"In historical writings on the creation of both the physical and intellectual New South, one aspect that has been largely overlooked is the existence of a town that was founded to be a "model city" and that became in time a model for the New South credo, the town of Anniston." - Preface of the book "The Model City of the New South: Anniston, Alabama, 1872-1900"
This is Part 3 of an unintended series of stories about Anniston, the "Model City". The first two are "Anniston Alabama: The "Model City" Has Been Broken" and "Anniston, Oxford and Oxanna: The "Model City" Has Been Broken (Part 2)".
Getting back to that Preface of the book "The Model City of the New South: Anniston, Alabama, 1872-1900" it continues to read, "The small industrial city in northeast Alabama was the product of the combined talent, capital, and labors of two men, Samuel Noble and Daniel Tyler, who began in 1872 to build a private company town out of the profits of their charcoal iron furnace. In addition, the founders experimented with community-building that paid heed to both the physical and spiritual needs of their employees. The outer world became intrigued with the "Southern counterpart of Pullman." and the model city of image became Anniston's permanent label." (Note to the Reader: The town mentioned here is that of the "model" industrial town of Pullman, Illinois which was the physical expression of an idea born and nurtured in the mind of George M. Pullman, President of Pullman's Palace Car Company and had its beginning on May 26, 1880. This strong historic community was threatened with demolition in 1960. But some knowledgeable and well-versed citizens came together to preserve it.) Perhaps there are some knowledgeable, well-versed and concerned citizens out there that will come together to preserve the city of Anniston. Because somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
More of the Preface reads, "After outside pressures forced the opening of the city to the broader public in 1883, the newcomers who swelled the population continued to speak of the town as a model city. The conceptualization of the meaning of the word "model" gradually became transmuted from uniqueness to an object of special attention, to an example to be emulated, to simply an intellectual reflex or motto. Moreover, the reactions to the "model city" varied from the founders, to the townspeople, to those journalist who recorded their impressions about it. What came across the final analysis was an exemplification of a form of civic pride and town boosting not unlike that of other prospering towns of the New South. What made Anniston different was the assumption of its supporters that it was. They proceeded on the basis, until the phrase "model city" itself was worn out with over use."
As we look to Chapter 2 "The Private Model Town" it reads, "For almost the first decade of Anniston's existence it became mutually inclusive and exclusive. The company owned or controlled most of the land in the city limits, as well as part of the timber lands in the surrounding hills that furnished charcoal for iron making. the town became virtually self-sufficient, and all business was solely that of the company. The company property was even fenced. Though the practical reason for the fence was to keep the various breeds of experimental stock from wandering off to other settlements in the county, the fence symbolized the Woodstock desire to eliminate outside interference. To outsiders, the fence became a barrier to any interest on their part in the town."
Just as the phrase "model city" is said to have become worn out and overused it should have become apparent by now that this writer feels that it is been broken too. And in a sense it seems as if there may be a "fence" still around the city of Anniston and it may be being built by some of it's city leaders. There may be "outsiders" wishing to enter but with the frivolous lawsuits being filed by Councilman Little and the other antics of the "dysfunctional" city council may deter others from wishing to relocate in Anniston. Because somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
Later in Chapter 2 it reads, "Anniston's projected image was that of a perfectly planned town in a naturally endowed location with beneficent proprietors. Yet not all voices were raised in perfect harmony. A visitor from Augusta went home and complained that in Anniston "every bunch of sassafras is a mighty forest, every frog pond a sylvan lake, every waterfall a second Tallulah, every ridge of rock a coal mine...and every man a liar." And finally in part of Chapter 2 reads, "Anniston's future success seemed assured, despite the seemingly insignificant difficulties and the voices of discontent were briefly raised."
While Quintard Avenue may be a quaint suburban boulevard lined with trees and large Victorian style Mansions, the image of Anniston today may not be as appealing as it was in the days of Anniston's past. There may be some liars in Anniston today, it will be up to you the individual to determine who is being truthful. The future of Anniston's success may depend upon more voices of discontent standing up and speaking out against the current "dysfunctional" city council. Because somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
As we skip to Chapter 4 "The Woodstock Company Enterprises" it mentions a town council where it reads, "A strong indicator of the relations between the company and the community was the town council. After incorporation in 1873, the residents annually elected an intendant (called mayor after 1886) and councilmen." It further reads, "The town council met for the first time on December 9, 1873, and convened from three to ten times each year until 1883, when it began to meet more often. Samuel Noble served on the council continuously from 1873 until 1886. During that time he was the dominant voice of the group and enjoyed unparalleled executive powers in the town. He drew up the council by-laws and the town's ordinances, made nearly all the motions, and composed most of the resolutions."
In this Chapter we also read where the Woodstock Company paid the salaries of the council members and other general expenses of running the town. It tells of how after the town's public opening in July 1883 the council was suddenly flooded with business such as petitions, licenses, new ordinances, building codes and requests for utilities but the Woodstock Company still subsidize the town. In 1885 the city was said to be no longer indebted to the Woodstock Company and in a 1886 meeting made no mention of them. However, Samuel Nobel still "kept a finger on the pulse of the community and a hand in all affairs. This enabled the company to hold sway in the area of municipal improvements".
Who is it now that seems to wish to be the dominant voice of the Council in Anniston? Who is it now that has been flooding the city of Anniston with multiple frivolous lawsuit? The citizens and other members of the Council must ensure that they keep their finger on the happenings in Anniston by holding those elected officials of the Council accountable. Because somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
More from the book, "It was Noble's committee that reported adversely on a petition from an Oxford group to build a connecting street railway between the two towns. The Oxford and Anniston Street Railroad was organized in 1884 with J. B. Allen as president. Allen and his kinsman, Ephraim D. Allen, had sold their land in Oxanna to the Georgia Pacific promoters and with the proceeds built the mule-powered streetcar line from Oxford to the Anniston city limits. The Oxanna Tribune reported that the leading citizens in Anniston, Oxanna, and Oxford had all expressed encouraging sentiments on the subject of streetcars. Another newsman asked why passengers were taken to the jumping-off place and then left jolted by other means over rough roads inside Anniston's incorporation. He felt the city authorities were doing more harm to the city by keeping them out. The council remained adamant in its negative decision. the group complained that no surveys had been made and that the tracks would "seriously interfere" with traffic. It would be "preposterous, the council asserted, for "our town to give the merchants of another town the means of actively interfering with a trade...that is absolutely Anniston's." The buying of loyalties of newcomers to Anniston should be attached to the local interest" of "our town."
Even more from the book, "Some new voices in Anniston were raised against the continued dominance, both financial and political, of the Woodstock Iron Company in the town. The Watchman printed many such complaints. For example, one citizen wrote that the town was run too much on a one-man policy, and the company should leave city government in the people's hands. The newspaper responded in defense of company policy, commenting on an "pleasant feature" about some Anniston businessmen, who thought that the town, its trade, and its privileges were theirs by right of association, and who felt it was their right to inquire into the "secret business workings" of the company. The writer then asked, "Must you rest indifference and wait for this company to do everything for the town?"
That competition between the cities of Oxford and Anniston will continue as Oxford rakes in "obscene amounts of sales-tax revenue" as Anniston struggles to attract new businesses and residents. The loss of Fort McClellan and much of its military-related businesses, the loss of several of Noble Street anchor stores to the Quintard Mall and the loss of several longtime car dealers to some may seem like a near-fatal blow to the city of Anniston. But if the leaders of Anniston don't step up to make some changes, Anniston may indeed die a slow agonizing death. There is certainly a need for some new voices in Anniston today. Because somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
The book continues to read, "The company continued to try to do almost everything for the town. The first practical use of electricity in the state of Alabama was introduced in Anniston in 1882, a light at the Woodstock Company. In 1884, the company signed a contract with the Brush Electric Light Company to furnish machinery and appliances for making lights for the town. By May, seventeen lamps on forty-foot poles had been erected at the main intersections. Plans called for seventy arc lights in all. Trimmers reached the globes by iron steps on the poles. An engine and a dynamo ran during the day to build up current for the storage battery, which was kept in the Opera House. When the citizens of Glen Addie, one of the residential areas for operatives, petitioned the town council for more light, it was Samuel Noble whose resolution called for action. The entire town was pleased with the availability of electric lights. The street lamps were described as "beacons" and a "foe to burglars in our city."
And yet more from the book, "Shortly after the advent of the wider use of electricity in 1884, another innovation appeared in Anniston, the telephone. Two rival systems organized and simultaneously petitioned the town council for permission to erect poles: the Southern Bell Company and the Noble Pan Electric Company, another Woodstock enterprise. Samuel Noble's motion granted both companies permission, provided the poles were "neat and straight, dressed and painted, and not unsightly."
According to some other readings I have done it shows that the Glen Addie area was named for Samuel Noble's daughter. It consisted of a 20-block section in southwest Anniston. The Woodstock Iron Company built cottages for the workers and sold them at actual cost as wells as on a liberal reimbursement basis. The homes were neat and comfortable with ample room for an outhouse and a garden in the rear and a lawn flower bed in the front. Rows of water oaks lined the streets. In the 1870's and 1880's the area was a white working-class neighborhood. At the time the black working-class lived in what was called "Smokey Row", probably due to how the smoke from the nearby furnaces hung low over the housing area. Another area where blacks lived was called "Furnace Hill" while other whites lived in "Cottage Row". As more industries located in Anniston, mill villages sprang up near those foundries and mills.
In today's Anniston, the name Glen Addie is closely associated with an area that is now part of the Anniston Housing Authority. It is located in Ward 3 of the city and it's current Councilman none other than Ben Little. I want to take you to an article in The Anniston Star dated May 31, 2018 by Phillip Tutor, titled "The ranking Anniston doesn't want". It starts out like this, "There are two Annistons, and everyone knows it. Race isn’t the delineation. Neither is income. It’s safety. The City Council can’t say that. Neither can Mayor Jack Draper. They have to stay above it, and should. But the mix of data and public perception shows that Anniston’s halves are distinguished by two simple factors: how safe do you feel when you’re there, and how safe are you?" Today's Anniston seem to contain many "unsightly" things.
As it is pointed out in this article "This isn’t about blacks and whites. The city and Calhoun County jails are full of both races. If that’s your take, this conversation isn’t for you.". The same could be said for what I am trying to convey with my recent articles. Having honorably served as a US Air Force Security Police for 6 years and as a civilian Law Enforcement Officer for 6 1/2 years I learned that "race" does not matter. The article goes on to mention about how "Anniston, the most violent city in Alabama, also ranks as the most violent in the United States.", a subject to which I had alluded to in my previous article titled "Anniston, Oxford and Oxanna: The "Model City" Has Been Broken (Part 2)".
That article from The Anniston Star later quotes Anniston Police Chief Shane Denham saying, "As I’m sure you know, statistics don’t show an accurate picture. Do we have too much violent crime? Definitely. Do we report our numbers accurately? Without question. Do all police departments? Nah." The statistics Chief is talking about is from a MSN report and the article included "which was republished from another site, 24/7 Wall St. — deemed Anniston as “the most violent (city) in the United States,” based on its 2016 violent-crime rate of 3,310 for every 100,000 residents."
Further in the article it reads, "Roughly 22,000 people live in Anniston. Numbers provided to APD in October 2016 by the East Alabama Regional Planning and Development Commission show 43,093 people live in Anniston and its police jurisdiction areas. That difference skews Anniston’s violent-crime rate because it measures APD’s statistics against the city’s smaller population, leaving out the police jurisdiction." It continues with, "Of Anniston’s four wards, Wards 2 and 3 contain many of the violent-crime hot spots on APD’s map. Little is the Ward 3 councilman, and he’s feasted on criticisms of APD during his lengthy Gurnee Avenue tenure. Most of his rants have been baseless and harmful to the city’s political climate. What Little didn’t do was disagree about the alarming rate of violent crime in Ward 3. “I do believe a major police operation at night is much overdue for Constantine, Glen Addie and Washington homes for Ward 3,” he wrote. “Individuals are walking around in the housing areas with guns. The people living in those areas should not have to live in such conditions … The street gangs, wherever they may be, cannot be allowed to torment this town."
This article concludes with, "Anniston’s reputation can’t be power-washed away like driveway grime. Passivity won’t dissolve it. The problem is intense, and it follows a trail littered with poverty, unemployment and economic malaise. But if Annistonians won’t protect their city’s name — a city, everyone agrees, that must lower its rate of violent crime — no one else will, either."
As I had stated in my first article, "Anniston Alabama: The "Model City" Has Been Broken", I moved my family to the Anniston area in 2002 and up until 2010 we actually lived within it's corporate city limits, although it was on the very most outskirts. However it wasn't until 2008 when I started paying closer attention to what was happening with what then seemed to be more like a "dysfunctional" city council to me. And one of those issues that stuck out to me at the time was the incessant claims of racism by Councilman Ben Little against the Anniston Police Department. At the time Barack Obama, a junior Senator from Illinois, was the Democratic Party presidential candidate of 2008. With him being an African-American there were issues of racism that even crept into the election. But for now let us stay on the issues of Anniston Alabama.
In reading from the above mentioned article from The Anniston Star, racial issues may seem to plague the city. Unfortunately racism has a history in Anniston, on Mother's Day in 1961, a Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders was ambushed. And in an editorial from The Annsiton Star dated December 6, 2016 titled, "Councilman Little's views about Freedom Riders site are comical". Here is what it reads in part, “I’m still not impressed with the bus location,” Expert Little said Monday night during a council work session. The former Greyhound station, he says, “has lost its fervor” and, unlike the bus-burning site on Alabama 202, is no longer historically significant. Yes, Expert Little said that.The bus station “has lost its fervor.” It further reads, "Don’t be fooled by Little’s Monday night performance. It was classic Ben Little, the newly returned councilman. Chaos empowers him. Bedlam and opposition provide him a political pulpit he never refuses. And Little’s opposition to the national designation for the former bus station has nothing to do with historical preservation and everything to do with ego and ward politics. Like an elected bully, Little threatened to “send something to Washington to try and block” Obama’s signature for the national monument if he didn’t get something in return. This is Ben Little politics, 2016: Comically threaten to derail a critical project — one that benefits the entire city, not just a specific ward — unless the council agrees to pay for home repairs for low-income residents, a move that at least one other councilman, Ward 1’s Jay Jenkins, already supports and has enough value to stand on its own."
Councilman Little said in that earlier article, “Individuals are walking around in the housing areas with guns. The people living in those areas should not have to live in such conditions … The street gangs, wherever they may be, cannot be allowed to torment this town." Yes, Little's antics may seem "comical" at times, but how or why anyone should ever take him serious? Somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
Want more proof? Here is yet another editorial from The Anniston Star dated September 12, 2016. It starts out, "On Aug. 24, 2011, Anniston police officer Justin Sollohub was shot while pursuing a suspect near 19th Street and Moore Avenue. Sollohub died the following day. He was 27. As colleagues, friends and family attested after his death, Sollohub was an outstanding officer, a selfless volunteer with a big heart and in short a model of a police force created to protect and serve its community. On Sept. 1, three days after Sollohub’s funeral and as a pall of shock and sadness still hung over the community, then-Anniston City Councilman Ben Little assembled reporters to allege that the city’s police department was racist and that it frequently singled out African-Americans for harassment."
Oh yes, there's some of those incessant claims of racism by Councilman Ben Little against the Anniston Police Department. This editorial continues to read, "Little’s evidence, such as it was, mostly consisted of the account of a former officer whose complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had been rejected 10 years earlier, an indecipherable audio recording and unconfirmed reports from other residents." It also includes this, “It’s pretty ignorant and pretty disgusting using Officer Sollohub’s death as an excuse to criticize the police department,” one Anniston resident said loudly as the councilman was speaking to reporters."
Today I'm sure the citizens of Anniston that are truly concerned for that future are seeing exactly what is going on. And again for those outside of this area, all you have to do is a quick internet search with the terms such as Anniston City Council, among others for starters to learn more. Somewhere along the way someone has broken "The Model City", but maybe one day someone somewhere will ensure that the city of Anniston will still have a viable future!
