Archives & Manuscripts: Guide to the Collections

The collections of the Birmingham Public Library Archives contain more than 400,000 photographs and 30,000,000 documents, including government records, business records, maps, letters, diaries, scrapbooks and architectural drawings.

The Collections

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Cadmean Club

Records, 1911-2019 Collections - Archives - Birmingham Public Library

ID: AR992

This collection contains minutes, yearbooks, club histories, and photographs documenting the activities of this Birmingham women’s study club.

Size: 2 boxes

Collection Guide Available: No

Camp, Mae Wilson

Papers, 1935-1936

ID: AR591

The memorabilia, photographs and scrapbooks in this collection relate to the activities of the American Legion Auxiliary.

Size: ½ linear foot (1 box)

Collection Guide Available: Yes

Carpenter, Charles Colcock Jones

Papers, 1920-1969

ID: AR241

Born in Augusta, Georgia, Charles Colcock Jones Carpenter was an Episcopal priest and served bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama from 1938 to 1968. He died on June 29, 1969. The papers contain the files compiled by the bishop’s office and are divided into four series: parish files, office files, financial files and supplemental files transferred from the diocesan offices at a later time. In addition to correspondence, the files include such things as bulletins, pamphlets, news clippings, photographs, sermons and building plans. The parish files contain much routine correspondence between the bishop and the parish priest and between the bishop and parishioners concerning such matters as the formation of a new mission, property purchases, new building, divorce and remarriage, loss of a priest, and the calling of a new one. The office files include correspondence with various diocesan officials, information about organizations within the church, various discern facilities and other miscellaneous matters. There is a significant amount of material relating to the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and the nation. The financial files contain material relating to various bequests and trust funds set up for the diocese.

Size: 21 linear feet (21 boxes)

Collection Guide Available: Yes (online)

Carter, Asa Earl “Ace”

Publications, 1956 and undated

ID: AR1265

Asa Earl Carter was a segregationist leader, politician, speech-writer, and novelist. He was active in the Citizens’ Council movement and the American States Rights Association and founded the North Alabama White Citizens Council. This collection contains three issues (March, April, and September-October 1956) of Carter's white supremacist newspaper The Southerner and one LP record entitled Essays of Asa Carter, Album 1. The record (purchased at a flea market by a member of the Archives staff) is the first in a series of twenty. On the record Carter reads four of his essays, "Communism: Trojan Horse," "Savage Showcase," Reconstruction Times," and "Jesse James."

Size: 1 reel microfilm and 1 LP record

Collection Guide Available: Yes (online)

Cathedral Church of the Advent (Birmingham, Alabama)

Records, 1888-1991

ID: AR1300

In 1872 the Elyton Land Company, the real estate concern that founded the City of Birmingham, deeded a lot on 20th Street for the construction of an Episcopal Church. A wood frame structure was built the following year, and in 1893 the present structure was completed. In 1982, Advent was consecrated as the cathedral for the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. Today, Advent has a congregation of more than 3,800 members and is one of the largest Episcopal parishes in the United States. The collection includes vestry minutes, parish registers, records of the Altar Guild and other women’s organizations, scrapbooks and records documenting the founding and early history of Advent Episcopal Day School.

Size: 8¾ linear feet, 11 flat boxes

Collection Guide Available: Yes

Catt, Carrie Chapman

Papers, 1848-1950

ID: AR123

Carrie Chapman Catt was born in 1859 in Wisconsin and graduated from Iowa State College. A teacher and school superintendent, she became a colleague of Susan B. Anthony and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She died in New York in 1947. This collection includes correspondence, diaries, speeches, biographical data, newspaper clippings and other material relating to Catt’s work on behalf of the women’s suffrage movement, feminism and the cause of international peace.

Size: 18 reels microfilm

Collection Guide Available: Yes

Cedar Grove Plantation

Papers, 1833-1964

ID: AR390

This collection contains personal and business correspondence and other material relating to the Walker and allied families associated with Cedar Grove Plantation in Marengo County, Alabama.

Size: 2 reels microfilm

Collection Guide Available: Yes

Centers of the Southern Struggle

FBI Files on Montgomery, Albany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis

ID: AR1439

This collection, edited by historian David J. Garrow, contains memoranda, newspaper clippings and other material collected or produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation documenting civil rights activities in five Southern communities.

Size: 21 reels microfilm

Collection Guide Available: Yes

Central Presbyterian Church, Birmingham. Ladies’ Aid Society

Minutes, 1895-1896

ID: AR1705

Size: ½ linear foot (1 flat box)

Collection Guide Available: No

Chambliss, Robert E.

Papers, 1972-1987

ID: AR1969

Robert E. Chambliss was the first person to be tried and convicted for the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and spent the rest of his life in prison, dying on October 29, 1985. This collection contains of letters written by and to Chambliss during his stay in prison. In his letters Chambliss maintains his innocence of the bombing, blames other suspects and works to obtain a release from prison.

Size: 2/3 linear foot (3 boxes)

Collection Guide Available: Yes (online)

Childers, James Saxon

Papers, 1918-1965

ID: AR1120

Writer and publisher James Saxon Childers was born in Norwood, Alabama in 1899. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1920 and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. From 1925 to 1942 he was a professor of literature and creative writing at Birmingham-Southern College as well as a columnist and book reviewer for the Birmingham News. In 1942 Childers married Maurine White and soon left Birmingham to serve as an Air Force intelligence officer in World War II. Upon his return from the war he and Maurine lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1947-1951) and Atlanta, Georgia. He was an editor at the Atlanta Journal (1951-1957); a lecturer for the U.S. Department of State in the Far and Middle East (1958-1959); and president of Tupper and Love book publishers after 1959. Childers authored more than twenty books including A Novel About a White Man and a Black Man in the Deep South (Farrar and Rinehart, 1936), the biography Erskine Ramsay, His Life and Achievements (Cartwright and Ewing, 1942), the travel book Sailing South American Skies (Farrar and Rinehart, 1936), and The Nation on the Flying Trapeze: The United States as the People of the East See Us (David McKay Company, 1960). James Saxon Childers died in Atlanta in 1965. The papers include family photographs, college memorabilia, articles by and about Childers and articles of interest to him, personal and business correspondence, financial records, copies of most of the books authored by Childers, galley and page proofs for The Nation on the Flying Trapeeze, and ephemera from Childers’ travels abroad. The correspondence includes letters from Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry S. Truman, and Flannery O’Connor.

Size: 5½ linear feet, (3 flat boxes), 18 volumes

Collection Guide Available: Yes

Chitwood, Lynn

Correspondence, 1942-1943

ID: AR391

This collection contains 68 letters written by Lynn Chitwood, a college student, to her boyfriend Elbert Hamilton while Hamilton was undergoing military training. Hamilton served in the 82nd Airborn Division and was killed in July 1944 in Europe. In her letters, which are often amusing, Chitwood discusses family and friends, her social life and the war.

Size: 2 boxes

Collection Guide Available: Yes

City Board of Missions

Papers, 1903-1985

ID: AR1004

This collection contains newspaper clippings, a history and other material relating to the City Board of Missions, a women’s home missionary group sponsored by the Methodist Church. The Board offered educational “mother’s meetings,” Bible instruction, day care and kindergarten, community houses and other activities.

Size: ¼ linear foot (1 box)

Collection Guide Available: No

City Paper Company

Records, 1897-1935

ID: AR109

City Paper Company was founded in 1897 by German immigrants E. Lesser and Louis Braun. From 1895 to 1913, City Paper published Birmingham's longest lived German language newspaper The Birmingham Courier. This collection includes probate court records establishing City Paper, minutes of the board meetings, stock certificates, some correspondence, and other documents from the company's early years.

Size: 1 reel microfilm

Collection Guide Available: No

Civettes, The

Scrapbook, 1951-1954

ID: AR949

This scrapbook contains material relating to the activities of this Birmingham club, especially a 1953 fund raising project, the staging of a follies entitled “Ankles Away.”

Size: 1 volume

Collection Guide Available: No

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