This collection contains Secretary-Treasurer Reports, 1936-1946 for the church.

This collection includes slave receipts, diaries, land sales and other documents collected by the library staff. The documents primarily relate to Alabama and Jefferson County.

Birmingfind was a project funded in the 1980s by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to collect historical information on Birmingham ethnic groups and neighborhoods. This collection includes oral history interviews, clippings, publications, census data and other material relating to Birmingham’s Lebanese, Greek, Italian, African American, and Jewish communities and the neighborhoods of Brookside, West End, Wylam, Woodlawn, North Birmingham and Ensley. The project also published a series of booklets on the histories of ethnic groups and neighborhoods.

Birmingfind was a project funded in the 1980s by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to collect historical information on Birmingham ethnic groups and neighborhoods. This collection contains photographs showing individuals, families, businesses, churches, school groups and other subjects from Birmingham’s Lebanese, Greek, Italian, African American, and Jewish communities and the neighborhoods of Brookside, West End, Wylam, Woodlawn, North Birmingham and Ensley.

Photographs of players and games, primarily from the Birmingham Black Barons and the Birmingham industrial leagues. Many of these images come from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Memphis-Shelby County Public Library, and permission from those institutions is required to copy or publish the images. Additional baseball photographs are available in the Archives’ collections Photographs: General Collection (AR 1556) and Lorenzo “Piper” David Photographs (AR 1700).

Clippings, publications, correspondence, diaries and other miscellaneous documents relating to the history of Birmingham collected by the Archives staff. An index is available in the Archives.

Clippings, publications, correspondence, diaries and other miscellaneous documents relating to the history of Birmingham collected by the Archives staff. An index is available in the Archives.

Clippings, publications, correspondence, diaries and other miscellaneous documents relating to the history of Birmingham collected by the Archives staff. An index is available in the Archives.

Clippings, publications, correspondence, diaries and other miscellaneous documents relating to the history of Birmingham collected by the Archives staff. An index is available in the Archives.

This collection contains photocopies of clipping files holding newspaper clippings, magazine articles, pamphlets, and other materials relating to Alabama African Americans, African American organizations, and events. The staff of the Smithfield Branch Library compiled these files.

This collection contains an extensive body of correspondence, clippings, publications, photographs and other material collected and created by the staff of the Birmingham World, the city’s longest running African American newspaper. Topics include civil rights organizations and their activities, sports, music, education, and politics.

Photographs showing students and teachers in classrooms, libraries, playgrounds, shops, lunchrooms and other areas of Birmingham city schools while classes are in session. The collection includes images from white and African American schools.

During the period of racial segregation, many businesses owned by African Americans such as banks, insurance companies, funeral parlors, and photo studios served an exclusively black clientele. One such photo studio, Brown’s, made the photographs in this collection. Located on 17th Street Norht, the studio was operated by Leon W. Brown from about 1938 until about 1968. This collection contains 36 images, a tiny fraction of the total number of images that a professional photographer like Brown would have created. The photographs in this collection are all group portraits showing the Birmingham Motion Picture Machine Operator’s Union, Fairfield Industrial High School students, Praco High School students, Madam C. J. Walker Beauty College students, and graduating classes from Parker High School and Ullman High School.

Lessie Colvin was a 1934 graduate of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School and a 1950 graduate of Alabama State College for Negroes. She taught in the Birmingham city schools. This small collection includes her diplomas, material relating to Council and Western and Olin schools and genealogical material.

A.G. Gaston was a prominent African American businessman in Birmingham. Born in Demopolis, Alabama in 1892, the family relocated to Birmingham in 1905. Gaston served in the military during World War I and then worked in the mines of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. As a budding entrepreneur, Gaston sold lunches to fellow miners and then began offering burial insurance. His business holdings came to include the Smith and Gaston Funeral Home, Booker T. Washington Insurance Company and the Gaston Motel. Gaston was one of the business leaders who negotiated the end to civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham in 1963. This collection contains material relating to Gaston’s business activities and smaller amounts of material relating to his family. The bulk of the material relates to his radio station WENN.