For more than seventy years the Birmingham Public Library has collected and preserved the history of Birmingham’s civil rights struggle and the BPL Archives is recognized around the world for holding one of the most comprehensive and heavily used research collections on the Civil Rights Movement. 

Collections Available Online

Civil Rights Movement Scrapbooks (Alabama Events)
These scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings. This entire collection is available for research online.  

Civil Rights Movement Scrapbooks (National Events)
These scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings. This entire collection is available for research online.

Theoliphus Eugene "Bull" Connor Papers
This entire collection is available for research online. The complete collection of original documents is also available for research by appointment in the Archives.

FBI Freedom Riders Investigation Files
A selection of documents from this collection is available online. The complete collection is available for research by appointment in the Archives.

Andrew M. Manis Oral History Interviews
This collection contains oral history interviews conducted by historian Andrew Manis while researching his book A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. This entire collection is available for research online.  

Collections Available in the Archives

Civil Rights Movement and Race Relations in Alabama
Civil Rights Movement and Race Relations in Birmingham

Suggested Reading

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Ray Arsenault

Blessed are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by S. Jonathan Bass

"The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 by Charles E. Connerly

But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle by Glenn T. Eskew

Foot Soldiers for Democracy: The Men, Women, and Children of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement by Horace Huntley and John W. McKerely

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter

A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth by Andrew M. Manis

Bull Connor by William A. Nunnelley

Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma by J. Mills Thornton