Southern Regional Council

Papers, 1940s-1960s

(AR 41)

The Southern Regional Council was established in 1944 with an original mission to promote economic development in the South and work to improve opportunities for African Americans within the system of "separate but equal" racial segregation. The Council's membership, representing 13 southern states, included college and university presidents, labor leaders, clergymen, and newspaper editors. In 1949 the Council announced its opposition to racial segregation, and this shift in policy led to a significant decrease in membership. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the Council collected information relating to social conditions and racial discrimination in the South and disseminated this information through its publications. The organization also helped to found state councils on human relations in the southern states and assisted these state groups with advice and funding. This collection contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, and other material created by the Southern Regional Council and the Alabama Council on Human Relations (based in Birmingham). The material relates primarily to race relations and civil rights activity in Alabama (and to a lesser extent the American South), the activities and membership of the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Council, race and religious institutions, and economic opportunities for African Americans.

Size: 4 boxes containing 4,727 pages

United States. Department of Justice

Scottsboro Boys Files, 1931-1936

(AR 151)

Size: 3 reels microfilm

United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Alabama “Freedom Riders” Investigation Files, 1961

(AR 111)

Photocopies of FBI reports and memorandums documenting acts of violence directed at the Freedom Riders in Alabama, the investigations and trials stemming from the violence, the activities of the Klan (primarily, the Birmingham Eastview Klavern) and the activities of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Other material in the collection includes internal FBI documents and correspondence between the FBI and other organizations, including correspondence to and from the Offices of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Size: 7 boxes

United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Asa Earl Carter Investigation Files, 1956-1975

(AR 1726)

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 F. B. I. reports, memos, letters, newspaper clippings and photographs pertaining to Carter. Some of the reports include interviews of witnesses of his speeches and other activities, investigations into terrorist activities of which he was a suspect, written affidavits of informants, interviews with Asa Carter himself and some of his acquaintances, details of meetings of various organizations that he lead or participated in, quotes from his speeches and copies of some of his writings.

Size: 2 boxes

United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation

KKK Murder of Viola Liuzzo Investigation Files

On the afternoon of March 25, 1965, Viola Liuzzo of Detroit, Michigan, was shot to death while driving her car along Highway 80 in Lowndes County, Alabama. Earlier in the day, she had participated in the final leg of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery and was driving a participant back to Selma when a car occupied by four men, all members of the Ku Klux Klan from Bessemer, Alabama, gave chase and sprayed her car with bullets. The FBI solved the crime within eight hours, because one of the men in the Klansmen’s car, Gary Thomas Rowe, was a paid FBI informant. Two trials against the men for first-degree murder resulted in a mistrial and, later in the year, a verdict of not guilty. Following the acquittal in state court of one of the men, Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., all three--Wilkins, William Orville Eaton, and Eugene Thomas--were arraigned in Federal court for violations of the Civil Rights Act. They were found guilty and sentenced to serve ten years each in prison. The suspects to the murder of Viola Liuzzo were among the first to be prosecuted under the new Civil Rights Act. This collection contains Bureau letters, memoranda, teletypes, and reports of the investigation.

Size: 1 reel microfilm

United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Kenneth Lamar Adams Investigation Files, 1958-1972

(AR 1762)

Kenneth Lamar Adams, a native of the Anniston, Alabama area, was active in white supremacist organizations such as the National States Rights Party and the Ku Klux Klan for several decades. He participated in the anti-integration movement and headed the local Klan group in Anniston as the Grand Cyclops. He and his group instigated such violent incidents as the assault on Nat King Cole in 1956, the burning of a bus carrying Freedom Riders at Anniston in 1961, and the assault on a randomly chosen black man in 1966. These files include F. B. I. reports, interviews with witnesses and memos relating to Adams and his activities.

Size: 1 box

Wallace, George C.

Scrapbooks, 1971-1976

(AR 361)

Newspaper clippings compiled by the staff of the Birmingham Public Library’s Southern History Department on the career of Alabama Governor Wallace.

Size: 10 volumes

Walter, Francis X.

Selma Inter-Religious Project Files, 1965-1972

(AR 1044)

Francis Xavier Walter was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1932. He earned a degree from Spring Hill College in 1954 and graduated from St. Luke's Episcopal Seminary at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1957 with a degree in divinity. In late 1965, after working with Grace Church in Jersey City, New Jersey, Walter returned to Alabama to head the Selma Inter-religious Project (SIP) under the auspices of the Diocese of Newark. SIP promoted economic and social freedom for rural African Americans in Alabama, especially in the Black Belt areas of Wilcox and Lowndes counties. Upon retiring from SIP in 1972, Walter became an advocate for the rights of the mentally retarded. He last served as rector of St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Birmingham. He retired from this position in 2001. The bulk of this collection concerns the first seven years of the Selma Inter-religious Project under the direction of the Rev. Francis X. Walter. The files mainly contain correspondence to and from supporters of SIP and the various projects with which Walter and his staff worked during the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and early 1970s. The collection also contains business letters, bank books, Walter's personal and business papers, newspapers and newspaper clippings, and a few photographs of Walter and his staff and a quilt sale in Wilcox County.

Size: 3 boxes

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