Historical Panorama of Alabama Agriculture

Alabama, Davis stressed, was diversifying, moving from a primarily cotton-based economy "into a combination of cotton and other cash crops plus livestock and poultry."

"It [the panorama] will reveal also that Alabama agriculture is not only changing and improving but that it is geared to go forward in a big way and in terms of efficiency and economy," Davis wrote.

In this sense, Davis viewed the murals as yet another form of educational communication that had distinguished previous Extension efforts — a means for "guiding farmers as to what to do and how to do it.

Indeed, state fairs were big business in the Depression-era Thirties — a place where thousands of financially hard-pressed Americans temporarily could forget their economic problems and the troubling portents of war in Europe.

According to Bruce Dupree, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System art specialist and Walker expert, Fairgoers moved excitedly through poorly lit, unair-conditioned buildings to view prize-winning livestock, colorful quilts, farm exhibits, baking contests, and canning demonstrations.

[5]Managing the large number of entries often proved to be a daunting task for fair planners, leading many of them to consider different strategies for handling these agricultural exhibits.

In an "Informal Report on Alabama Pageant of Agriculture Exhibit" submitted to Davis in May 1939, the project was described as being "in good hands" and was predicted to be "unusually successful."

Moreover, Extension employees dispatched to Mobile to consult with Walker reported to Davis that they were confident that panorama would "present Alabama agriculture in a most interesting way" and that "the entire series, especially if they are properly interpreted, should make a very strong impression on those who see it."

Not only Walker's Extension Service sponsors but also U.S. Department of Agriculture employees became intimately involved in the planning, offering detailed instructions even for the selection and placement of the objects for display in the foreground of the murals.

[6] The effort placed immense physical and mental strain on Walker, who, in addition to managing the demands of a day job, also was contending with a serious family illness at the time.

He ordered 40 new spotlights, more than 600 yards of curtain-like fabric, hundreds of feet of rope, and all the crepe paper he could find to cover the exhibit hall ceiling.

[9] Sometime thereafter, the murals were taken to Auburn University and stored in Duncan Hall, the state headquarters of the Alabama Extension Service, where they remained basically undisturbed for the next 45 years until they were rediscovered in the early 1980s.

Originally intended to depict an impoverished "one-armed Confederate" veteran working in a soil-eroded field, this painting represented the antithesis of everything farming was supposed to be in the 20th century. All of the elements included in the painting were intended to underscore this fact - a dilapidated plantation house, highly eroded cropland soil, a farming operation exclusively dependent on cotton, and a wagon loaded with supplies that should have been produced on the farm.
All the elements of this painting were included to reflect Cooperative Extension's vision for 20th century farming – mechanized farming, crop diversification and rural electrification .
Another mural extolling the virtues of farm diversification, depicting livestock and row crops raised side by side.
Another depiction of how Alabama was changing as a result of the application of sound agricultural and domestic practices promoted by Cooperative Extension and the land-grant university.
John A. Walker's pass to the 1939 Alabama State Fair.