The 1924 Glomerata came out in the midst of turbulent years on campus. Old buildings were in disrepair and Gov. Kilby put out bids for new construction. Money was necessary, but there were funding problems. There were always money problems.

There was a movement afoot to have the campus shifted some 50 miles west, to Montgomery. Kilby met with a group urging the governor to not build in Auburn, but to move the entire campus to the state capital. Kilby was apparently on board with the plan, which made it to the state legislature. The board of trustees didn’t like the proposal which was eventually killed.

And in 1923, the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, a centerpiece of the university, was at the center of a huge controversy. Luther Duncan had been appointed director of Extension and organized the Alabama Farm Bureau Federation. An older organization, the Farmer’s Union, complained of favoritism. These became statewide issues, economic and political, and they reverberated down through the generations.

Politics never end on that campus, but we were coming to the end of an era. Many of the names of the leadership listed in the book have their names above the doors on the campus I attended. But it sure looks different here.

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