The plaque reads: "In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the Herald of Prosperity." Enterprise, Alabama, thanking the insect that wiped out its cotton economy. The weevil forced diversification into peanuts, the town survived, and somebody decided gratitude was the right response.
The monument was bankrolled by Bon Fleming and H.M. Sessions, white businessmen with capital to change course. The inscription credits "the Citizens of Enterprise" but doesn't mention George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee agronomist whose peanut research made diversification viable. Fleming invited Carver to speak at the 1919 dedication; washed-out railroad tracks kept him away. His name appears nowhere on the stone.
Black sharecroppers, trapped in debt to white landowners, couldn't diversify. Cotton's collapse hit them hardest. Many left, part of the Great Migration that reshaped American cities. The inscription calls what followed "prosperity."
The object at Main and College today is a polymer replica. The original, stolen and vandalized until unsalvageable, sits in a gift shop nearby. Enterprise keeps rebuilding the monument. Whose adaptation it celebrates was decided in 1919.
The monument's physical life
- Dec. 1919: Dedicated at Main and College. No boll weevil on it yet — a classical female figure holding a fountain. Cost: $1,795, mostly Fleming's money.
- 1949: Artist Luther Baker fashions a boll weevil from linotype metal to replace the fountain. It has four legs, two short of accurate.
- 1953: Weevil stolen. Replaced with a six-legged version.
- 1973: Added to the National Register of Historic Places.
- 1974: Entire statue stolen, found damaged along Highway 27. A monument commission is formed.
- 1998: Original damaged beyond repair by vandals. Polymer-resin replica erected; original moved to a gift shop nearby.
- 2019: Centennial celebration.
By 1917, Coffee County was the nation's largest peanut producer. Within a decade, some Alabama counties lost half their Black population.