Let's talk about campus/Tuscaloosa

DKE's secret basement

quote:

---

The basement at Gorgas is creepy as frick

---

That's because Gorgas is haunted.

quote:

---

The basement at Gorgas is creepy as frick

---

This is true.

It looks like a bomb shelter

Have you ever noticed that there are no rocks to speak of anywhere on campus? That's no mistake. In 1963, as they were getting ready for Malone and Hood's arrival and integration, Dr. John Blackburn, Dean of Students, along with Donald Stewart, who was then student body president (later US Senator), and many other students and staff picked up all the rocks on campus. One of the things that started the rioting at Ole Miss the year before was someone chunking rocks at the marshals and UA was determined that there would be nothing handy for anyone to use to provoke a confrontation. For a long time, the only rocks left were in a canoe statue thingy in front Little Hall. I think they moved it over to Woods Quad a few years ago.

In 1957, Leonard Wilson climbed the flagpole at the intersection of University and Greensboro to rally a mob against the admission of Artherine Lucy, a black student. He led them down University to the front steps of Reese Phifer Hall, which was the student union at the time. If memory serves, they burned books, flipped a car, and generally made assholes out of themselves. Wilson earned the nickname "Flagpole" Wilson and went on to be big in the Council of Conservative Citizens movement. He resurfaced a few years ago as head of the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a leader in the renewed Council of Conservative Citizens, and is a major backer/friend/confidant of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker and incoming CJ Roy Moore.

The cemetery across from BDS holds the remains of Josiah Gorgas - for whom the Gorgas House is named, where he lived with his wife and kids. He was the Ordinance Chief for the Confederacy and a leader in the development of the iron industry in the area. His wife, Amelia, was the daughter of a governor, and became the head librarian (the library is named after her). As chief of ordinance, Josiah Gorgas built the works at Selma. Later, he was president of the university. His son, William Crawford Gorgas, became Surgeon General of the United States. He was one of the physicians who discovered that mosquitoes were responsible for Yellow Fever and helped lead the effort to eradicate mosquitoes in the Panama Canal Zone, enabling construction of the canal. All three are buried in the cemetery.

I never heard that, but I suppose it could be true. I'll have to ask my wife's grandmother some time. She worked there from the mid-to-late '40s until the early '80s.

Btw, are you a student or faculty member?

Bernie Madoff did his freshman year at Alabama. Northern schools used to impose a "quota" on Jewish students, but not southern ones. Alabama actively recruited them. During the 1930s, as much as 1/3 of the student body was Jewish.

Other notables: Mathew Fountain Maurey - called the "pathfinder of the seas" taught at UA. He has a statue on monument avenue in Richmond, VA.

Porn star Nina Hartley's grandfather was a physics professor at Alabama.

Timothy Leary taught at UA at one time.

Marshall Applewhite, leader of the Heaven's Gate Cult, taught music at UA.

The very top floor of Clark Hall is an auditorium. Now, they use it for a dance studio, but in the early 1900s, it was used for large gatherings and speakers. William Jennings Bryan - leader of the Populist Party, three time presidential candidate, US Secretary of State during WWI, and the prosecutor for the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, gave a rousing speech in there once. They opened the windows and hundreds of people who could not get into the building gathered around it to listen to him. Another notable who gave a speech there was Thomas Dixon, author of The Clansman, the book upon which the movie Birth of A Nation is based.

ETA: Those little white buildings behind the president's mansion are slave quarters.

Frank Rose, president of the university who hired Bryant and was president during integration, was the first cousin of Wyatt Cooper, who married Gloria Vanderbilt, and was the father of Anderson Cooper, from CNN.

Used to work on 4M of gorgas during my undergraduate (last year), it's now a series of offices. Apparently it's haunted too lol.

It was still there in 2001 or so. I don't recall it being there when I graduated in 2006.

Was it an ugly arse green couch?