San Antonio College Library

An 83-year-old reminisces about her Depression-era life in the town of Whistle Stop, Alabama.

"Several generations of Southerners claim the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, "Sweet Home Alabama," as their anthem. The Billie Holiday hit "Stars Fell on Alabama" is another, and though an actual star didn't fall on Alabama, the state is the only place on Earth where a person has been injured by a meteorite. Another impact, this one about 80 million years ago, left the 5-mile-wide Wetumpka impact crater in the center of the state. Alabama's world-class geology,...

In the summer of 1860, more than fifty years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. Timothy Meaher, an established Mobile businessman, sent the slave ship, the Clotilda, to Africa, on a bet that he could "bring a shipful of niggers...

The Selma-to-Montgomery marches marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. This peaceful period film footage gives a strong sense of the size of these marches and the solidarity of the marchers, black and white. From the National Archives and Records Administration. (46 minutes)

Two law enforcement incidents that erupted into national headlines are examined by graduating recruits at the St. Louis (MO) County and Municipal Police Academy.In the first incident, Indiana officers are forced to deal with a 6'5? UFC fighter and his wife trying to play them after a three mile pursuit. And, in a language barrier tragedy, an Alabama officer throws an older Indian man to the ground, partially paralyzing him.

Nate Shaw's father was born under slavery. Nate Shaw was born into a bondage that was only a little gentler. At the age of nine, he was picking cotton for thirty-five cents an hour. At the age of forty-seven, he faced down a crowd of white deputies who had come to confiscate a neighbor's crop. His defiance cost him twelve years in prison. This autobiography, assembled from the eighty-four-year-old Shaw's oral reminiscences, is the plain-spoken story...

Tucker has an eye for tragedy and pain. A celebrated, internationally famous photographer, he has traveled the world and seen both the serious and the strange. But when his brother escapes from a mental hospital and an old girlfriend appears with her son and a black eye. Tucker is forced to return home and face the agony of his own tragic past. Back in rural Alabama, Tucker comes to terms with the ghosts he left behind. Miss Ella Rain once loved Tuck...