"One can go home again, if he remembers and accepts the land of his birth for what it was, and if he understands what it has become and why. The homecoming is more complete if one admits that he and his land have shaped each other, that from it springs much of both of his weakness and his strength."
Louis Lomax

Alabama has known a deep and complex history. From Native American genocide to slavery and secession, and from the fight for civil rights to the championing of MAGA ideology, the national history written on, in, and by the people and landscapes of Alabama reveal problematic patterns at the nexus of our larger American identity. Now in a time of pandemic, protest, and political polarization, "What Has Been Will Be Again" contends with generational racial, ecological, and economic injustices across my home state’s cultural and physical landscape. Social isolation is both a phrase and experience that has defined the recent past, and "What Has Been Will Be Again" expressly evokes the alienation that has characterized the moment. Yet the work features sites for which isolation and violence is nothing new—places where extracted labor and environmental exploitation have exacted heavy tolls over generations. Such isolation is less accidental or temporal, and more a product of decades of willful neglect by a mainstream America only now starting to visualize what—and who—has been pushed out of our collective frame of vision. "What Has Been Will Be Again" has led me across each of Alabama’s 67 counties, tracing colonial routes including the Old Federal Road and Hernando de Soto’s 1540 expedition and traveling the Trail of Tears. The resulting pictures speak to the forced marginalization of African-Americans, Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Accompanied by historicizing captions, the images at once mirror and challenge the silence of historical narratives that have failed to speak the names, dates, and places where such violence occurred. Using a Southern Gothic visual sensibility, "What Has Been Will Be Again" strategically focuses on the importance of place, the passage of time, and the visual-political dimensions of remembrance to confront white supremacist myths of American exceptionalism and reveal connections between Alabama’s centuries-long past and its present-day issues. 

IMAGE CAPTIONS:

(01) Spring Hill, Barbour County, Alabama. Michael Farmer, 57, fashions a scarecrow next to his garden on Election Day, 2020. Michael Farmer’s family has lived in Spring Hill for generations, where the predominantly Black community has faced a history of racial violence and voter disenfranchisement. On November 3, 1874 a white mob attacked the Spring Hill polling station, destroying the ballot box, burning the ballots, and murdering the election supervisor’s son. Farmer is a lifelong Democrat and military veteran who served two tours overseas in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. When asked what he hoped might come from the 2020 presidential election, Farmer said, “I hope the young folks might think about what their ancestors came through to get where we are.” – –

(02) Childersburg, Talladega County, Alabama. Sunshine turns soil in the Commons Community Workshop garden. As a response to recent national division and the COVID-19 pandemic, Sunshine and her husband Rusty recently bought a home in Childersburg and created The Commons Community Workshop. Through their Fearless Communities Initiative they are building a community garden in a donated downtown lot, hosting trade days, and fostering relationships with their neighbors as a means of “celebrating solidarity and strength.” The couple invited me to find them on Facebook where Sunny posts Initiative announcements, vocalizes her opposition to mask wearing and vaccines, and shares her beliefs about global child sex trafficking networks, the threat of Marxism, and the coming of the end times.

(03) Jacksonville, Calhoun County, Alabama. Taxidermy tableaux.

(04) Carrollton, Pickens County, Alabama. Civil War Monument.

(05) Evergreen, Conecuh County, Alabama. Antoine.

(06) Black Oak, DeKalb Co., Alabama. Along the Trail of Tears. Between 1830-1850 approximately 60,000 American Indians were forcibly displaced from their homelands in the Southeastern United States. The ethnic cleansing was carried out by the U.S. government to make way for White settlement under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the government to nullify any Indigenous title to land claims. People from the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to Indian reservations, and thousands died before reaching their destinations. About 16,000 Cherokees were placed in stockades in Tennessee and Alabama until their removal by river and overland routes. In September 1838 Cherokee conductor John Benge led a detachment of approximately 1,100 Cherokee were led from their ancestral home of Wills Valley in present-day DeKalb County. Their 768-mile trip to Stilwell, Oklahoma took 106 days to complete. Thirty-three deaths were recorded along the way; most were likely from measles and whooping cough.

(07) Talladega County, Alabama. Ruins of Mt. Ida Plantation. Destroyed by fire in 1956, the 1840 Greek Revival-style antebellum mansion was built for Walker Reynolds, who owned some 13,000 acres of land and several hundred enslaved persons. The plantation–located near the site of Abihka, once one of four mother towns of the Muscogee Creek confederacy–was reportedly a location for the 1915 white-supremacist film, "The Birth of a Nation."

(08) Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Glitter scattered on ruins of the former Alabama state capitol building. Yoholo-Micco, chieftan of the Upper Creek town of Eufala, is said to have addressed the Alabama Legislature in 1836 at the state capital in Tuscaloosa before departing the ancestral Muscogee homelands on the Trail of Tears. Yoholo-Micco’s actual words are unknown, but the white, colonial writers of history have painted the Creek leader as one who accepted indigenous removal with an air of romantic resignation, going so far as to contrive his final words in a way to whitewash the genocide that had taken place over 300+ years’ time. Yoholo-Micco’s apocryphal address––which has been reproduced in Alabama history books and grade school curriculum for decades––reads, in part: “I come here, brothers, to see the great house of Alabama and the men who make laws and say farewell in brotherly kindness before I go to the far west, where my people are now going. In time gone by I have thought that the white men wanted to bring burden and ache of heart among my people in driving them from their homes and yoking them with laws they do not understand. But I have now become satisfied that they are not unfriendly toward us, but that they wish us well.”

(09) DeKalb County, Alabama. Manitou Cave, near the former Cherokee town of Willstown. Inside Manitou, traces of human activity date back 10,000 years. The cave includes sacred inscriptions written in Cherokee syllabary, which was invented by Sequoyah while he lived in Willstown in the early 1800s. After the Cherokee removal the cave was used as a Confederate encampment and saltpeter mine; by the end of the 19th century industrialists mined the cave for iron ore; in the 1920s it was converted into a tourist destination where flappers danced the Charleston in a “ballroom” that featured a wooden dance floor and electric lights; and during the Cold War it was outfitted as a nuclear fallout shelter. Through the mid 20th century the site operated as a roadside attraction but closed after the interstate drew traffic away from Ft. Payne. After decades of neglect the cave is now the focus of grassroots historical and environmental protection directed by Manitou Cave of Alabama, with a mission to “respect, protect, preserve” the cave’s unique geology, diverse biology, and rich history.

(10) Irondale, Jefferson County, Alabama. Street Preacher.

(11) Russell County, Alabama. Control Burn.

(12) Monroe County, Alabama. Along a spur of the Old Federal Road, near the site of Claiborne. Located along the Alabama River in present-day Monroe County, Claiborne was a once flourishing center of political and economic life in territorial Alabama. Serving as a base of operations during the Creek War in the early 19th century, Claiborne was also home to Alabama’s first Eli Whitney-designed cotton gin. Today, the Georgia-Pacific Alabama River Cellulose paper mill is located just upriver of the old town site. The mill produces specialty fluff and market pulp for consumer products that are found in more than 65% of U.S. households. While in process of switching to sustainable and renewable energy sources and investing in conservation projects, Georgia-Pacific self-reported that the Alabama River Cellulose paper mill released more than 120,000 pounds of reproductive toxins into the Alabama River in 2015.

(13) Near Stewart, Hale County, Alabama. Christenberry Home Place. 

(14) Russell County, Alabama. Judas. 

(15) Fort Deposit, Lowndes County, Alabama. Ben.