Every Tuesday evening through Labor Day, enjoy an entertaining and educational presentation at the Museum of Coastal Carolina. The Sandbar Lecture Series brings local experts to speak about topics ranging from our coastal environment to Outer Banks history.
On Tuesday, Aug 16, join Julie Hedgepeth Williams to learn about what happened after the first flight. In 1910 the Wright Brothers came to Montgomery, Alabama, to establish the nation’s first civilian flying school. Five young men enrolled as potential pilots, only three of whom graduated, but those students flew the world’s first night flights. The program shows the amusing confusion residents and reporters in Montgomery had about “aeroplanes.” As the people of Montgomery sorted out this new science, the city became one of the first places in the United States to embrace newfangled aviation as a reality.
Julie Hedgepeth Williams is a media historian, winner of the prestigious Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Media History. She’s also the former president of the American Journalism Historians Association. She and her husband live in Birmingham, Alabama, in a historic house built the year after the Wright Brothers brought the nation’s first civilian flying school to Alabama. Williams teaches at Samford University.