2

Veteran Newspaper Man

2

"I was a publisher of a paper in Randolph County when I was seven-
teen. At that time I organized the first county Sunday School Association
in Alabama. The annual meetings of this association were celebrated
with Sunday School programs, big barbecues and speakings. I often had to do
some of the speaking.

"Later I went back to Montgomery, I remember the old electric street
cars of those days. When we were getting on a car, the conductor would
warn us not to get on if we were wearing a fine watch. It didn't harm
mine I assure you! I came upon the scene of the death of two horses that
had been killed by fallen street-car wires, soon after they had been killed.
No one, not even the driver of the horses, had been injured; but that
event so alarmed the town that Montgomery abolished electric street cars.
Although Montgomery was the first in the South to electrify her cars,
this type of car had been adopted by all the larger towns and cities over
the country before Montgomery put them in again.

"I have heard many of the people who heard William L. Yancey, describe his
eloquence when he was persuading the delegates to the Alabama Convention
to secede, prior to the War Between the States. Very few of these dele-
gates had come prepared to vote for secession, but Bill Yancey's eloquence
won all but two of them to the cause. One of these two was graphic and
sincere in his explanation of reasons for voting in the negative. He pre-
dicted the horrors of a reconstruction period that were all too true.

While Mr. Greer was publishing a paper in Lafayette, he wrote an editor-
ial that has been credited with being the beginning of the movement for an
industrial school for girls. When questioned about this, he said, "I got
the idea of this type of state school for girls from an article in a north-
ern paper. I wrote my editorial from this and sent a copy to every legis-
lator. From this they drew up a bill that was finally passed, to provide
for the school that is known today, as Alabama College.

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