Archival
Collections
Birmingham Sports
History
Birmingham
Baseball
Photographs
(AR 1436)
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).
Size: 36 photographs
Birmingham
Chamber of Commerce
Sports Files,
1974-1996
(AR 1486)
Newspaper clippings,
correspondence, publications and other material
relating to various sporting events held in the
Birmingham area, including professional baseball,
football and hockey; college football; Olympic sports;
golf; high school sports; horse racing.
Size: 6 boxes
Birmingham News
Photographs,
1920s-1950s
(AR 1074)
Photographs taken by
Birmingham News photographers from circ 1920s to circa
1950s, primarily showing Birmingham scenes and
buildings. This collection does not contain all
photographs made by the newspaper during this time, but
a small sample.
Size: 750 photographs
Birmingham World
Office Files,
1939-1988
(AR 1102)
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.
Size: 62 boxes
Brooks, Charles
Birmingham News
Editorial Cartoons, 1959-1985
(AR 1602)
Charles Brooks served as
editorial cartoonist for the Birmingham News from 1948
until his retirement in 1985. Born in Andalusia,
Alabama, Brooks enrolled at Birmingham-Southern College
in 1939, applying $200 won in an art contest toward his
tuition. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts
with Chicago Daily News cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker, a
two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In 1948 he
returned to Alabama and was hired by the Birmingham
News as the paper’s first editorial cartoonist.
Brooks served as president of the Association of
American Editorial Cartoonists (1969-1970) and
president of the Birmingham Press Club (1968-1969). He
continues to edit Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year,
an annual publication. His cartoons have been included
in more than 50 books, including encyclopedias and
textbooks and exhibited at the Birmingham Public
Library, the White House, the National Portrait Gallery
in London, and the Smithsonian Institution. This
collection contains original pencil and ink drawings of
cartoons, most on 11 inch by 7 inch drawing paper. A
chronological guide and a subject guide to the cartoons
are available in the Archives.
Size: 3,800 cartoons
David, Lorenzo
“Piper”
Photographs
(AR 1700)
Lorenzo
“Piper” Davis was born in the coal mining
community of Piper, near Birmingham, in 1917. Davis
played baseball in Birmingham’s industrial
leagues and joined the Birmingham Black Barons in 1942.
He became manager of the Black Barons in 1948 and later
played for various minor league teams. He worked as a
scout for the Detroit Tigers and other teams until his
retirement in 1986. In 1993, “Piper” Davis
was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. This
collection contains photographs collected by Davis of
himself and other athletes, including Willie Mays,
Leroy “Satchel” Paige and Charlie Pride.
Size: 29 photographs
Ferguson, Hill
Papers
(AR 56)
Hill Ferguson was a
Birmingham businessman active I many civic
organizations, including the Birmingham Historical
Society. Fascinated by the history of his hometown,
Ferguson worked from the 1890s until his death in1971
to collect photographs, newspaper clippings, theater
programs, unpublished histories and biographies, and a
wide variety of ephemera documenting Birmingham
history. Having come of age in the late nineteenth
century, Ferguson witnessed many events from
Birmingham’s early history, such as the
city’s emergence as an iron and steel
manufacturing center, the emergence of a local musical
culture, and early sporting events. He knew many
of the city’s founders and wrote biographical
sketches and histories of events and organizations for
his scrapbooks. He wrote to people of historical
significance and their children requesting information
and material. An index to the collection is available
in the Archives.
Size: 129 boxes
Gaines, Charles
Papers,
1965-1980
(AR 593)
Charles Gaines was born
in 1942, in Florida. He graduated from
Birmingham-Southern College in 1963 and earned an
M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1967. Gaines
served as director of the federal Title III Operation
Arts program in Green Bay, Wisconsin for two years
before accepting a position as associate professor of
creative writing at New England College in Henniker,
New Hampshire in 1970. He resigned in 1976 to take up
writing full time. Gaines' writing explores the
psychology and practice of sports, especially body
building. His first novel, Stay Hungry (1972), is set
in Birmingham and was a finalist for the National Book
Award. Gaines later co-authored the screenplay for the
1976 film Stay Hungry. Gaines's other books include
Pumping Iron (1974), Staying Hard (1975), Dangler
(1976), and writing for Esquire, Playboy, Geo,
Harper's, Outside, Architectural Digest, Fly-Fisherman,
and Sports Illustrated. The papers include
correspondence, notes, photographs, and manuscripts of
the novels Staying Hard, Stay Hungry, Pumping Iron, and
Dangler.
Size: 5 boxes
Hunt, Oscar V.
Photographs,
1890s-1940s
(AR 1075)
Oscar V. Hunt was one of
Birmingham’s most prolific and adventurous early
commercial photographers. Born in Bowdon, Georgia in
1881, Hunt lived most of his life in Birmingham. He
worked briefly as a streetcar motorman for the
Birmingham Railway, Light, and Power Company before
spending a decade working and training in the studios
of two of Birmingham’s best known early
photographers, Bert Covell and R. T. Boyett. Hunt had
his own studio by the early 1920s and also took
photographs for the Birmingham Ledger newspaper. Hunt
often focused on Birmingham streetscapes in his
photographs and documented Birmingham area
manufacturing and mining, trains and streetcars and the
construction of downtown buildings. He is credited with
making the first aerial photograph of Birmingham in
1912 and he photographed leisure activities such as
parades and day trippers at local parks.
Hunt’s photographs show an interest in
individuals, especially working people, and his
construction and industrial images often highlight
workers. Some of Hunt’s photographs, such as one
of Terminal Station with the old Magic City sign out
front, have become iconic images of Birmingham. During
his later years in the 1950s, Hunt’s studio
became a favorite hang out for young photographers and
photo enthusiasts. Oscar Hunt died in Birmingham in
1962.
Size: 1,269 photographs
Jones, Sid B.
Birmingham
Athletic Club Papers, 1893-1917
(AR 84)
Sid Jones was a
prominent Birmingham sportsman of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. His papers include
correspondence, pamphlets, broadsides and photographs
documenting activities at this downtown Birmingham
club.
Size: 3 boxes
Jones, Sid B.
Birmingham
Athletic Club Scrapbooks, 1893-1919
(AR 505)
Newspaper clippings.
Size: 1 reel microfilm
Newman, Henry H.
“Zipp”
Papers,
1920-1976
(AR 388)
Henry “Zipp”
Newman was a sports writer and editor for the
Birmingham News and author of the books The House of
Barons: Record of the barons since 1900 (1948), 50
Years of Professional Baseball in Alabama (1950) and
The Impact of Southern Football (1969). This collection
includes correspondence, newspaper articles,
photographs and other material relating to Newman and
sports in Alabama.
Size: 4 boxes
