Montevallo has the distinction of being one of about 25 Alabama towns that were selected by the United States Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture to have an original work of art, in the form of a mural, installed in its new 1937 Post Office. This was a program initiated by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in much the same way as his “fireside chats,” to reach ordinary people individually in the belief that a country needed citizens familiar and involved with the arts in order to be truly democratic. In so doing, he tried to bring original art to small towns everywhere.
This program was among Roosevelt’s many efforts during the Depression years to provide constructive work for the unemployed – and artists were no exception. The government put thousands of artists, themselves often destitute, to work on commissioned murals and sculptures for federal buildings and for eleven hundred post offices throughout the country. Most of the Alabama murals are in the northern and southern sections of the state, and some either no longer exist, have been relocated, or are in storage. The Montevallo and Fairfield post office murals are the only ones in Central Alabama.
Generally speaking, the murals focused on either the settlement history of the locale for which it was intended or depicted the roles of agriculture, industry, and commerce in the development of early Alabama. And the Montevallo mural certainly follows this model. Entitled “Early Settlers Weighing Cotton,” it was completed and installed in the spring of 1939 by artist William Sherrod McCall of Jacksonville, FL.
The following article from the April 6, 1939 issue of the Montevallo Times provides more details about the mural and the artist.
The Montevallo Post Office mural was installed on the north interior wall and above the entrance to the postmaster’s office in the lobby and customer service area of the building. The theme of the painting is the cultivation and harvest of cotton by early white settlers to the Montevallo area. While not a part of the Black Belt to the south, or the Tennessee Valley in the northern part of the state, both of which were more known as cotton growing regions, the Montevallo area was a center for cotton culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries and a cotton gin, owned by J.A. Brown, Sr., operated for many years on the south bank of Shoal Creek near the railroad. Other Depression-era murals in several Alabama post offices depict how the state’s legendary cotton barons depended completely on African-American slave labor for their prosperity. Conversely, “Early Settlers Weighing Cotton,” shows how, for non-slave owning pioneer farmers, the entire family had to pitch in to get the cotton picked and ready for market.
The Montevallo mural appears to still be in good condition considering its age and the many years of seasonal temperature changes it has endured. Exposure to dust and grime and the simple passage of time has darkened the painting to a degree. And some areas of paint have chipped off or become discolored at one time or another. In any case, we should not forget that we are most fortunate to have this artistic and historic treasure, in such good condition, and that it is available to everyone, every day, just by stepping through the post office doors and looking up.
Thank you Clay Nordan, Vice President of Montevallo Historical Society, for this information!