Alabama's is a story, believes author Virginia V. Hamilton, that bears scrutiny by Alabamians and outsiders alike if they would understand the present.
Pause for a moment before a gallery of fading portraits, and you will sense the beginnings of Alabama's troubled history—homespun pioneers gripped by "Alabama fever," chained and manacled black people quietly awaiting a slave trader's order to move on, newly rich planters and iron barons holding tightly to the reins of power. You will also be caught in the tangled web of the South's past.