The Birmingham area includes
several counties and many cities with remarkable histories. Three local efforts
are bringing much of that rich web of the past to screens near you.
Birmingham Public Library offers
access to collections of images and texts of the African American Experience in
Birmingham, the Alabama Theatre, some early newspapers, city buildings, old
homes, businessmen and business districts. Also available are scrapbooks of newspaper
clippings and local school yearbooks. The Birmingham Memory collection features
submissions by the public.
Each BPL collection may have
several subdivisions. For instance, the African
American Experience collection features a number of subjects, including churches,
civil rights, and A.G. Gaston. Various groups such as inventors, lawyers,
mayors, musicians and nurses; and schools such as the Industrial High School
[now Parker High School] and the Tuggle Institute are also included.
In 1903 local social worker and
educator Carrie Tuggle opened her Institute for the housing and education of
African-American orphans in the area. Within a decade the facility had almost
150 students, most boarding at the school. The Institute became a part of the
Birmingham public school system in 1926, and the current Tuggle Elementary
School carries on the name. Alumni of the public school have included
businessman A.G. Gaston and musicians Erskine Hawkins, Jo Jones and Fess
Whatley.
Research Club at Tuggle Institute in 1911
Source: Birmingham Public
Library Digital Collections
Tuggle Institute c. 1906
Source: BhamWiki
Source: BhamWiki
Carrie A. Tuggle [1858-1924]
Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
Besides material about the history
of the university, UAB’s digital offerings include oral histories related to
the city and Alabama, pellagra in Alabama and Mervyn H. Sterne, a local
businessman for whom one of UAB’s libraries is named. Pellagra is a nutritional
deficiency disease that was rampant in the South in the first decades of the 20th
century.
Also available from UAB is the
Birmingham Medical College collection, material related to the school that
operated in the city from 1894 until 1915. The college was one of many
proprietary schools in the U.S. before World War I. As state legislatures and
the American Medical Association began stricter regulation of medical schools,
these small for-profit businesses like Birmingham Medical College began to
close. The city remained without a medical school until the Medical College of
Alabama moved here from Tuscaloosa in 1945.
A third resource devoted to
Birmingham history and culture is the BhamWiki project. A private Wiki project
that covers all topics related to the city and the surrounding area, BhamWiki
currently has over 10,400 articles and 2400 illustrations available for the
interested public. Contributions from anyone are encouraged.
Alabama Mosaic is another catalog
of online print and image resources from the collections of numerous libraries,
museums, archives and government agencies in the state. Many Birmingham area
materials including those from BPL and UAB are linked in this database. All of
the resources mentioned here are free to use for personal study and research.
This piece originally appeared on the DiscoverBirmingham.org site on July 25, 2013.
