Explore the origins: The Montevallo African American Heritage Trail
How we got here. . . .
The idea for the MAAHT was launched on MLK Day 2017 by Mayor Hollie Cost. Early work on the Trail was led by Rev. Kenneth Dukes, who formed a committee charged with identifying little-known aspects of Black history in Montevallo. Initially, the committee sought to discover "firsts": first family, first school, first business, first church.
The pandemic brought this phase of discovery to a halt for two years.
The project was taken up again spring 2021 by the Montevallo Historic Preservation Commission under the leadership of Joyce Jones. It quickly gained momentum. Two members of Commission -- Kathy King and Anitka Stewart Sims, who would co-found the MLP along with Reggie Holifield -- set out to research three sites of obvious significance. Two sites illustrate the central importance of the church to Black history and experience (Ward Chapel AME and Shiloh Missionary Baptist). The third marks the site of Montevallo's first and only Black high school, Prentice High School (1950-1970).
They realized there was a world of "invisible history" calling out to be seen. For starters, the Rev. Joseph S. Prentice, the man for whom the segregation-era high school was named, and his equally remarkable family.
And more. An early Black-taught and Black-supported primary school nearly forgotten today, a site of enslaved labor in the heart of the University of Montevallo campus, cemeteries, local sports heroes, historic Black neighborhoods gutted by forced removals.
Stories of pluck, ingenuity, and peril during the Jim Crow era. Episodes of "good trouble, necessary trouble" in the local struggle for civil rights. Most of all, Kathy and Anitka saw a community that, over many generations, worked, prayed, sacrificed, and held themselves together to leave something better behind.
These were stories that had to be told.
They began to share their discoveries in a series called Untold Stories of Black Montevallo published monthly in Montevallo's Chamber Chatter. The Untolds might be thought of as first drafts for sites on the African American Heritage Trail.
African American Heritage Trail established by resolution
By the summer of 2022 research Kathy and Anitka had identified some 14 (!) sites to propose for the Heritage Trail.
City council, on August 22, 2022, voted to approve a resolution to support the MAAHT
The city would fund and maintain historic markers, plaques and associated items. In the words of the Resolution, the Trail would recognize the "accomplishments and strength of African American individuals and their families, by recognizing their stories, and structures in the community, to offer an inclusive history that honors their legacy for future generations."
This is an extraordinary achievement for a small town like Montevallo. In fact we know of nothing like it in the state of Alabama and cannot applaud too loudly the efforts of the city to recognize the vital role played by people of African descent in this town.
Where are we now?
Led by James Salter of the Montevallo Historic Preservation Commission, the city has ordered plaques for three sites: Shiloh Baptist Missionary Church, Ward Chapel AME Church, and the Mason Hall.
The language is simple but powerful. This structure "has been designated as a significant historic site by the Black Heritage council of the Alabama Historical Commission."
A larger two-sided marker has been ordered for the corner of Island Street and Bloch "alley." This was once the hub of a closely-knit Black neighborhood known as Jacksonville.
One side memorializes the site of the "little school," a segregation era primary school for Montevallo children until 1937, when Shelby County opened Almont Elementary school. (It too will be a part of the MAAHT, but being outside city limits, the plaque is funded by Shelby County.)
The marker's other side honors beloved educator Onnie Dell Fluker, who not only attended the "little school" but later came to live in it. Fluker's parents bought the property and expanded it into a multi-room family dwelling. One of her descendants lives there today. It is one of just three black-owned houses to have survived the forced removals of the Jacksonville community in the 1940s and 1950s.
One marker has been in place for several years now. It remembers two men, names unknown, lynched in 1889 at the corner of Main and Shelby streets. This marker is the product of a two-year partnership between the city, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, and a citizen's group called the Montevallo Community Remembrance Project (CRP). It was installed, without ceremony, June 2020, in the time of Covid. The MLP website offers a fully documented account of the double lynching, the only such account presently available.
Read the full story in “Lynching in Montevallo: An Historical Account.”
These sites are only a start. Together with other sites yet to be identified, researched, marked, and interpreted, they begin to tell a fuller story about African American experience in Montevallo and surrounding areas. We will continue to update you as more sites are approved.
Another origin story. . . The MLP
The Montevallo Legacy Project found its inspiration in the African American Heritage Trail. Much of the preliminary research for the Trail had been conducted by MLP co-founders Kathy King and Anitka Stewart Sims, at that time members of the Montevallo Historic Preservation Commission. Here's the story in their words.
In just a year we turned up loads of fresh information about potential sites for historical markers. We learned in the process fascinating bits about people and places important to the local African American community for many generations.
We realized these pieces of the past were at risk of disappearing as people aged and memories faded.
We realized that markers alone could not tell the story of African American experience in our town's story.
We realized that an inclusive history would spill out over the edges of a plaque or marker.
Hence the Untold Stories of Black Montevallo, published monthly since Fall 2022 in Chamber Chatter. These stories remain the signature outreach activity of the Montevallo Legacy Project.
The MLP itself was born of a hunger for more history, more context, more interpretation, more amplitude. We found a like-minded soul in Reggie Holifield, who joined us in our earliest efforts to create a citizen's group with a core mission to amplify and expand the city's Heritage Trail. The MLP was incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit entity Sept 30, 2022.
The idea was to use the Untold Stories along with other MLP-sponsored events, newsletters, social media, community storytelling, and website to tell a richer, fuller, more complicated story of Black history and culture in Montevallo.
A really impactful Heritage Trail, we believed, needed an overarching story capable of creating empathy and emotional engagement. It would shine a light on the accomplishments, contributions, and presence of people whose lives history had received little recognition in previous mainstream accounts of Montevallo.
For this we need input from the community. From you.
The Untold Stories are, in a sense, the alpha and omega of our project. We know that gathering information is just the beginning, necessary but just that, a beginning. We feel an ethical obligation to preserve stories and to give serious thought to the kind of future we want these stories to shape.
The website serves as a digital archive that builds upon the "first draft" published in Chamber Chatter and preserved as a PDF in the Stories section of the website. But the Untold Stories that live in digital space are enhanced and expanded. Some are partly revised. We have added a curated collection of photos, graphics, additional information, newspaper clippings, quotes -- things that add context and depth to a story that needs to be told.
We turn now to members of the community to help us develop the overarching interpretation of the Montevallo African American Heritage Trail, its themes and motifs. The story that we want to pass on to the generations to come.