Prior to the Civil War, William Oliver and his wife Susan lived in Coosa County, Alabama. Oliver joined the 34th Alabama Infantry and saw action is Tennessee and Georgia. During his military service Oliver regularly corresponded with his wife. After 1871, the Olivers relocated to Birmingham where he served as marshal and worked in real estate.

The collection includes correspondence, photographs, maps, memoranda, programs, reports, and minutes.

Testimony Surrounding the Death of Bonita Carter, 1979

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was born in 1939 in Keene, New Hampshire. A graduate of Virginia Military Institute, Daniels was enrolled at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts when he traveled to Alabama in 1965 to work with a voter registration drive in Selma. After the Selma to Montgomery March Daniels began work with the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Lowndes County. He was arrested along with other civil rights demonstrators in August 1965. After six days in jail in Hayneville the demonstrators were released. Daniels and three others approached a store in Hayneville to buy soft drinks. A local white man, Tom Coleman, ordered the group away from the store. When Daniels questioned the order Coleman shot and killed Daniels. Six weeks later an all-white Lowndes County jury found that Coleman had acted in self-defense. Carolyn Potter Oppenborn, who gathered the material in this collection, was born in 1913 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Oppenborn worked as a secretary in Washington, D.C. for the National Recovery Administration and later was employed by the Jefferson County, Alabama Personnel Board and by the Birmingham Museum of Art. This collection contains correspondence, clippings, photographs and other material relating to Jonathan Myrick Daniels. This material was gathered in preparation for and as a result of the program "A Weekend to Remember … The Thirtieth Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Jonathan Myrick Daniels." The Program was held at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama, September 12-13, 1995 and included a number of participants who had known and worked with Daniels. Smaller programs recognizing Daniels were held at the church in subsequent years.

Eleazor C. Overton, a local optometrist and native of Birmingham, was elected to the Birmingham City Council in 1963. He was instrumental in the founding of the Jefferson County Commission on Economic Opportunity and the Office of Economic Opportunity and in the establishment of the School of Optometry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The papers contain Overton’s official files and consist largely of correspondence, pamphlets, reports, and miscellaneous studies relating to the governance of the city. These papers cover a wide variety of topics including public safety, public improvements, taxation and municipal finances and, they provide an account of Birmingham's growth from 1963 through 1966.