John Allen, a well-known Alabama history buff, will be the speaker for the Limestone County Historical Society’s quarterly meeting at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 21, in the Rodgers Center at First Presbyterian Church in Athens.

As the former president of both the Huntsville-Madison County Historical Society and the Tennessee Valley Civil War Round Table, Allen was a wide-breadth of knowledge of the history of this region.

Allen is a graduate of the University of Alabama. He has been a speaker for the Alabama Historical Association in Mobile and Huntsville, the Alabama Association of Historians, and Historic Tuscaloosa’s summer lecture series. He and his wife, a retired school teacher, have two grown children and two grandchildren.

Allen has chosen to discuss at the meeting, which the public is welcomed to attend, how the Alabama Crimson Tide’s win in the 1926 Rose Bowl ended Civil War Reconstruction in the South.

He will present his slide lecture highlighting how the underdog University of Alabama team defeated the Washington Huskies, electrifying the South and launching the Crimson Tide’s Johnny Mack Brown into Hollywood stardom.

By the end of the Civil War, the South was in a state of political upheaval, social disorder and economic decay that continued for decades. Farming, industry, transportation and the old way of life were all disrupted.

Consequently, the people of the South had felt downtrodden for many years — until an amazing thing happened that transformed and inspired not just Alabama, but the entire South.

The 1926 Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, California, was not just a landmark event for Crimson Tide’s football team, it was “the Game that changed the South.” By the 1920s, the Tournament of Roses matchup had become the de facto national championship game to many experts.

The Washington Huskies’ 10-0 record in 1925 earned them the Pacific Coast Conference crown and an invitation to play in the 1926 Rose Bowl. After some confusion in the selection of an opponent, the Tournament of Roses committee turned to the recognized Southern champion, offering an invitation to Alabama and Coach Wallace Wade.

The general consensus was that Alabama was going to get destroyed, but in an exciting and very hard-fought game, Alabama defeated the University of Washington in the final minutes with a score of 20-19.

The victory gave Alabama their first National Championship and immensely raised the estimation of Southern football.

After the game Johnny Mack Brown declared that the The Crimson Tide had, “won the Rose Bowl for the whole South.”