By DAVE DOMESCIK | Staff Writer

PELHAM – The Pelham Public Library has announced an event centered around the Cahaba Federal Prison and the Sultana disaster.

The event will be held on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025 beginning at 1 p.m. The keynote speaker for the event is Mollie Smith Waters, a professor of composition, literature, theater and speech at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Greenville, Alabama. The talk is being held by the Pelham Public Library in partnership with the Alabama Humanities Alliance and its Road Scholars program.

“Mollie is a fantastic speaker and she has been before,” said David Smith, the library supervisor at Pelham Public Library. “Her presentations are lively as well as informative.”

As the Civil War came to a close, many Confederate prison camps throughout the country paroled their inmates. One of those prisons was Cahaba Federal Prison, which released POWs in March 1865. After release, many prisoners traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi via steamboat. One of those steamboats, the Sultana, tragically exploded en route to Vicksburg on April 27, 1865.

Nearly 1,000 former POWs were onboard the Sultana when it exploded. At the time of print, it was the greatest loss of life in American maritime history. Despite the gravity of the event, it was overshadowed by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth, his assassin.

The presentation itself will focus on the origins of Cahaba Federal prison, how it was converted to a POW camp during the Civil War and what the conditions of the prison were like. The presentation will also focus on the aftermath of the Civil War, how so many POWs ended up on the Sultana and how the event impacted future generations.

Mollie Smith Waters writes for various publications, including Bookaholic, Southern Literary Review, The Camellia Magazine, Encyclopedia of Alabama and Alabama Heritage. She has also participated in several National Endowment for the Humanities summer programs. In 2009, she served as a Group Study Exchange team member in Brazil. In 2013, she directed her first play, “Crimes of the Heart,” and was instrumental in the creation of the Greenville Community Theatre.

The Alabama Humanities Alliance serves as a nonprofit and state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Through grantmaking, the AHA empowers scholars, communities and nonprofits to create accessible humanities-based projects, including festivals, documentary films, museum exhibitions, research collections and more.

To learn more about the Pelham Public Library event and the Alabama Humanities Alliance, visit Aabamahumanities.org.