Some history in Madison
By MIKE MARSHALL
Times Staff Writer,
[email protected]
MADISON - On the west side of town, just before the railroad tracks, there is a neighborhood known as Pension Row.
This is a former Place in Peril, according to the Alabama Historical Commission. Each year, the state commission and the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation select 12 sites that are endangered landmarks.
Previous lists have included old barns, historic gas stations and neon signs. The deadline for this year's nominations is Thursday.
Pension Row received its designation in 2003 because many of its historic buildings are "rapidly disappearing," in the words of the Historical Commission.
The end of segregation caused much of Pension Row's legacy to vanish. Then, as west Madison was overrun with new neighborhoods in the 1980s and '90s, Pension Row was in danger of being swallowed into oblivion.
Today, there are still signs of its heyday. The neighborhood has tin roofs, wooden clotheslines and air-conditioning units jutting from the windows.
Many of the homes are made of cinder blocks, the style of farmhouses in the early 20th century, when Madison's best-known black residents lived on Pension Row.
The porches are already prepared for the evening conversations of spring and summer. Most are concrete slabs with chairs on each side of the front door.
At the edge of the driveways, the mailboxes are adorned with names of longtime residents. Some of them, such as Leroy Crutcher, have lived here for more than 50 years, since telephones and television arrived in Pension Row.
From the front yard of his home on Langford Avenue, he points to the white-frame home of Roy Washington, one of his childhood friends.
"That's where the old school burned in '49," he says. "After that, we went to school in churches until 1952."
Pension Row is where the first black businesses in Madison were built. It is where former and current residents pass the former sites of those businesses and the memories begin.
There are also signs of Pension Row's rejuvenation. New houses have been built throughout the neighborhood.
Gilbreath and others are leading a drive to preserve Pension Row. She is the founder and president of the Madison African-American Alliance Group, an organization dedicated to black heritage.
Recently, she was named the new 5th Congressional District representative for the Black Heritage Advisory Council of the Alabama Historical Commission. She represents Madison, Morgan, Limestone, Jackson, Colbert and Lauderdale counties.
Being named one of the state's Places in Peril "helped bring awareness to the need of the community," Gilbreath says.
Before, she says, there was little knowledge of the efforts to revitalize Pension Row. Since then, several groups, including the State Black Archives at Alabama A&M University, have shown interest.
"It assisted in working with groups that we would not have worked with if we hadn't gotten that designation," Gilbreath says. "It also brought the city closer to that community. It made the city aware that the community needed to be preserved."
Here's why Pension Row needs to be preserved, she says: it was one of the first black communities in Madison and the only one remaining.
The history of the neighborhood dates to the Civil War. The area was named Pension Row because black residents lived off federal pensions that they received for fighting for the Union.
Now, Gilbreath says, it's the last of the historic black neighborhoods in Madison.
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