Line of Scrimmage

Young friends take a break from their tackling and punting.   

  

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A gang of Mobile boys takes a break from a game of football to pose playfully for Norwegian-born photographer Erik Overbey. The Bay area has a long sports history, and Mobile children have no shortage of homegrown sports heroes to admire and emulate. The Whistler-born Billy Williams, a baseball Hall of Famer, once wrote, “Folks back in Mobile, Alabama, and the surrounding area like to joke around and say there must be something in the water down there…”

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The year this photograph was taken is unspecified, and the image itself offers very few clues, but we do know that Overbey operated a studio in Mobile from 1903 to 1958. If you recognize any of the children in this photograph, let us know! Email [email protected].


Original photo from the Julius E. Marx Collection, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama • colorization by Dynamichrome Limited

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