May 16, 1998

A resident of Alabama’s Black Belt nearly all her life, Viola Goode Liddell recounted the stories of many Wilcox County residents, including her own, in three memoirs. She was born in 1901 and died May 16, 1998. She studied at Judson College in Marion and lived briefly in New Mexico before returning home to Camden, where she started teaching and resumed writing. Her first book, “With a Southern Accent,” (1948) tells of her youth in Gastonburg. A second memoir, “A Place of Springs,” (1979) chronicles the struggles of the Black Belt during the Great Depression and the turbulence of the civil rights era through the eyes of Camden residents. Her final memoir, “Grass Widow: Making My Way in Depression Alabama,” was published posthumously in 2004 and tells of her early years in Camden and her relationship with her husband.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

This photograph was used in the 1950 Wilcox High Yearbook, which was dedicated to Viola. (Photograph courtesy of Ruth H. Liddell)

Viola looks ravishing in the height of flapper fashion at Judson College, circa 1922. During her senior year, she met her first husband, Oxford Stroud. (Photograph courtesy of Ruth H. Liddell)

Viola and Will’s home on Broad Street in Camden, now known as the Bagby-Liddell House, was photographed for the Historic American Building Survey in 1936. (Alabama Heritage, Library of Congress)

Viola’s marriage to Will Liddell allowed her the financial security to pursue her writing career. (Photograph courtesy of Ruth H. Liddell)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.