Margaret Alexander Black

Graveside Services for Margaret Louise Alexander Black, age 85 of Tuscaloosa, formerly of Fayette, will be held at 2 p.m. Friday, April 1, 2011 at Heritage Memorial Gardens, U.S. Highway 43 North, Fayette with the Reverend Doctor Wells Warren, the Reverend Doctor Margaret Scalise, and the Reverend Mark McGuire presiding. Mrs. Black died Thursday, March 24 at Capstone Village in Tuscaloosa. She graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Alabama, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society and Alpha Gamma Delta social sorority. In 1946 while she was in graduate school, she bagan a teaching career which spanned nearly forty years. At Fayette County High School, she taught college preparatory English beginning in 1956, and in 1969, she became an original faculty member of Brewer State Junior College, now Bevill State Community College. At the time of her retirement in 1987, she chaired the Humanities Department and served as director of public relations. She was a member of several professional organizations and honor societies and served for several years as a member of the board of the Northwest Alabama Mental Health Board. She often worked in concert with her husband Jack Black, publisher of the Fayette County Broadcaster, a weekly newspaper in Fayette and manager of radio station WWWF. After retirement, she continued to support the Fayette Art Museum with her husband, who was museum director. She was a beautiful, kind, and understanding teacher who was always a favorite among her students, and she leaves a host of thankful recipients of her influence. She was preceded in death by her parents, Joe Alexander and Margaret Brewer Alexander and by her husband, Jack Black, all of Fayette, and by her brother, Dr. Jack W. Alexander, of Birmingham. She is survived by her daughter, Claire Black Tisdal, and her husband, Alan Lee Tisdal, of Tuscaloosa; her grandson, Alexander Black Wilson, of Tuscaloosa; her brother, Joe Alexander and his wife, Marilyn Alexander of Wapakoneta, Ohio; her sister, Martha Alexander Bowling, of Brookhaven, Miss.; and her sisters-in-law, Hilda Brown, of Tuscaloosa, and Jean Alexander of Birmingham. Pallbearers are Dan Bowling, III and Chasen Clark, of Atlanta, David Bowling, of New Orleans,Jimmy Wiygul and Dick Coffee,III of Birmingham, Perry Yawn of Statesboro, GA, and Dr. James Rayburn,Bill Robertson and Robert Newton, of Fayette. The family invites friends to a reception at the Fayette Civic Center and Art Museum, 530 South Temple Avenue South, Fayette, following the graveside services and suggests that memorials be made to the Margaret and Jack Black Memorial Fund at the Fayette Art Museum, 102 2nd Ave. S.E., Fayette, AL 35555. Norwood Chapel of Fayette directing.