legislature in 1957, was established to promote the development of an interstate canal connecting the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers. This silent segment begins with a shot of Folsom arriving at an airport aboard an Air National Guard plane. (For the text of the compact, see Act No. 355 at https://archive.org/details/alabama-acts-1957_v1/page/n465.)
0:11:39: Lee High School band returning to Montgomery from Chicago on July 12, 1958. The students had led the Lions International parade on July 9, and they won fourth place in a band competition sponsored by the organization.
0:11:53: Silent footage of a high school ROTC team practicing outside, probably in Montgomery.
0:12:06: Judge Walter B. Jones receiving an award from the National Press Photographers Association at the Montgomery County courthouse on February 21, 1958. L. P. Patterson, managing editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, presented the citation on behalf of the organization because of Jones's willingness to allow photographers into his courtroom. Though the footage is silent, an account published in the Birmingham News on February 23 ("Press photographers honor Jones, Wheeler") quotes Jones as saying, "When you deny the people of the press, you deny the people the right to know what is going on in their government."
0:12:42: Five-year-old Debbie Golden and her mother boarding at plane at Dannelly Field in Montgomery on March 11, 1958. They were headed to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where Debbie was scheduled to have heart surgery on March 22. Citizens in Montgomery donated $4,000 to pay for the operation and travel, and Tine W. Davis (president of Kwik-Check grocery stores) lent his personal plane for the trip. The footage is silent.
0:13:12: Clips of various press conferences held by Governor John Patterson throughout 1959. Among the subjects discussed are the following: a legislative screening committee that reviewed all bills related to segregation (0:13:12); a request by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to see voting records in Dallas and Wilcox Counties (0:13:55); administrative problems at the Seafoods Division of the Department of Conservation in January 1959 (0:14:36); small-loan legislation, the possibility of a special legislative session, and continued industrial growth in Alabama despite the state's "race problems" (0:15:08); divorce laws, possibly in relation to a current legislative bill (0:16:59); intervention by federal civil rights agents and the commission hearings in December 1958 (0:17:37); his decision on October 29 to commute the death sentence of Frank Flowers, an African American man who had been convicted of murdering his wife (0:19:07); current conditions in Phenix City, "a clean town" with "no organized vice or crime . . . of any consequence" (0:20:08); the "ample tools" in place to enforce school segregation in the state, including "the school placement law, the freedom of choice amendment, and the power in the local school board to close a school in the case of disorder or violence" (0:20:50); his endorsement of John F. Kennedy as the presidential nominee in 1960 (0:22:16); the Patterson family cat's difficulty in adjusting to life at the Governor's Mansion (0:23:04); and his plans for Thanksgiving and a moose hunting trip in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in November.
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