Construction Maison

SYLACAUGA, Alabama – Harold Franklin never set out to attend Auburn University . The school with its agricultural heritage had little appeal for the bookish Franklin. “I used to hate when daddy grew a garden and I had to go out and help with it,” Franklin said. "That was the last place I wanted to go.” He had dreamed of being an attorney, inspired by his childhood idol Thurgood Marshall , the prominent counsel for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and first black Supreme Court justice . “I wanted to be a lawyer,” Franklin said, sitting on the couch in his two-bedroom apartment in Sylacauga below a framed photo of Samford Hall. “That was the most important thing to me.” Franklin graduated from Alabama State University , then named Alabama State College , in 1962 with a degree in government and psychology. Franklin was seeking character references for a law school application when an encounter with civil rights attorney Fred Gray put him on the track to b...

A month after publicly denouncing a health care bill that the president was desperate to pass, Senator Dean Heller sat uncomfortably alongside President Donald Trump in front of rolling cameras. Holding the floor, Trump did not disappoint, addressing the awkwardness head on with a veil of humor so thin it stood no chance of obscuring anyone's view of the true threat at its heart. “Look, he wants to remain a senator doesn ’t he?” Trump said with a smirk. Heller rocked his head back and initially burst into a laugh. But, with a subtle yet significant hand on his arm, Trump let him know that the warning was not to be taken lightly. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now “And I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think the people are going to appreciate what you hopefully will do,” the Republican president added . [embedded content] And with that, the uneasiness of being a Republican in the era of the most unpredictable and self- serving president ...

Downtown Merchants Association coordinator Jessica Kohn said one resounding issue is brought up at each monthly meeting of downtown Auburn business owners . “A huge hurdle is employees not having designated parking spaces for them,” Kohn said. “Unless business owners lease parking spaces , that’s really the only way they’re guaranteed a space. Certain business owners tell their employees to catch a ride or walk.” On average, 125 employees work at businesses downtown each day, she added. Not having them park their personal vehicles downtown frees parking spaces for customers. Yet the rallying cry from people who work, shop and eat in Auburn is that there is simply not enough parking space available to everyone. “In all the parking studies we’ve done, we’ve always been told that what Auburn needs is not one huge deck with 1,000 cars or 2,000 cars. It’s several little spaces,” interim city manager Jim Buston said. “Because our town is not that big; our town is smal...