Clay County lies in the east-central area of the state of Alabama with the Talladega National Forest occupying most of the county’s western corridor. In the 1800s, the area’s longleaf pine forests and abundant natural resources drew large numbers of settlers who relied upon their family members, including young children, to establish and work small farms. On many farms, the labor needs were often of a magnitude that the children had to forego any education beyond the primary grades. However, on the Evans farm, Viola Blanche Evans was an exception. As the youngest of twelve children, Blanche not only worked the family farm but embraced it as a living laboratory where she eagerly learned about animals and nature from her father and wildflowers from her mother. With the support of her parents, Blanche was able to continue her education and complete a high school diploma in 1908.
With a high school diploma in hand, Blanche returned to her home community and taught at a small school housed in the local Presbyterian church. It was satisfying for some time but eventually, Blanche wanted more. That desire led her to pursue a teaching certificate at Jacksonville State University and Valparaiso University in Indiana and later a degree in Chemistry from the University of Alabama. Throughout her formal education, Blanche was also independently studying botany and biology the latter of which she would teach for 30+ years in the Birmingham School System. To examine her life is to be reminded that every cliche carries within it an element of truth. For Blanche Evans, “once a teacher, always a teacher” was indeed the foundational truth of her life.
“She always carried a whistle around her neck and when you were on an outing with her and she blew that whistle, you better come fast!”
(Ruth Manasco, former adult student)
Blanche Evans married William Dean but it lasted less than a year and they divorced in 1939. Following the divorce, Blanche sought opportunities for socializing but rather than wait on others, she created her own by using her teaching skills to lead colleagues on naturalist field studies in the Birmingham area. The outings were so popular that, in 1951, Blanche formally launched one of the state’s first outdoor nature camps for adults which ran for approximately 13 years. Using her own curriculum and adapting it to Alabama’s different regions, Blanche would rotate the camps among different sites ranging from Dauphin Island in the south to DeSoto State Park in the north. After her death in 1974, members of the Birmingham Audubon Society chose to honor Blanche by reviving the camps as the Audubon Mountain Ecology Workshops. The workshops remained true to Blanche’s original model of instruction consisting of discussions led by subject matter experts and hands-on learning experiences in nature.
By the early 1950s, Blanche was recognized as an expert in Alabama natural history and she would use her knowledge to venture into conservation work by creating the Alabama Conservation Council. Among the Council’s most significant projects was an attempt to protect sections of the Black Warrior River, including Clear Creek Falls, from the Alabama Power Company’s plan to build a dam along the river. The power company had maintained that the dam was needed as a means of generating additional power and drinking water for the region. Blanche and her colleagues had hoped to protect the Falls by having them designated as a national park but their efforts would fail and the dam, one of the largest in the eastern U.S., was completed in 1961. Clear Creek Falls was totally lost in the process becoming submerged under the newly formed Lewis Smith Lake. The Council would suffer other defeats as well and eventually fold. However, even as the losses mounted, the lessons for Blanche remained. She would move forward with an even deeper sense of urgency around protecting Alabama’s natural resources and a greater understanding of grassroots organizing and advocacy work.
Blanche’s maturing as a conservationist coincided with the nation’s growing environmental movement of the 1960s. She seized the opportunity by lobbying Mary Ivy Burks, a friend and fellow member of the Birmingham Audubon Society, to launch another statewide advocacy group to fight rampant development and shape governmental policies. Blanche believed that Mary, with her professional reputation and background in public relations, would make all the difference at the state and national level. Together, the two worked with others to establish the Alabama Conservancy in 1967, with Mary serving as their President. One of the group’s first major projects was the preservation of an endangered wilderness area located adjacent to the West Fork Sipsey River in Bankhead National Forest, an area that Mary and Blanche had hiked together numerous times over the years.
In 1964, the U.S. Department of Agriculture increased the levels of commercial timber harvesting within the national forests as a means of sustaining the country’s post-war growth. Alabama’s Bankhead Forest was particularly vulnerable to any expanded harvesting given its large stands of old-growth hardwoods and pine forests many of which were located along the West Fork Sipsey River. The Alabama Conservancy began its proactive campaign to protect the Sipsey by amassing scientific data noting, no doubt, that Alabama’s wilderness areas provide habitat for the largest number of species east of the Mississippi River. The group then used petitions, newspaper editorials, and one of the earliest promotional films in the field of conservation to communicate their message. Their arguments were further advanced by using a political strategy that leveraged the nation’s recently created National Wilderness Preservation System (1964).
The wilderness system was originally designed to preserve large tracts of pristine areas west of the Mississippi River with the belief that the more urbanized areas of the east would not qualify under the legislation’s criteria. However, the Conservancy argued that the Sipsey area did indeed qualify marking the first time that an eastern state was seeking protections under the new legislation. Their effort garnered considerable political and public support across multiple states ultimately fueling what became known as the “Eastern Wilderness Movement.” Yet, even with momentum, the Conservancy’s fight was a protracted one requiring numerous legislative attempts before Congress passed the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975. Among other lands, the Act also set aside 12,700 acres within the Bankhead as the Sipsey National Wilderness, Alabama’s first national wilderness area. It also marked Blanche Evans Deans’ first victory as a conservationist.
Blanche had retired from the public school system in 1957 and, in addition to her ongoing conservation work, she devoted most of her post-retirement life to writing textbooks related to Alabama natural history. She would eventually complete five books one of which, Trees and Shrubs of the Southeast, achieved reference status over the years. Her final writing project was undertaken at the age of 77 when she partnered with Joab Thomas, a renowned University of Alabama biology professor and botanist, to produce another significant text, Wildflowers of Alabama and Adjoining States, which was published in 1973.
Recalling Blanche’s childhood and the family farm where she first learned of Alabama’s wildflowers from her mother, the Wildflowers text project brought Blanche Evans Dean’s life full circle. She would die in 1974 from complications of a major stroke and be laid to rest in the cemetery next to that little church school where it all began.
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