Alabama vintage: History and stories too long untold and overlooked finally brought to light – AL.com

Alabama.

Today, about five million people call it home. So many of them have a story. An Alabama story.

A story about family. A story about place. A story about pain. A story about perseverance. A story about tragedy. A story about triumph.

A story about history.

A story that has never been told. A story too long ignored.

Alabama Vintage will tell those stories.

Produced by our award-winning journalists, Alabama Vintage on Instragam and other AL.com digital platforms will tell those stories with powerful, poignant, and personal little-seen photos and videos of an Alabama often omitted from our history books, languishing in long-forgotten vaults and archives, or gathering dust in family scrapbooks and basements.

An Alabama that includes a diaspora of races, cultures, and religions intentionally shunned by state archivists, and, we confess, by our own egregious, neglectful reporting of our states complicated past.

An Alabama that should be celebrated not camouflaged; showcased not shrouded.

An unsung Alabamalived by unsung, everyday Alabamians.

By mothers who simply wanted to ride the bus with dignity. By parents who didnt want their children to endure what they had to.

By visionaries who saw a future better than their present.

By children who simply wanted to learn, live and play.

By farmers. By architects. By secretaries. By ministers. By artists. By teachers. By politicians. By maids. athletes. By entrepreneurs. By activists. By corporate leaders. By students.

By Alabamians.

Some images and videos will commemorate a significant moment or person; an anniversary of an event that changed usfor the better, even if it caused great pain. A birthday or death of an Alabamian who changed us, too.

Some will showcase historic buildings, structures that defined a city or revealed our creative genius.

All will acknowledge and celebrate, well, us. At work. At play. Socializing. Traveling. Worshiping. Dancing. Marching. Enjoying our natural beauty. Living each day. In Alabama.

Who are we? Who are we fully when those whose contributions were left out are finally given their deserved light?

Where do we come from? What did we bring with us? How did we endure? How do our shared legacies collectively shape and define us? Define Alabama?

We are reaching widely for photos and videos of our untold stories. To museums, municipal and state archives, educational institutions, churches, hospitals, and beyond.

And to you.

Share with us the photos and videos that tell your stories. That celebrate your ancestors. Your parents, grandparents, and other family members who made your way easier. Perhaps easier for others, too.

Pull those boxes from under the bed or out of the basement. Call your elders and ask them to share aging scrapbooks. Shoot a video of them talking about their journey, about their memories. About their lives.

If you have photos and/or video to share, contact us at AlabamaVintage@AL.com.

Every day youll see new photos and videos on Instagram, along with a few words. Youll see a new story.

We are embracing all institutions and people and families to collectively elevate the stories of how Alabama came to be the place we all call home.

All of us.

Some of the stories will make you smile. Some will touch your heart. Some may even anger you. Some may simply hurt.

Together, they will reveal all of who we are, Alabama. And we will leave no one out.

Not this time.

Roy S. Johnson is a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of 2021 Edward R. Morrow prize for podcasts: Unjustifiable, co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Press-Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com, follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.

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Alabama vintage: History and stories too long untold and overlooked finally brought to light - AL.com