© Jared Ragland, “Spring Hill, Barbour County, Alabama—Michael Farmer,” 2020, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Michael Farmer’s family has lived in Spring Hill for generations, where the predominantly Black community has faced a history of racial violence and voter disenfranchisement. On November 3, 1874, a White mob attacked the Spring Hill polling station, destroyed the ballot box, burned the ballots inside, and killed the election supervisor’s son. Many of the perpetrators of the massacre were known, but no one was ever convicted. Instead, Hilliard Miles, a Black man, was imprisoned after identifying members of the mob. Decades later, BB Comer, whom Mr. Miles had named as one of the perpetrators, was elected governor of Alabama. While 1,200 Black residents voted in the 1874 election, only 10 cast ballots in 1876. Almost 150 years later, little has changed. In 2016, Barbour County had the highest voter purge rate in the United States.

© Jared Ragland, “Childersburg, Talladega County, Alabama—Sunshine turns soil in the Commons Community Workshop garden,” 2020, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Sunshine turns soil in the Commons Community Workshop garden. As a response to national division and the COVID-19 outbreak, Sunshine and her husband Rusty bought a home in downtown Childersburg and created The Commons Community Workshop. Through their Fearless Communities Initiative, they maintain a community garden in a donated downtown lot, host trade days, and foster relationships with their neighbors as a means of “celebrating solidarity and strength.” The couple invited me to find them on Facebook where Sunshine posts Initiative announcements, vocalizes her opposition to vaccines, and shares her beliefs about global child sex trafficking networks, the threat of Marxism, and the coming of the end times.

© Jared Ragland, “Jacksonville, Calhoun County, Alabama—Taxidermy tableau with Confederate battle flag / along the de Soto route,” 2020, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” In 1540 Hernando de Soto entered present day Alabama with a company of 600 soldiers. In just a single year’s time, de Soto transformed life in Alabama and across the Southeast—waging war, enslaving Indigenous people, and introducing Western disease. It was de Soto’s expedition, and others like it, that caused a literal apocalypse. An estimated 55 million Indigenous people died between 1492 and 1600—a shift in population so large that it affected global temperatures.

© Jared Ragland, “Near Carbon Hill, Walker County, Alabama—Johnny Slingblade,” 2022, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Carbon Hill has endured a troubled history of racism and violence. Originally established as a mining and railroad community by the Galloway Coal Company, Carbon Hill’s founders incorporated the town on Valentine’s Day, 1891 and nicknamed it “The Village of Love and Luck.” However, just two weeks prior a group of 200 White coal miners on strike from the Carbon Hill Coal and Coke Co. devolved into a violent mob upon hearing rumors their strike would lead to layoffs. Afraid their jobs would be given to Black workers, the mob terrorized the town. Between 2019-2020 Carbon Hill mayor Mark Chambers published several inflammatory statements on Facebook, including a call to “kill out” the LGBTQIA community, claiming immigrants were “ungrateful,” and aiming racist remarks at the Black Lives Matter movement. Walker County’s population is approximately 90% White and 25% live below the poverty line; more than 83% of residents voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, 85% in the 2024 election.

© Jared Ragland, “Russell County, Alabama—Controlled burn along the Old Federal Road,” 2022, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” First designated as a postal route by Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s, the Federal Road stretched through Creek territory in lower Alabama and ushered in an era of national expansion, communication, and exploitation. Crudely constructed over ancient Indigenous trails, the road functioned as a major thoroughfare for the western migration of settlers and enslaved people into present-day Alabama for the first three decades of the 19th century. This colonial migration—what became known as “Alabama Fever”—ultimately led to the Creek Wars and the cessation of more than 21 million acres of Muscogee (Creek) territory. Following Indian removal, the plantation system quickly transformed the economy and produced unprecedented wealth while as many as 435,000 enslaved people labored in Alabama by the 1860’s. A majority of counties located along the Old Federal Road are today the poorest and most disenfranchised areas in the state, and where logging, milling, and chemical industries pose significant threats to the environment and local residents.

© Jared Ragland, “Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama—Glitter scattered on ruins of the former state capitol building,” 2020, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Yoholo-Micco, chieftain of the Upper Creek town of Eufaula, is said to have addressed the Alabama Legislature in 1836 at the state capital in Tuscaloosa before departing the ancestral Muscogee homelands on the Trail of Tears. Yoholo-Micco’s actual words are unknown, but White, colonial writers of history have portrayed the Creek leader as one who accepted Indigenous removal with an air of romantic resignation, going so far as to contrive his final words in a way to whitewash the genocide that had taken place over 300+ years’ time. Yoholo-Micco’s apocryphal address—which has been reproduced in Alabama history books and grade school curriculum for decades—reads, in part: “I come here, brothers, to see the great house of Alabama and the men who make laws and say farewell in brotherly kindness before I go to the far west, where my people are now going. In time gone by I have thought that the White men wanted to bring burden and ache of heart among my people in driving them from their homes and yoking them with laws they do not understand. But I have now become satisfied that they are not unfriendly toward us, but that they wish us well.”

© Jared Ragland, “Marion, Perry County, Alabama—Birthplace of Coretta Scott King,” 2022, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King, Jr. were married on June 18, 1963, at her family home in Marion. That evening, the couple was rejected by a Whites-only hotel in nearby Marion and were forced to spend their wedding night in a home that served as a Black-owned funeral parlor.

© Jared Ragland, “Hayneville, Lowndes County, Alabama—site of Varner’s Cash Store, where Jonathan Myrick Daniels was shot to death by Tom Coleman,” 2020, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a White Episcopal seminarian from Keene, NH, had come to Alabama following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for clergy to join the march from Selma to Montgomery. Daniels remained in Alabama after the march, assisting with voter registration efforts, working at a health clinic, and helping integrate an Episcopal congregation. In August 1965 Daniels and fellow activists attempted to purchase drinks at a Hayneville store but were held at gunpoint by volunteer special deputy sheriff Tom Coleman, who demanded they leave the property. Coleman shot at 17-year old African American activist Ruby Sales, but Daniels pushed Sales to the ground and took the impact of the blast, dying instantly. Coleman was charged with manslaughter in Daniels’ death, but an all-White jury acquitted Coleman of all charges after deliberating for less than two hours.

© Jared Ragland, “Macon County, Alabama—Near the site of Fort Bainbridge / CDC Tuskegee Syphilis Study round-up sites,” 2022, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” Located near several important Muscogee (Creek) towns along the Old Federal Road, Fort Bainbridge was constructed in 1814 to guard the U.S. Army’s supply route into Creek territory. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, local White landowners established a plantation system using extensive forced labor of enslaved people. Between 1932 and 1972, investigators from United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enrolled a total of 600 African American men from Macon County in “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” Participants were not informed of the nature of the experiment and left untreated for 40 years. As a result, 28 patients died directly from syphilis, 100 died from complications related to syphilis, 40 of the patients’ wives were infected with syphilis, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.

© Jared Ragland, “Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama—Jeremiah,” 2020, from the ongoing series, “What Has Been Will Be Again.” According to a 2020 investigation by Northeastern University, 123 Black people were killed by White police officers in Jefferson County between 1932–1968. In only two cases were officers charged for the killings. For 26 of the 36 years chronicled, the commissioner of public safety in Birmingham was Eugene “Bull” Connor, who infamously turned fire hoses and attack dogs on Civil Rights protesters in Birmingham in 1963.