Alabama Telephone Company

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The Alabama Telephone Company was an American independent telephone company in Northwest Alabama, operating in the mid-20th century and serving Pickens County, Fayette County, and the Haleyville area. [1] At its peak, it was the largest telephone company in Alabama outside of the Bell System. [2] It is best known for being the first telephone company in North America to implement 9-1-1 service.

Contents

History

The company was founded in 1938. [3]

In 1954, employees organized under the Communications Workers of America and held a strike for over a year. [1] In the tenth month of the strike, the company headquarters was dynamited, in connection with a series of dynamite and shotgun attacks surrounding communication workers strikes throughout the Southern United States. [4] The strike ended in August 1955 when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that a new election of non-striking employees should redetermine whether the company should be unionized; the union won the vote. In October, following the end of the strike, the exchange in Hamilton, Alabama was reduced to rubble by a dynamite attack. [5]

In 1966, it created a subdivision to sell cable television, which was contracted to Stromberg-Carlson. [6]

In January 1968, after reading a national newspaper story about AT&T's intent to build a 9-1-1 system, company president Bob Gallagher determined to implement the system himself. On February 16, the first 9-1-1 call in North America was placed by Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite, with the phone answered by Tom Bevill at the Haleyville, Alabama police station. Alabama Public Service Commission director Bull Connor witnessed the call being answered. [7] [8] According to Gallagher, the motivation to beat AT&T to implementing 9-1-1 came from his father, a fire chief in West Virginia. [9] However, the logic of having two villains of the civil rights movement as the first 9-1-1 dispatchers has been questioned. [10]

In 1975, it was purchased by Georgia State Telephone Company, which later became a subsidiary of Contel called "Contel of the South" and currently operates as Frontier Midstates. In 2002, the relevant Alabama service was resold to CenturyTel of Alabama. In 2022, it was again resold to Brightspeed.

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References

  1. 1 2 Brooks, Thomas (1977). Communications Workers of America: The Story of a Union. New York: Mason/Charter. p. 173. ISBN   9780884055853.
  2. ↑ Stewart, Carolyn (1987). Arms Across Georgia: The Story of Telephony in Georgia and the Georgia Telephone Association. Cornelia, Georgia: Standard Telephone Company.
  3. ↑ "Cooperative Digest". Southern Trade Publications. 1968.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ↑ "Operator Hurt in Dixie Phone Strike Blast." Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr 28 1955.
  5. ↑ "Hamilton Blast Levels Alabama Phone Exchange", The Advertiser (Haleyville, AL), 4 Oct 1955. Photo included.
  6. ↑ "Telephone Engineer & Management". Telephone Engineer Publishing Corporation. 1966.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ↑ "World's First 9-1-1 Call". NENA, Alabama Chapter. 21 August 1999. Archived from the original on 21 August 1999. Retrieved 19 July 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. ↑ "The History of The 9-1-1 Emergency Telephone Number". 911 Dispatch History. May 26, 2011. Archived from the original on April 17, 2015. Retrieved July 19, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. ↑ "The History of Calling 9-1-1". Firefighters' Real Stories. December 2002. Archived from the original on 2002-12-23. Retrieved 2023-07-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  10. ↑ Mason, Myles W. (20 October 2022). "Establishing 911: media infrastructures of affective anti-Black, pro-police dispositions". Critical Studies in Media Communication. 39 (5): 394–407. doi:10.1080/15295036.2022.2086991.
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