Alabama's Cemeteries and Symbols

Drive down any highway, backroad, or country lane, and one is sure to pass a cemetery or two along the way. While many people think of cemeteries as merely final resting places, they are also repositories for the history and culture of a location.

In the program "Alabama Cemeteries: Common Symbols and Architecture," these histories and the culture of some of Alabama’s cemeteries will be explored. Not only will common symbols and typical architecture be discussed, but unusual, macabre, and famous cemeteries and its inhabitants will also be featured. From this program, attendees will learn about symbols, secret organizations, epitaphs, grave styles, and much more.

Mollie Smith Waters is a professor of composition, literature, theater, and speech at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Greenville. Waters writes for various publications including Bookkaholic, Southern Literary Review, The Camellia Magazine, Encyclopedia of Alabama, and Alabama Heritage. Waters is a past-participant of several National Endowment for the Humanities summer programs, including seminars on the American Lyceum, the Pilgrims & Wampanoag Indians, and the Transcendentalists. In 2008, she was a Group Study Exchange team member to Brazil. In 2013, she directed her first play, "Crimes of the Heart," and she helped to create the Greenville Community Theatre.