Mosaic magazine 2026

This September, new issues of Mosaic magazine are hitting the mailboxes, letter slots, and P.O. boxes of humanities lovers statewide.

To read the issue in full, visit alabamahumanities.org/mosaic-magazine/america-at-250.

Alabama Humanities’ 2026 issue of Mosaic is inspired by America’s semiquincentennial and brings our country’s founding history and principles to bear on the present. We are thrilled to feature authors who are experts in their field — historians, poets, musicians, educators, artists, archaeologists, legal scholars, veterans, and more.

AHA also highlights its own ‘America at 250’ grantmaking and programming from 2026 thus far — from a pair of Many Voices, One Nation exhibits in state to a 250 series at Alabama Constitution Hall Park, an Alabama History Day at American Village, and a ‘Threads of Memory’ yearlong project with the Montgomery County Historical Society. And so much more.

A sampling of stories in this issue: 

• Historian Kathryn H. Braund on the impact of some “Revolutionary Travelers through Creek Country” and America’s war for independence in the land that would become Alabama.
• Tuscaloosa educator Callie Outlaw on teaching students to do primary research that recovers the personal stories of Alabama “Silent Heroes.”
• A roundtable conversation in northwest Alabama on the future of one of Alabama’s most sacred indigenous sites, the Florence Mound.
• Poet Sam Calhoun on the act of remembrance in “At the Soldier’s Grave.”

Two other essays stand out as bookends on a similar vein of thought: What can we glean from the Declaration of Independence as we consider its meaning for us all today?

In the first essay, UAB scholar Brian Steele explores the gulf “Between Promise and Fulfillment” (a phrase from Martin Luther King Jr.) that’s ever present between the words of America’s revolutionary founding document and the reality of our country’s history. In the essay, Steele writes:

“Augustine wrote in City of God that a people is constituted by ‘loved things held in common.’ In other words, if you want to understand a people, pay attention to what it loves. The Declaration assumes that there is such a thing as an American “we” and tells us a story about what that people loves and most deeply values.”

“…This is why the Declaration is rarely an occasion for uncritical celebration and self-congratulation; it has instead always been the standard that finds us wanting when our practices and institutions betray its claims about who we are and what we love.”

Later in the issue, Col. Alan Miller shares a closing essay that moves us forward, from examinations of the past to ask what we can consider for our shared future. In “Colors,” he writes about the the daily work of citizenship that extends far beyond this milestone year:

“Some look at our history and see hypocrisy more clearly than hope. A mature patriotism should not dismiss such disappointment. To love one’s country truthfully is not to pretend that it has always lived up to its ideals. But when America disappoints us, the answer is not to abandon the promise. The answer is to ask whether we are becoming the kind of people capable of fulfilling it. We must return more seriously to the work of citizenship.

“…Real patriotism is harder. It asks us to love the country truthfully: to see its wounds without despising it, its achievements without becoming blind to its failures, and our neighbors as citizens whose dignity and hopes are bound up with our own.”

Special insert, special tributes

The 2026 issue of Mosaic also includes a special insert that serves as an exhibit guide for Americans, a Smithsonian traveling exhibit that explores connections between U.S. and indigenous history. The exhibit will tour the state from September 2026 through June 2027, with stops in Atmore, Wetumpka, Florence, Scottsboro, and Foley.

And last but not least: This issue includes profiles on all of our 2025-2026 Alabama Humanities Fellows, who will be honored at a pair of events this October in Birmingham and Montevallo.

To say we are proud of the honorees’ profiles that appear in this issue would be a profound understatement. These essays are penned by an array of brilliant artists, historians, and scholars who know our 2026 Fellows well. Readers will hear from:

• Law professor Anil A. Mujumdar, who considers Bill Baxley’s courageous prosecution of Ku Klux Klan elements in Alabama;
• Famed historian Wayne Flynt on his former Auburn colleague, Kathryn Braund, and her ability to shine a light on early America’s forgotten history;
• Musician Allison Moorer on Emmylou Harris, steward of American music, equal parts “enthusiastic archivist and discerning creator”;
• Alabama Poet Laureate Jacqueline Allen Trimble on her predecessor, Ashley M. Jones, who “navigates the terrain of humanity with trepidation and hope”;
• Kate Campbell on fellow musician Will Kimbrough’s gift for finding the “delicate tension between beauty and brokenness, grace and grit, mystery and mischief”;
• Archivist Caity Bell on her fellow Fort Payne native, Randy Owen, and the lifelong relationship between artist and the cherished land he still calls home;
• Music historian Burgin Mathews on the brilliance of Fred Wesley, who knows what it means to bring the joy, and the funk, to all who will hear.

To learn more and read the issue in full, visit alabamahumanities.org/mosaic-magazine/america-at-250.