Kimberly O'Dell's
Anniston Revisited
by Benjamin Nunnally
“Those who don’t learn
from history are doomed
to repeat it.”
The line is a cliche at this point, but only
because it’s true enough to say over
and over. Anniston has its own share of
history slipping out of the public mind.
Historical buildings like the Noble Theater
have disappeared over time, and painful
memories of Monsanto and the Civil Rights
era are often left unmentioned in wellmeaning attempts to move forward.
Historian, teacher and local author Kimberly
O’Dell’s third book, “Anniston Revisited,”
looks at Anniston’s evolution in the nearly
140 years since its 1879 founding, starting
with its birth as a closed mining town.
Hundreds of pictures fill the pages, with
prosperous men posing beside their cars,
a photo of a bustling farmer’s market and
a shot of Noble Street in the late 1940s,
with JC Penney and Woolworth's still open
for business. Another photo shows smoke
billowing from the top of a bus parked
outside Forsyth’s grocery store during the
Civil Rights era. The book takes the good
with the bad.
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“It’s my job to gather the facts and present
those facts, and the reader makes the
decision for themselves,” said O’Dell. “It’s
not my job to tell you what to think.”
Captions lay out historical information in
quick, easy to read snippets. The format
lends itself to quick reads of a few entries,
September 2016
INSIGHT