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Off the Shelf
A conversation with Tennant McWilliams, author of
New Lights in the Valley: The Emergence of UAB
(2007: University of Alabama Press)

Birmingham’s transformation from a blue-collar steel town to a white-collar metropolis infused with intellectual and social capital is inseparable from UAB’s own meteoric rise. This symbiotic relationship between the city and the university forms the backdrop for New Lights in the Valley: The Emergence of UAB, by Tennant McWilliams, Ph.D., a longtime professor of history at UAB and former dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. UAB’s alliance with the city extends to the university’s humble beginnings in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression and President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Birmingham was hit hard as demand for iron and steel plummeted, prompting massive worker layoffs. At the same time, people from rural areas were streaming into the city looking for work.

Many of the same problems were occurring across the country. In order to create jobs and jumpstart the economy, Roosevelt instituted a public works program fueled by competitive grants. The University of Alabama received such a grant to fund an extension center in Birmingham, largely to retrain displaced workers. This was the origin of UAB, but the university did not spring up overnight—it would not become an independent institution until more than 30 years later.

SHELF LIFE: How did you get started on this project?

MCWILLIAMS: In the early 1990s, Dr. Scotty McCallum, UAB’s third president, asked me to write a history that would reflect the rise of the university and the evolution of the core values of UAB and its impact on the community. Once I began the initial research, I found that it was a huge scholarly topic. I wanted to frame the university’s origin within the context of higher education historically, so the opening chapter notes that there is no way to date a precise beginning for UAB—because it’s a true story. Unlike fiction, true stories don’t have precise beginnings in time and place because you can always find some event that came before, regardless of the time frame you’re focused on.

As far as the chronology of the proto-UAB is concerned, that story starts in the 1930s when the University of Alabama won a federal grant to open an extension center in downtown Birmingham; the center was located in a two-story house situated where the newer section of the Birmingham Public Library stands today. There was a library in the dining room, and there were classrooms in the bedrooms, all with working coal-burning fireplaces—a very nice touch, kind of like Oxford or the University of Virginia. At that time the medical school was still functioning out of Tuscaloosa. The extension center eventually outgrew its space downtown and was moved to its current location in the Five Points South area, where in 1969 it became an independent campus of the University of Alabama system.

SHELF LIFE: Why do you think UAB has been able to set itself apart?

MCWILLIAMS: Interdisciplinary thought through research at both the graduate and undergraduate levels—that is what makes UAB unique. That campuswide ability to work across disciplines for a common goal was initiated by UAB’s first president, Joseph Volker. Dr. Volker brought in faculty and administrators who shared a particularly modern view, namely that the future of the country’s economy, and particularly Birmingham’s, would depend less on heavy industry and more on the intangible qualities of information, imagination, and intellect. As a result, UAB has been able to attract students committed to learning and research who want to make an impact on the world.

SHELF LIFE: What have been the biggest, or most surprising, changes at UAB?

MCWILLIAMS: A very surprising aspect was the rapid emergence of this university during a period when much of the rest of the state was experiencing fairly tumultuous events with regard to race and race relations. UAB became an independent campus in 1969 at the crest of the civil rights movement, yet the horrific events that had roiled Birmingham during the 1960s, including the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church downtown, had little effect on the campus’s growth. One of the most dramatic changes within the past two decades—transcending the timeframe of the book, which concludes with the advent of the Ann Reynolds presidency—has been the expansion of residential student life.

SHELF LIFE: Where did you find the historical documents to support your narrative?

MCWILLIAMS: The UAB Archives, under the direction of Tim Pennycuff, provided a wealth of information, as did the archives at the Birmingham Public Library, which is headed by one of our own history graduates, James Baggett. Jim earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from UAB. Also, I traveled to England to conduct research because I was fascinated with the parallels between the development of civic universities in that country and the development of universities in urban areas in the United States during the 1960s. Many of these universities—UAB, the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, and Virginia Commonwealth University—sprang to life as independent campuses to meet the needs of people then. What moved them from sort of proto-university life to the emergence of full university life, like UAB in 1969, was a response to waves of national and economic reform, as well as concerns about poverty—all of the social-justice values that you associate with the 1960s. At the same time, interdisciplinary science was surging forward as a force in American life and in Europe. So there was a combination of social-conscience concerns and rigorous, interdisciplinary scientific research, and these formed the most potent intellectual forces behind the birth of UAB. Of course, factored into that is the personal component of leadership, but if you want to look beyond individuals, or a certain set of faculty members, to find the seeds of UAB’s rise, those are the broad social currents that formed its principal sources.

SHELF LIFE: How would you briefly characterize the UAB presidents encompassed in your book?

MCWILLIAMS: Joe Volker, in addition to bringing an interdisciplinary vision to UAB, was a brilliant political strategist. Richardson Hill, the university’s second president, was a person with a large and ever-expanding vision who had complete faith in the institution’s ability to grow to a place of national and international prominence. The third president, Scotty McCallum, held the same viewpoint and both he and Dick Hill possessed the management skills to support that vision. Claude Bennett was the fourth president and he also possessed the vision of a rapidly expanding institution built on interdisciplinary thought. Of the different presidents, Claude probably had the most experience as an interdisciplinary scientist, beyond even Joe Volker.

In New Lights, I cover these four presidents and then summarize the significance of Ann Reynolds’ tenure as the first woman president of UAB, as well as the challenges she faced coming on board in 1997. Since then, of course, Carol Garrison was named president in 2002, and she, too, envisions the university as an interdisciplinary research institution destined for ever-higher distinction on the international stage.

SHELF LIFE: How did you organize such a large body of material?

MCWILLIAMS: The book is organized around the concept of change over time. There are metaphors in some of the chapter titles—”Conception,” “Gestation,” “Stage One Delivery,” “Stage Two Delivery”—that correspond to the creation and birthing of a new life. The underlying idea is that of genes as synonymous with history: Out of the past springs forth new life. A geneticist or physician may look at genetics in an attempt to find the links in the chain that tie us modern humans to our remote ancestors; in a similar vein, a historian wants to outline the events of the past, present, and future as a seamless, interconnected narrative.