Celebrations and Civic Consciousness: The Role of Special Observances in Alabama's Educational Modernization, 1900-1915

In the early years of the twentieth century, the period generally designated as the Progressive Era, when educational officeholders, teacher representatives, civic activists, concerned legislators, philanthropists, and others - collectively "educational modernizers" - considered Alabama's mostly rural public schools, they were dismayed. They believed these schools, which were largely controlled by parents and local communities, did not meet contemporary standards for educational efficiency and were inadequate to the task of preparing students for a diversifying economy of industrial and commercial enterprise and an agricultural sector revolutionized by scientific farming and technology - in other words, an economy encapsulated in the term "New South." At the same time, these Progressive reformers sought to inculcate in students a broad sense of southern identity, believing that it would provide them with the fundamental civic values needed to address the challenges of the new century.