A valuable contributor to the state economy, life along Alabama’s working waterfront is a unique way of life steeped in rich tradition and history. The Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium recognizes the importance of those places, as well as the need to record and share the stories of the people who make up the community.
Many videos and recordings have been made documenting the history and stories of businesses and families of the Alabama and Mississippi working waterfronts. Several videos are available on the MASGC YouTube channel, but now all of these valuable stories are available in one place.
We are pleased to announce the debut of Stories from the Alabama Waterfront: Preserving the Oral Histories of Bayou La Batre, an interactive storymap showcasing the history and culture of one of Alabama’s working waterfronts.
Thanks to our partnership with the National Sea Grant Law Center, University of Mississippi, Auburn University and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, MASGC has been able to catalog and compile Alabama working waterfront oral histories and videos and create this educational tool so that those of us living on the coast can learn more about the parts of our culture that make this place special.
This interactive multimedia tool integrates oral histories and cultural highlights, interwoven with the changing landscape of a modern-day working waterfront. We look forward to sharing these stories with you, and for you to share the importance of working waterfront communities to the fabric of the Gulf Coast.
The authors would like to give special thanks to Anna Hamilton, without whose dedication to preserving these stories this project would not have been possible.
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