page_title: Alabama Centennial half dollar
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Alabama Centennial half dollar / Design
caption_attribution_description: Thomas Kilby
context_page_description: The Alabama Centennial half dollar, or Alabama half dollar, was a commemorative fifty-cent coin struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1921 as a belated acknowledgement of the 100th anniversary of Alabama's admission to the Union in 1819. The coin was created by Laura Gardin Fraser, the first woman credited with designing a coin.
  Alabama Congressman Lilius Bratton Rainey introduced legislation for a commemorative coin at the request of the state's centennial commission. The bill originally provided for commemorative quarters but was amended to provide for halves instead. The bill moved quickly through the legislative process and became the Act of May 10, 1920, with the signature of President Woodrow Wilson.
  The half dollars were not issued until October 1921, apparently because the initial decision to depict President Wilson, a Democrat, on the coin might be reversed depending on the results of the 1920 presidential election. After Republican Warren G.
context_section_description: The obverse of the coin features jugate busts of Bibb, Alabama's first governor as a state, and the incumbent in 1919, Kilby. In so appearing, Kilby became the first living person depicted on a U.S. coin. Anthony Swiatek, in his volume on commemoratives, averred that the issuance was not controversial at the time, as the Act of May 16, 1866, that forbids the depiction of living people on currency was deemed to refer to paper money only, but Q. David Bowers wrote that the portrayal caused contemporary comment, for the position of the federal government (excepting some paper money issues of the 19th century) was that living people should not appear on U.S. money. A total of 22 stars flank the busts, symbolic of Alabama being the 22nd state; a message reinforced on those pieces bearing the inscription 2X2 in the obverse field. The X in that inscription alludes to the St. Andrew's cross on the flag of Alabama. The date, the names of the governors, and various other wordings appear towards the rim of the obverse.
  The reverse features an eagle, possessing arrows and a shield, but no olive branch to symbolically counter the instruments of war; matched branches and arrows are often present in heraldic depiction of eagles on coins. The eagle's beak holds an end of a ribbon on which is inscribed the Alabama state motto, "HERE WE REST" about which Swiatek and Breen, in their 1988 book jibed, "no pun intended about the sleepy Deep South".
  Bowers complained that the centennial dates on the reverse, plus the 1921 for the year of striking, lead to "a bewildering confusion of dates to the casual observer". Numismatic historian Don Taxay deemed the half-dollar "one of the most successful portrait coins in the commemorative series. The heads of Bibb and Kilby are true, and yet contain more than a touch of the ideal. They are beautifully related to each other. The eagle is equally fine".
  Art historian Cornelius Vermeule considered the Alabama coin "a good example of the trite motifs, partly real and partly symbolic, that go into one of these statehood commemoratives". He suggested that the use of the jugate portraits "recall that this classical device was first revived in American coinage on the Washington-Lafayette silver dollar of 1900." Vermeule concluded that "vigorous lettering has saved uninteresting portraits from weakening the reverse and the defiant eagle of the obverse is handled in a spirit worthy of Saint-Gaudens."
caption: Governor Thomas Kilby
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