In what city was a scheme to increase Culture spawned by the reading of an American classic set in Monroeville, Alabama?
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Great Reading Adventure The Great Reading Adventure was introduced in 2003 as part of Bristol's bid to be European Capital of Culture 2008. It was inspired by an equivalent scheme in Chicago, where they were reading Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". In its first year in excess of 15,000 people read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson as part of the scheme. When the 2004 scheme launched, Bristol was the only city in Britain to have such a project, but plans were underway for London to introduce one.
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To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
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New Albany, Mississippi New Albany is a city in Union County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 8,526 at the 2010 census. New Albany is the county seat of Union County. New Albany was first organized in 1840 at the site of a grist mill and saw mill on the Tallahatchie River and was developed as a river port. New Albany is the birthplace of author William Faulkner as well as Eli Whiteside and Bettie Wilson and the adopted home of Morris Futorian, father of the Northeast Mississippi furniture industry. As of 2010 New Albany has a population of 8,526 and is known for its education system, well-educated labor force and strong work ethic. The city houses modern factories, robust neighborhoods and vibrant shopping centers, while at the same time preserving its historic downtown area.
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William Lee Popham William Lee Popham (1885–1953) was an American author, evangelist, Chautauqua speaker, and real estate developer who was important in the growth of Apalachicola, Florida and St. George Island, Florida. Born on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky, he began writing poems as a child. His parents (Virgil and Clara Popham) moved the family to Louisville in about 1900. William Lee briefly studied at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, but was not ordained. His gifts for speaking and writing were recognized early, and he began speaking on the Chautauqua circuit by age 17.
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Jessie Redmon Fauset Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 – April 30, 1961) was an African American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Fauset’s literary work helped sculpt African American literature in the 1920s as she focused on portraying a true image of African American life and history. Her black fictional characters were working professionals which was an inconceivable concept to American society during this time Her story lines related to themes of racial discrimination, “passing,” and feminism. From 1919-1926, Fauset’s position as literary editor of "The Crisis," a NAACP magazine, allowed her to contribute to the Harlem Renaissance by promoting literary work that related to the social movements of this era. Through her work as a literary editor and reviewer, she discouraged black writers from lessening the racial qualities of the characters in their work, and encouraged them to write honestly and openly about the African American race. She wanted a realistic and positive representation of the African American community in literature that had never before been as prominently displayed. Before and after working on "The Crisis," she worked for decades as a French teacher in public schools in Washington, DC and New York City. She published four novels during the 1920s and 1930s, exploring the lives of the black middle-class. She also was the editor and co-author of the African-American children's magazine "The Brownies' Book." She is known for discovering and mentoring other African American writers such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay.
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Pensacola culture The Pensacola culture was a regional variation of the Mississippian culture along the Gulf Coast of the United States that lasted from 1100 to 1700 CE. The archaeological culture covers an area stretching from a transitional Pensacola/Fort Walton culture zone at Choctawhatchee Bay in Florida to the eastern side of the Mississippi River Delta near Biloxi, Mississippi, with the majority of its sites located along Mobile Bay in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. Sites for the culture stretched inland, north into the southern Tombigee and Alabama River valleys, as far as the vicinity of Selma, Alabama.
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Thomas Sutpen Thomas Sutpen is the focal character of William Faulkner's 1936 novel "Absalom, Absalom!" Sutpen arrives in Faulkner's imaginary Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi in the 1830s and establishes a 64,000 acre (100 square mile) plantation, Sutpen's Hundred, in an attempt to create his own personal dynasty. It is eventually revealed that Sutpen was born to a poor white family in what became West Virginia before moving to the Tidewater region of Virginia, where he was first privy to the aristocratic plantation culture of the Antebellum South.
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Columbia Springs Columbia Springs, also known as "Stovall's Springs," was an early hotel and health spa located on Pearl River near Columbia, Mississippi. Built by proprietor Charles Stovall early in the 19th century, it was the most famous health retreat in South Mississippi during the period, mostly catering to the aristocracy of the region. Planters, politicians, merchants and attorneys alike were drawn from as far away as New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi, likely paving the way for the hotel's temporary status as Mississippi state capital in 1821. Unfortunately, a gentleman's disagreement occurring at the hotel ultimately led to two separate dueling incidents, which likely contributed to the decline of the establishment.
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Hopewell tradition The Hopewell tradition (also called the Hopewell culture) describes the common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern United States from 200 BC to 500 AD, in the Middle Woodland period. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations. They were connected by a common network of trade routes, known as the Hopewell exchange system.
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One City One Book One City One Book (also One Book One City, "[City]" Reads, On the Same Page and other variations) is a generic name for a community reading program that attempts to get everyone in a city to read and discuss the same book. The name of the program is often reversed to One Book One City, or is customized to name the city where it occurs. Popular book picks have been Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird", Ernest Gaines's "A Lesson Before Dying", Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", and Rudolfo Anaya's "Bless Me, Ultima".
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Plantation tradition Plantation tradition is a genre of literature based in the southern states of the United States that is heavily nostalgic for antebellum times.
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Tuscumbia Historic District The Tuscumbia Historic District is a historic district in Tuscumbia, Alabama. The district contains 461 contributing properties and covers about 232 acres (94 ha) of the town's original area. The first white settlers in Tuscumbia built a village next to Big Spring, at the site of what is today Spring Park. Many settlers, many from Virginia and Maryland, began to emigrate to The Shoals in the 1820s and 1830s. The oldest houses in the district are Tidewater-type cottages, a style native to the Middle Atlantic. Also built during the town's early period are some of the oldest commercial buildings in Alabama, including the Morgan-Donilan Building (built 1825) and a seven-building block known as Commercial Row (built in the mid-1830s). The town's economy declined in the 1840s, when many farmers left seeking more fertile soil, through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
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Mystic society A mystic society is a Mardi Gras social organization in Mobile, Alabama, that presents parades and/or balls for the enjoyment of its members, guests, and the public. The New Orleans Krewe is patterned after Mobile's Mystics. The societies have been based in class, economic and racial groups. Mobile's parading mystic societies build colorful Carnival floats and create costumes around each year's themes.
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National Tom Sawyer Days National Tom Sawyer Days is a yearly event on 4 July, organized by the Hannibal JayCees in Hannibal, Missouri in the United States. In the town, National Tom Sawyer Days and the fourth of July are celebrated at the same time. Hannibal is the hometown of the famous author Mark Twain, the writer of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Many local Tom fans or some other fans from all over the world are attracted by the big parade float, flea market, carnival for children. What is more, the fans can enter a no speed-limited car competition and a Mud Volleyball Tournament.
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John Henry (folklore) John Henry is an African American folk hero. He is said to have worked as a "steel-driving man"—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel. According to legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam-powered hammer, a race that he won only to die in victory with hammer in hand as his heart gave out from stress. The story of John Henry is told in a classic folk song, which exists in many versions, and has been the subject of numerous stories, plays, books, and novels. Various locations, including Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia, Lewis Tunnel in Virginia, and Coosa Mountain Tunnel in Alabama, have been suggested as the site of the contest.
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American literary regionalism American literary regionalism or local color is a style or genre of writing in the United States that gained popularity in the mid to late 19th century into the early 20th century. In this style of writing, which includes both poetry and prose, the setting is particularly important and writers often emphasize specific features such as dialect, customs, history, and landscape, of a particular region: "Such a locale is likely to be rural and/or provincial."
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Living Witchcraft Living Witchcraft: A Contemporary American Coven is a sociological study of an American coven of Wiccans who operated in Atlanta, Georgia during the early 1990s. It was co-written by the sociologist Allen Scarboro, psychologist Nancy Campbell and literary critic Shirley Stave and first published by Praeger in 1994. Although largely sociological, the study was interdisciplinary, and included both insider and outsider perspectives into the coven; Stave was an initiate and a practicing Wiccan while Scarboro and Campbell remained non-initiates throughout the course of their research.
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Southern Agrarians The Southern Agrarians (also the Twelve Southerners, the Vanderbilt Agrarians, the Nashville Agrarians, the Tennessee Agrarians, and the Fugitive Agrarians) were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who united to write a pro–Southern agrarian manifesto, published as the essay collection "I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition" (1930). The Southern Agrarians greatly contributed to the Southern Renaissance, the revival of Southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s, and were based at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, with John Crowe Ransom as the unofficial leader.
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Century Association The Century Association is a private club in New York City. It evolved out of an earlier organization – the Sketch Club, founded in 1829 by editor and poet William Cullen Bryant and his friends – and was established in 1847 by Bryant and others as a club to promote interest in the fine arts and literature which was open to "Artists, Literary Men, Scientists, Physicians, Officers of the Army and Navy, members of the Bench and Bar, Engineers, Clergymen, Representatives of the Press, Merchants and men of leisure." It was originally intended to have a limited membership of 100 men. Its early members included Bryant; painters Asher Durand, Winslow Homer, Jervis McEntee, and John Frederick Kensett; sculptor Paul Manship; architect Stanford White; judge Charles Patrick Daly; author Lewis Gaylord Clark; and architect Calvert Vaux, who, along with Frederick Law Olmsted, was the co-creator of Central Park. However, by the middle 1850s, the membership primarily consisted of merchants, businessmen, lawyers and doctors.
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Southern Progress Corporation Southern Progress Corporation, based in Birmingham, Alabama, is a publisher of lifestyle magazines and books. The company publishes such magazines as "Southern Living", "Cooking Light", "Health", "Coastal Living" and "Sunset". At the end of 2012, its magazines have a combined readership of about 8 million. The company employs more than 700 people at headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama.
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Anti-Tom literature Anti-Tom literature refers to the 19th century pro-slavery novels and other literary works written in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Also called plantation literature, these writings were generally written by authors from the Southern United States. Books in the genre attempted to show either that slavery was beneficial to African Americans or that the evils of slavery as depicted in Stowe's book were overblown and incorrect.
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Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside the Indianapolis metropolitan area. According to the Monroe County History Center, Bloomington is known as the "Gateway to Scenic Southern Indiana." The city was established in 1818 by a group of settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia who were so impressed with "a haven of blooms" that they called it Bloomington.