Jan 27, 2025

Welcome back. Hope the weekend went well.

We're having some fun (maybe getting a little silly) near the bottom of this newsletter in the "Name that Gulf" section. We're taking alternative names for the Gulf of Mexico/America that have more of a Southern flavor. Play along if you'd like.

Today's report follows. Thanks for reading,

Ike

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The Air Force has reversed its course and will NOT remove Tuskegee Airmen history from its instruction curriculum, reports AL.com's Kayode Crown.

Was the short-lived removal malicious compliance or simply a misunderstanding over the intent of President Trump's ban on federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs

Republican U.S. Sen. Katie Britt joined others, including Democratic Reps. Shomari Figures and Terri Sewell, in protesting the removal. Britt called it "malicious compliance" -- implying a passive-aggressive overreaction to Trump's executive order -- in a social-media post, and brand-new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth replied “We’re all over it Senator. This will not stand.”

And it apparently hasn't stood, with the San Antonio Express-News and other outlets reporting that the curriculum would return today.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the black pilots and support personnel who trained in Tuskegee and served in segregated units during World War II.

Towana Looney, the Gadsden woman who became the fifth American to receive a gene-edited pig organ, has set the record as the longest living among that small group, reports The Associated Press.

And on Saturday she was at 61 days, which is how long a gene-edited pig kidney remained working inside a deceased man's body during a 2023 experiment.

It was during that experiment, by the way, that researchers gleaned information that helped them recognize and treat rejection of Looney's new kidney less than a month into her recovery.

Now, reports are she's doing great and might get to return home in another month.

Looney is in New York, where she had the procedure at NYU. She learned of the experimental work through UAB Hospital, where researchers are involved in the project. She donated one of her kidneys to her mother in 1999, and her other kidney began to fail after she had complications during a pregnancy. She developed antibodies that tests showed would've rejected any human kidney that was available, so she was left with the experimental option.

She was taken off dialysis in December for the first time in eight years. If her transplant fails she should be able to resume dialysis.

If you listen to the poets and songwriters, then you know that where people are born can stick with them the rest of their lives, often as a badge of honor.

In song it's often a brag or a humble-brag. Folks have been born in a small town, in a dead man's town, in a crossfire hurricane, down in Alabama (thank you, Clarence Carter), across the river in the mountains, or in the backseat of a Greyhound Bus rolling down Highway 41.

Kind of like you've paid your dues even before you took your first big gulp of air.

I'm going to put this next one in that category: Dallas Bennett was born after a snowstorm in a Krispy Kreme parking lot.

AL.com's Patrick Darrington reports that Mama Sha'Nya Bennett was having contractions at her home in Dothan last Wednesday, when South Alabama was uncharacteristically snow- and ice-covered. Father Keon Mitchell said it was slow going on the roads to the hospital, and they came up about a mile short.

They pulled into the Krispy Kreme parking lot and, next thing Keon knew, he was holding a brand-new baby, managing to not pass out, and waiting on the paramedics, who arrived within three minutes.

Mom and baby arrived at the hospital and were doing fine.

Krispy Kreme, meanwhile, offered the couple free doughnuts for a year and to host the first birthday party for Dallas.

Krispy Kreme manager Laura French said, “I’m telling you, everything happens in the Krispy Kreme parking lot on a scale from small to grand.”

One thing we're going to try to do here and there through 2025 is to quickly highlight a place or a thing in Alabama and where its name comes from.

Of course, if you're from the place we're talking about it might not be some big information reveal for you. But each one should be new information for someone.

Also, the origin of many names are disputed. So we'll try to make it clear when we're going on local lore or shaky oral history.

Let's start this week with possibly the first place I ever voluntarily looked up for information on its name, for personal biases: Fort Morgan.

Fort Morgan is a community on Mobile Point in Baldwin County. If you're sharp, you've probably figured out that the community is named for old Fort Morgan out at the end of the Point, guarding the mouth of Mobile Bay.

The fort was built in the 1830s on the site of the former Fort Bowyer, and the Army turned it over to the state after World War II.

Like many forts, it's named for an American War hero. Daniel Morgan was a Revolutionary War soldier who was born in New Jersey and settled in Virginia. He served under Benedict Arnold in Canada and was taken prisoner and released in an exchange. Later he made a big part of his name by leading a crucial victory against the British at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina.

After the war he was briefly recalled to help suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania and later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

And as far as I know never vacationed at Fort Morgan or anywhere on the Gulf of Mexico/America.

What a week last week was.

I can't help but note than on the same week President Trump renamed the Gulf, snow fell on it.

Could that have happened because a yankee renamed our Gulf?

No offense to the president -- and God bless you wherever you come from -- but if one person's going to get to up and rename our Gulf, shouldn't it have at least been a Southerner? Many non-Southerners who visit our beaches call it "the ocean," for goodness sake.

We the word "America" here, but bear with me for the sake of this exercise.

If you had to change the name from "Gulf of Mexico" to something, and you wanted to give it more of a Southern flavor, what would you name it?

If you have a great idea, reply to this email. If I get enough response I'll share some of them in a future Down in Alabama newsletter.

In 1894, attorney and state lawmaker Albert Patterson of New Site. He would be assassinated in Phenix City in 1954 while running for state Attorney General on a platform of cleaning up corruption and organized crime in Phenix City.

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