DOTHAN – A Troy University student has reached a rare academic benchmark for an undergraduate by making a presentation to the Alabama Historical Association’s annual meeting. 

Senior social sciences student Scotty Kirkland of Cottonwood, who is enrolled on the Dothan Campus, presented a paper on the Dothan Riot of 1889 at the AHA annual meeting on the University’s Montgomery campus April 8-9. 

“This is a singular honor,” said Vice Chancellor Bob Willis, interim vice chancellor for the Dothan campus. “It is very rare that an undergraduate student has a paper accepted for presentation at the AHA, which usually hears from graduate students, professors and lay members who have researched and written about local history for many years.” 

Kirkland’s work, entitled “Policing the Wiregrass: Tobe Domingus and the Dothan Riot of 1889,” recounts that episode in the town’s early history. He maintains that the riot was not merely a battle between angry individuals but had its roots in the rancor of emerging populism and the larger economic battles between farmers near Dothan and the merchants, bankers and professional who had become Dothan’s political leaders. Kirkland also looks that the aftermath of the riot, particularly the trials and acquittal of Tobe Domingus, the town marshal accused of murdering George Stringer, the event that triggered the riot itself. 

Kirkland will present a similar paper April 16 at the annual meeting of the Alabama chapters of Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honor Society, at the University of South Alabama. In this paper, he examines the reporting of the Dothan Riot as an exercise in newspaper rhetoric and the competition between Dothan, Columbia and Ozark for economic hegemony in the region. 

He will merge the two presentations into an article for submission to The Alabama Review: A Quarterly Journal of Alabama History.