LEEDS — 1819 News awarded three Alabamians the Albert Patterson Courage Award on Friday in front of a sold-out crowd of 500 attendees at Barber Motorsports Park.
The first Albert Patterson Courage Award went to Craig Monger for his November 2023 reporting on the late Smiths Station Mayor Bubba Copeland, who was also a pastor. The story exposed that Copeland was leading a double life by posting sexual photos of himself dressed in drag, as well as posting memes encouraging children to transition, and writing explicit homoerotic fiction stories.
1819 News also gave former Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs commissioner Kent Davis an Albert Patterson Courage Award for his advocacy for veterans' mental health funding and enduring a months-long campaign from Governor Kay Ivey that eventually led to his firing over a dispute regarding ARPA funding and an ethics complaint. Davis filed a lawsuit recently against Ivey in response to his termination in 2024.
Eagle Forum of Alabama executive director Becky Gerritson received the final Albert Patterson Courage Award for Eagle Forum's efforts in lobbying the legislature to pass a ban on transgender surgeries for minors in Alabama and successfully defending against lawfare efforts by the Biden DOJ and left-wing groups like the SPLC who attempted to subpoena from Eagle Forum large amounts of private communications and records related to their efforts to get the transgender surgery ban for minors passed into law.
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