Biography;

Historian; university professor; administrator.  Born–April 24, 1935, Birmingham.  Parents– Jack and Lena Margaret Jones Rawls.  Married– George Arthur Atkins, June 7, 1954.  Children– four.  Education; Birmingham schools;  Auburn University, B. A., 1956; M.A., 1960; Ph. D., 1974.  Taught history at Auburn, 1960-69; at UAB; at Samford until 1985.  Director of the Center for Arts and Humanities at Auburn, 1985-1995.  Published widely in history journals, especially about the history of Alabama.  Consultant for many libraries, literary and historical groups.  A world champion water skier;  first woman inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, 1976.  Member of Alabama Historical Association; Friends of Alabama Archives. Board member of the Alabama Archives and History Foundation.  Inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor, 2007. Received the James Sulzby Award for the best book on Alabama history, for Developed for the Service of  Alabama, and for Alabama:  The History of a Deep South State,  which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Sources;

Women who Made a Difference in Alabama.  Compiled by the League of Women Voters of Alabama, 1995.

Author;

Blossoms amid the Deep Verdure; A Century of Women at Auburn, 1892-1992.

The Building of Brasfield and Gorrie.  Birmingham, Brasfield & Gorrie, 2002.

The Club:  A History, 1951-1986.  Birmingham, 1986.

Developed for the Service of Alabama:  The Centennial History of the Alabama Power Company, 1906-2005.  Birmingham:  Alabama Power Co., 2006.

John M. Harbert III:  Marching to the Beat of a Different Drummer.  Birmingham:  Tarva House, 1999.

A manual for writing Alabama State and Local History.  Alabama Historical Commission, 1976.

Nineteenth Century Club:  Celebrating 100 Years of ‘Mutual Mental Improvement’ (1895-1995).  Birmingham:  The Club, 1995.

The Romantic Ideal:  Alabama’s Plantation Ideal.  Troy State University Press, 1978.

‘Tasso’:  The Bower House at Molette’s Bend.  Alabama Power Company, 2010.

The Valley and the Hills; A History of Birmingham and Jefferson County.  Woodland Hills, CA:  Windsor Publications, 1981; rpt. 1996.

The Warrior and the Tombigbee:  Two Rivers Flowing through History.  Mobile, AL:  Warrior-TombigbeeWaterway Association, 2000.

Joint_Publication;

An Alabama Legacy:  Images of a State.  Virginia Beach:  Donning Co., 1995.

Alabama:  The History, Geography, Economics, and Civics of an American State.  Montgomery: Crystal Clear Press, 2005.

Alabama; The history of a Deep South State.  University of Alabama Press, 1994.

“I Am a Telephone Man”:  Wallace R. Bunn’s Life in the Bell System.  Birmingham:  Pine Ridge House, 2009.

The Jones Family of Huntsville Road.  Birmingham, 1981.

Made in Alabama:  A State Legacy.  Birmingham Museum of Art, 1995.

People of Power:  Images from the Collection of the Alabama Power Archives.  Alabama Power Company, 2011.