Images of America: Bemiston, and: Images of America: Marion County (review)

the alabama review 244 an analysis of the science; reserve works less well, in relative terms, when revisiting the litigation, the official apology by the Clinton administration , and the cultural legacy of the Tuskegee syphilis study. And no treatment of the Tuskegee study could be complete without an examination of its cultural effects, because, as Reverby notes, it “never stayed just as a memory” (p. 187). Given how dramatic and hotly contested those effects were, the approach here inadvertently dulls them. One suspects that this was done out of a sense of fairness and a desire to avoid the white‑hot debates that the Tuskegee syphilis study cannot help but engender. Still, that academic detachment, and the careful “academic” language that is employed, seem to rob Reverby’s work of some of its potential power. R. Volney Riser University of West Alabama Images of America: Bemiston. By Bobbye Baker Trammell. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. 127 pp. $21.99. ISBN 978-0-7385-6803-4. Images of America: Marion County. By the Marion County Historical Society with Barbara Woolbright Carruth. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. 127 pp. $21.99. ISBN 978-0-7385-6849-2. Arcadia Publishing has produced thousands of books in its Images of America series. They are to be found in any bookstore, large and small, in America. All are the same size, have sepia-toned covers, are heavily illustrated , and are written by local authors. Indeed these books are more like scrapbooks telling the stories of villages, towns, cities, and counties. The authors are often amateur, not academic, historians, and draw the old photographs they use from the local historical society, friends, and neighbors. Some of the pictures are clearer than others, occasionally the captions leave something to be desired, but the story comes through. These books are prepared for local and regional audiences, and, indeed, most academic historians turn their noses up at them, dismissing them out of hand. After all, such books do not explore themes of gender inequality , or racial discrimination, or systematic economic exploitation. They are not meant to be controversial, but to celebrate communities which often had their glory years—if they had them at all—generations ago. Many also endeavor to save the story of people and places that now exist largely in old pictures, and in the memories of old men and women. Academic historians are unlikely to immerse themselves in the July 2011 245 story of a cotton mill town such as Bemiston, or Marion County, a hill country county where most people have made a marginal living since it was founded early in the nineteenth century. Both are remote from the comforts of a major research library, from which their stories could not be told, anyway. No, if you want to learn about places like Bemiston or Marion County you must go there and stay a while until the people come to trust your motives and intentions and share their treasures with you. When you have done all that, do not expect a warm reception from your colleagues on the tenure and promotion committee. They may have a point, but the result is that the authors of such books, and places like Bemiston and Marion County, must fend for themselves. Well, how do they do? Actually quite well. Both books work in preserving the story of the people, businesses, wars, and workplaces that were at the heart of these communities. Marion County presents a more difficult task, as it was founded in 1818, and the 127-page limit presents challenges for the author. Some of the pictures are not very sharp, almost all are posed, and there are periods of time that are simply not illustrated. Still, Carruth conveys the truth that her people had a history and presents it enthusiastically. Trammell, on the other hand, has a chronologically easier time, as Bemiston began in the late 1920s as a cotton mill village. The mill closed in 1979, but the town endures as an outlying suburb of Talladega. Many of the residents or their parents and grandparents worked in the mill making cotton bags. The village is small, compact, and quietly appealing. The Bemis brothers treated the...