Docena: Coalminers At Heart

Published on November 15, 2018

https://www.samford.edu/departments/oral-history/projects/samwav/Docena-History.mp3

". . . coal miners are coal miners at heart, wherever they are. They’re facing danger every day. It brings them closer together. . . . I think coal mining is in your blood."

Chapters

Introduction: Docena, 1944

Claire Davis and Michelle Little introduce the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad town of Docena; and Melba Kizzire recounts some of her memories growing up there in the 1940s and 50s.

Play Segment

An External Perspective

E.L. McFee, a former student preacher at Docena, discusses church life in the town and the hospitality of its community.

Play Segment

Docena, 2018

Docena resident Faye Mason and intern Cameron Teaney reflect upon Docena’s future.

Play Segment

Transcript

[HARWELL GOODWIN DAVIS: He stated that he had been appointed to suggest a
president for Howard College.

EUNICE ROGERS: And so there was a lot of industry in Bessemer when I grew up, a
lot of progressiveness. However, it was still a typical, small, Southern town.

OLIVER BARREAU: To be perfectly honest with you, um, I didn't know what Alabama
was until I set foot in Alabama.

ELIZABETH SLOAN RAGLAND: I was not greeted by hecklers. I was greeted by Martha
Ann Cox.]

MELBA WILBANKS KIZZIRE: Well, coal miners are coal miners at heart, wherever
they are. They're facing danger every day. It brings them closer together,
and. . . . I think that coal mining is in your blood.

CLAIRE DAVIS: Welcome back to Sam.wav. We are your hosts, Claire Davisâ€"

MICHELLE LITTLE: --and Michelle Little.

CLAIRE DAVIS: And today we are bringing you the history of Docena, Alabama. If
you listened to our last episode, you already know a little bit of background
about the mining town and Samford University's involvement with it. If you
haven't, be sure to take some time to do so--it's an amazing
story in its own right.

MICHELLE LITTLE: For most of its history, Docena, Alabama was tied to the mining
industry. In 1907, the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company exchanged the
land in a deal to better access the Pratt coal seam. However, it wasn't
until 1912 when the Docena our interviewees knew and loved was born. Docena was
the first of several model mining villages within TCI. The planned communities
had all the necessities and several perks, such as paved roads, schools, stores,
churches, parks, and social halls. Compared to contemporary conditions in other
mining camps, Docena was a paradise.

CLAIRE DAVIS: The superiority of Docena was stressed in several of the 1979
interviews conducted by Dr. Rikard's oral history class. Ranging from
fifteen minutes to over two hours, these interviews covered mining conditions,
community activities, and, most of all, fond childhood memories. All of this can
be found in Joy Richardson's home interview with Ms. Melba Kizzire, who
opened this episode, and her friend, Ms. Plunkett. Having moved to Docena as a
child, Ms. Kizzire was in the unique position to contrast her old home in Blount
County with Docena and found it to be, in her words, "Wonderland."

JOY RICHARDSON: And what was your, your home like, that first home?

MELBA WILBANKS KIZZIRE: When I came to Docena?

JOY RICHADSON: Imagine that you're in that home.

MELBA WILBANKS KIZZIRE: okay. I lived in a wood, a log, a log cabin home in the
hills of Blount County, and I came to a brown, painted house, like, you know,
there was paint on all four sides and the top. First time I had ever lived in a
painted house. All the rooms were wallpapered with what I thought was the most
beautiful wallpaper I had ever seen. And it was. The floors were covered in
linoleum, and I had been able to see the chickens through the floor where I
lived. I mean, it was primitive. And, um. The schools had flushing johns. The
first time I had ever saw a flushing john. First time I ever saw a telephone was
when I came here. And, uh, I had a lot of firsts when I moved here that first
week I came. And I'm almost forty years old, and I know a girl at church
told me that I wasn't old enough to remember things so primitive, but you
didn't have to be old to have come from the hills of Blount County.

JOY RICHARDSON: Certainly.

MICHELE LITTLE: Listeners might remember that Ms. Kizzire wrote a book about
growing up in Docena that STORI stumbled upon through our intern Cameron's
outreach. Flipping through the book, it's plain to see the care and concern
that Ms. Kizzire took to compile her neighbors' experiences as well as the
pride she felt for her community.

CLAIRE DAVIS: Dr. Rikardâ€™s class didn't only interview local families.
Some tracked down frequent visitors to the community, as seen in student Jim
Nogalski's interview with Mr. E. L. McFee. Mr. McFee was the Methodist
preacher for Docena as a student at Birmingham Southern College from 1939 to
1941. He served the town by preaching every other Sunday. Why once every two
weeks? Mr. McFee explains.

JIM NOGALSKI: What was the, the, normal routine for the church at Docena on a
weekly basis? How often did it meet?

E.L. MCFEE : Well, you see, there was one building. It was owned by the company.
Very nice, brick building. Back of it had, uh, Sunday school rooms on it. Uh, it
was a pretty large building, much larger than would be necessary for the
churches, and they used it in addition to the church as a community building, so
they had community affairs and that kind of thing. They had, at that time, a Ms.
Dollar, D-O-L-L-A-R, [Mary Dolliver] uh, trying to think what her first name
was. She was, a, a, lady from Iowa, who was in charge of the, um, community
service projects in there hired by the company. And she held her meetings in
there. I preached just every other Sunday. The Baptist minister, who at that
time was a student at what was then Howard College, uh, he preached every other
Sunday. Each summer, uh, one summer, they had one revival meeting. Both churches
sponsored it. One summer the Methodists would bring the preacher, and the
Baptists would bring the evangelistic singer, and the next year, they would
reverse it. Um . . . of course, you did all the ministerial duties: visiting the
sick at the hospital, normal pastoring. However, at that time, I was a student
at Birmingham Southern and was doing what we call a "student supply."

JIM NOGALSKI: And, and that's where you went out?

E.L. MCFEE: I, I lived at home, which is right here in this area, but I went out
there and served the church and stayed. There was one home which I lived part of
the time, they had a bedroom they let me sleep there, and that kind of
thing. Saved going home a lot of the times I had a meeting. . . . Well, I think
in some ways the cooperation between the Baptists and the Methodists and, uh,
was exceptional. They worked together, taught the same Sunday school classes.
They had their board, and we had ours. And, uh . . . the collections on the
Methodist Sunday went to the Methodist, and so with the Baptist, and each
contributed to the other. Um, to some degree, but mostly. When the Methodist
Sunday, I'm sure the Methodists gave the, it always went to the Methodist
church, and the Baptists to the Baptist church on their Sunday, and there was
the major portion, but they helped each other without too much, with not much division.

MICHELE LITTLE: Like Ms. Kizzire, Mr. McFee also spent some time in other nearby
mining communities, which gave him a chance to compare attitudes between
congregations. When asked to compare, he remarked on the quintessential Southern
hospitality he felt as an outsider to the community.

JIM NOGALSKI: What were some of the things you enjoyed most about the congregation?

E.L. MCFEE: Oh, it had some of the finest people. They were just very loyal to
you, very friendly, open. I can recall the names of the families, some of the
families there and how nice they were to us. Good about inviting you out to
their homes for meals, most appreciative of any attention you showed them. The
people who were loyal to the church had a real deep loyalty. If they were there
(there were very, very little). They, in many ways, I think, just like any other
industrial people, when you get away from this fatalistic thing. They're
open, tight people. Friendly, like gregarious, liked to get together and have
fun, that kind of thing. I thoroughly enjoyed Docena; I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It always had a warm place in my heart, and some of the families that were there
are friends to this day and maintained over the years. . . . No, never felt an
outsider. No, I don't think they ever, they weren't clannish to the
degree that, you know, anybody that comes from the outside is foreign, that
didn't, I never noticed that at all. As I said, they were open, opened
their home, "Come on in, spend the night with us," that type thing. I
never felt an outsider at all.

CLAIRE DAVIS: Nearly forty years after Dr. Rikard's class visited Docena,
our intern Cameron Teaney received the same warm welcome in her interactions
with the community. To hear another side of the story, Cameron asked about the
church and its function within Docena in her interview with Faye Mason and Nancy
Fouche, a mother-daughter pair who both grew up and live in Docena today.

CAMERON TEANEY: Who's, what's the name of the pastor? Is it Mike?

NANCY FOUCHE: Mike Woodham.

CAMERON TEANEY: Yeah, I think he was saying that it used to be kind of a
multi-purpose building like they used it as some sort of, a community center, or
a place for like meetings as well as a church. Do you remember that?

FAYE MASON: Oh yeah.

CAMERON TEANEY: Ok.

FAYE MASON: We did from the school we did our plays at the church because
everything was better.

CAMERSON TEANEY: Oh ok.

FAYE MASON: And so when we put on a play, it would be there and we all would, we
had all the Sunday school rooms was for our dressing rooms and all. And we had
one play where we had to sing and all of us was in one area. And anyway, it was,
the church was the main thing.

CAMERON TEANEY: Gotcha, was, did most the people that you knew go to church? Was
that pretty-- like if you, you know, lived in Docena you went to church? Was it--

FAYE MASON: Yeah, right. That was a Methodist and Baptist Church. One week it
would be one, one week Methodist, one week Baptist.

CAMERON TEANEY: Oh ok, yes.

FAYE MASON: And the different people from college, the important people, when
they came and talked to us, and they seemed to enjoy it too. I didn't even
go to church all the time; there was another church, but for anything special,
we went to that church.

MICHELE LITTLE: Another constant through the years was a sense of optimism about
the future of the neighborhood. Just as Ms. Kizzire expressed hope for the
tight-knit community that coal-mining produced, Ms. Mason also shared her hopes
for a new industry to revitalize the community of her childhood, which lead to
Cameron's main takeaway from her research:

CAMERON TEANEY: . . . in Faye's interview, was that she was saying, or I
asked, like, what legacy she hoped Docena would leave, and she was saying how
she like, still hopes that, you know, that one day there will be trucks, like,
you know, she'll-- the mines would come back, and in my mind, I was
like, "Well, I don't know that'll happen with the way that, you
know, technology has progressed."€ But I was, like, thinking more about what
she was saying, and I think she was getting at something that was a lot deeper
than just, you know, this industry returning to the U.S. And I think that, um,
is just having that strong sense of community and whether it's, you know,
we're bound together through, you know, this industry, um, or, you know, a
type of industry or not, like, what can we find now that, like, binds us, and
like really focusing on that. And so I think, like, that was a huge takeaway for
me, was just seeing how, um, like, even at the time this, you know, one company
kind of created, fostered this sense of community but today what does that look
like for us?

FAYE MASON: I think it, it is a legacy of hope. That while we had, when I was
younger we had what we needed, but it was hope to go on out, just like the last
entry on there about Red. He was, he was a hero and people come from here. I did
have all the people who come from here that went on to be, to do greater things,
but I, I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have been more. I think
about Ms. Bingham, the youth director here, Ms. Baker, the teacher, Ms. Skully,
they're heroes, they taught us to reach, reach for the stars, wasn't
anything we couldn't do and that's about true. If you, if people set
their mind to it, but having the rules of Docena and the regulations and, and
the responsibilities is what makes people whatever they are. You've got to
have that foundation. If you don't, you'll be like Docena is now.
It's just mixed up, torn up. And even now, I keep hoping that the mines
will open back up and they'll stop using foreign coal and use this coal
again and it will be like it used to be. May never happen, but still got hope. I
hold on to my little house and one day the trucks will come through here again.
. .

CLAIRE DAVIS: As we listened through the Docena interviews, the most striking
similarity we found was the interviewees' earnest commitment to a
tight-knit community. Despite differences in age, occupation, experience, and
even period in history, what impacted interviewees most was not the environment
but how they interacted with their neighbors--not the company-supplied
houses, but the people inside of them. Perhaps, as Mr. McFee suggested later in
his interview, it has to do with the dangerous nature of coalmining that breeds
a fatalistic and gracious attitude. Perhaps the isolation and self-sufficiency
of the community fostered a type of relationship unavailable today with our
increasingly interconnected society. Regardless of the mind-set's origins,
though, we are confronted with the same questions that Cameron was. Docena found
their community in a specific industry and a set of company-laid streets. Where
do we find it today?

MICHELE LITTLE: Next time on Sam.wav, we'll be sharing stories from Marion,
Alabama, and an oral history project centered music education and high schools
in the area. Until then--

BOTH: Make waves!

CLAIRE DAVIS: Our theme was produced by Samford student Kerry Joiner. Our
background music was supplied by Kerry Joiner, as well as the Blue Dot Sessions
and Lobo Loco from the Free Music Archive. Joy Richardson conducted the
interview with Melba Kizzire and Ms. Plunkett. Jim Nogalski conducted the
interview with E. L. McFee. Cameron Teaney conducted the interview with Faye
Mason and Nancy Fouche. This episode was written and produced by Claire Davis
and Michelle Little. This is a Samford Traditions and Oral History Recordings
Initiative production. For more information on our program, you can find our
page on the Samford website or follow us on social media at Facebook and
Instagram at Samford_STORI and on Twitter at SU_STORI.

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection