4/19/02

MOBILE HISTORIAN TO DISCUSS CITY¹S HISTORY AT AU

AUBURN -- Michael Thomason, professor of history at the University of South Alabama and a member of the Alabama Humanities Foundation Speaker in the House program, will lecture at Auburn University on Thursday, April 25.

Thomason will speak at 3 p.m., in the Special Collections and Archives Department of Ralph B. Draughon Library.

The topic of his presentation will be: "Mobile: A Tricentennial City." Mobile, Alabama's first city, is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year.

Thomason, who for five years has worked to put Mobile's history into print, will explore its diverse personality and reveal what it is that instills a love for the Port City in natives and transplants alike.

His presentation is part of the 2001-2003 AHF Speaker of the House program.

Thomas, who received his Ph.D. in history from Duke University, has produced several exhibitions of historic Alabama photographs and documented the history of Alabama and Mobile in five books.

They are: The Image of Progress, Trying Times; Alabama Photographs 1917-1945; Mobile: American River City; Mobile: The Life and Times of a Great Southern City; and Mobile: The New History of Alabama's First City.

The Alabama Humanities Foundation is a nonprofit organization, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, of which the AHF is the state affiliate, as well as by corporate and individual donors.

The foundation is dedicated to the promotion and celebration of the humanities throughout the state of Alabama and, conducts its own statewide programs and awards grants, on a competitive basis, to nonprofit organizations for humanities projects.

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apr02: AU-mobile

CONTACT: University Archivist Dwayne Cox, 334/844-1707. For more information on Speaker of the House or other AHF programs, please call 205/558-3980.