Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts 20141229

History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan 3. Follow us on twitter at cspan history for information on our schedule, upcoming programs, and to keep up with the latest history news. Each week american artifacts takes viewers into museums, artifacts around the country 37 next we visit the Birmingham Public Library with items related to the history of alabama. Im jim baggett. Were pleased to have our friends from cspan visiting today. Well take a tour of the Archives Department where we have more than 30 million documents and more than half a million documents douming the history of alabama. Then well look at documents in particular relating to the long story of race and the struggle for civil rights in the United States. In particular, this is appropriate when were recognizing and remembering the 50th anniversary of the civil rights anniversary in the spring of 1963 and 16th Street Church bombing in the fall of 63. First, lets go down stairs, look at our shelving and where we store a lot of this material. Then well come back up, look at the documents that were selected. Were in the stats of Archives Department, one of four areas where we store collections. We wanted to look at one of the items we consider the holy grail of birmingham history, the original survey where our streets and blocks were laid out and physical shape of birmingham were created. Many people dont realize that birmingham did not exist at the time of the civil war. This valley where were located at the time was occupied by a few farms, a village. This area where the library sits now at the time of the civil war was a cornfield. What you have in this valley are all of the ingredients needed to make iron steel. So after the civil war, once the railroads came through, a group of speculators bought property here. They brought in a military surveyor named barker and he laid off the streets and blocks that are now birmingham. This shows the original boundaries of the city, the property they purchased. The farmers who lived here thought the idea of building a city here was insane. They couldnt imagine why anybody would come here and buy lots in the city. The farmers were hired back to clear the land. They could be paid in cash or new lots. Every one of the farmers took the cash. They had no idea that those lots would be worth a fortune. You can see how they laid out the city. Birmingham is laid out on a grid so its very regular. Colonel barker, the surveyor, was more farsighted than even he could have known. Once the streetcars came, birmingham has space to accommodate streetcars. We have one of the most extensive streetcar systems at that time. Once the automobile comes, theres space through town, space for traffic, so barker built a city that could expand, adapt to changes. Theres another map i would like to show you, a sanborn fire map which shows how the city grew and segregation was a part of birminghams growth. Its much larger than what we can shelve back here so well head into our reading room and take a look at that. This is a sanborn Fire Insurance map. Sanborn maps are created for cities throughout the United States. For birmingham they date back to the 1880s and come up to the present. Theyre created for a variety of purposes, especially for Fire Departments, real estate companies, insurance companies, local government offices will have comes of sanborns. This pirl one is volume i of the birmingham set that covers the 1920s to the 1950s. Sanborns are different from street maps in that they show the buildings on each block. And thoen when we look at this page, we see here, 16th street Baptist Church, which was the site of one of the last racially motivated bombings here in birming happen. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute would be just across the street where many of the demonstrations were held is die diagonally across the map. 16th Baptist Church is identified with the term used at that time color, telling us it was an africanamerican church, an africanamerican congregation. Youll see that with other churches on this map as well. What this shows us is how the race and concept of racial congregation permeated every aspect of life in a place like birmingham and every part of United States at that time. This map was not created to show us where the segregational lines were but even on something created for the purposes of insurance companies, Fire Departments and so forth, it was considered important to identify the race of people and places. And so that has been done here. Were back in the main reading room at downtown Birmingham Public Library. Were going to look at documents from our collection today focusing specifically on the story of race and the struggle for civil rights in america. Even though birmingham did not exist during the annebellum period, you cant begin this story without at the issue of race and slavery. We put up two documents from the fondale plantation. It was locateded in the established in the 1880s by thomas and louisa harrison. After they married, thomas traveled to alabama accompanied by a party of slaves. He purchased several pieces of property in alabama and established this plantation, which is actually still owned by the same family today. What these records demonstrate is the difficulty you often encounter in reconstructing the history and story of individuals and individual families during slavery. The fondsale plantation there are thousands of letters, diaries of the families that lived at fondsale. For the africanamericans the story is not so well documented, but by using various documents we can learn a lot about the experiences of these people. For instance, what we have here is a bap tis malregistry from fondsale plantation and it records baptisms of enslaved people who lived on the plantation. For instance, if we go down here, in 1848 we find ann. Ann was baptized as an infant. Her parents were emily and her father is listed as sam, his full name was sampson. Their full name was emily and Sampson Collins at the time of the baptism in 48, sampson was 28, emily was 23 years old. Sampson was the familys driver, he drove the carriage. Emily was a field hand. Something thats not recorded here is the date of anns birth, the child. But if we move here, this book was used to record the cotton harvest every year. You can see down this side each enslaved person is listed by name. This is the month of september. Then you have the dates across here and this indicates how many pounds of cotton each person picked per day. What we noticed here when we look at this harvest record, emily kol tindz, mother of ann, is not listed as workingle fields the entire month of august. If you look here, she works a few days then shes out of the fields. She works a few gaze then shes out of the fields again. We can assume ann was born in august and she was given time out of the field for Health Reasons and parnlly out of concern for the new mother to care for her child. Emily and sampson had five more children. Ann died in 1864. Sadly, ann did not live long enough to see freedom. Now, during the period after emancipation in the south and in other parts of the was known as con vee lease. It was a way white farmers, white owners of mines and companies, white owners of Timber Companies could exploit black labor cheaply. What would happen is africanamerican men and sometimes white men would be arrested often for minor crimes or no crimes at all. Sentenced and charged a fine. They would not have the means to pay that fine, so a company could then lease that convict, take him to their facility, work there and work off his fine. It was a brutal system. It was a system in many places where the owners of these companies had no incentive to care for these workers to concern themselves with the safety of these workers because the workers were easily replaced. So a lot of africanamerican men were forced to work in these conditions. A lot of africanamerican men died, especially in the mines. This particular book that weve pulled is from the jefferson county, alabama, criminal court. What it records are africanamerican men who were arrested and then leased out to companies. This is george brown. Mr. Brown was leased out to schlossfield iron company. This is Leonard Hooper who was also leased out. Thousands of men cycled through this system over a period of decades. The convict lease system in alabama was not officially outlawed until 1928. In other states it was outlawed in the teens and the 20s generally. As these men worked, especially in the mines, they were generally shackled 24 hours a day. This is a set of those shackles. These come from the banner mine, here in the birmingham area. A large number of these men were killed in an explosion at the banner mine. It was one of the most deadly mine explosions in alabama. You can imagine wearing these 24 hours a day. Trying to dig coal, wearing these, eating, sleeping, spending all of your time shackled like this for months or years at the time. One of the earliest issues in the terms of civil rates in birmingham was the need for africanamerican families to have access to equal and decent housing. Like many cities, birmingham was racially segregated. Its neighborhoods were segregated. And as the black population grew here, the city did not provide adequate space for africanamericans to build houses, to rent apartments. So by the late 1940s as was happening in many cities around the United States, many africanamericans are beginning to build houses preserved for whites. By the 1950s you have a strong Civil Rights Movement here anchored in reverend schettles worth. He was the most outspoken, most vocal, most fearless of all the civil rates leaders. For that reason he was often the target of the klu klux klan. They bombed his church in 1956. The bomb damaged the church and literally blew away the walls of the bedroom where he lay. He walked out of that bombing that night without a scratch. He said later that event convinced him that god had anighted him, had selected him to lead the Civil Rights Movement and that he could not be harmed, could not killed. And he showed fearlessness throughout this period. After the christmas night 1956 bombing, members of the congregation organized themselves into squausd. They took turns each night guarding bethel Baptist Church. In 1958 a young woman who lived across the street, Lavern Mcwilliams who was coming home from her job at a Sandwich Shop noticed smoke coming up beside the church building. She went over to wake up some of the guards and found they had actually fallen a sleep on the porch of the house next door. One of the guards, a man named will hall, walked over to investigate. What mr. Hall found was not a fire but, in fact, a metal bucket filled with dynamite and the fuse had been lit. Now, mr. Hall had worked in mining and had experience with explosives. So, he looked at the fuse and calculated that he probably had a minute before the bomb exploded. Rather than running for cover, mr. Hall picked up that metal bucket. He set it in the street, turned, ran, jumped into the ditch and the bomb exploded. It blew a crater two feet wide and 15 inches deep in the middle of the street. It also blew windows out of houses in the area and blew the windows out of the church but it saved the church building. The church was bombed a third time in december of 1962. This bomb also exploded at night. This time there were people inside the church, including children, practicing for the upcoming christmas pageant. The force of the explosion blew windows out of the church and some children were injured by flying glass. The explosion also blew out the power lines. And when the police arrived, the whole neighborhood was dark. What we have here out of the Birmingham Police Department Surveillance files are pieces of evidence that the Birmingham Police collected following that bombing. This is a piece of the metal bucket that the bomb was contained inside. You can see here where these were sent to the crime lab in washington. This bomb is also interesting in the way it was constructed in that not only did it contain dynamite, which is something you would use to blow up a building, it also contained shrapnel. It contains little pieces of metal metal. The intention, of course, is when the bomb explodes the shrapnel is thrown all Different Directions and its the equivalent of hundreds of bullets flying in a different direction. If a person is nearby they can be seriously injured or killed by the shrapnel. This is one of more than 40 bombings that occurred here in birmingham. And of course, the most famous and the most tragic happened on september 15, 1963. That was the bombing of the 16th street Baptist Church. That was the first bomb in which anyone was killed in birmingham. And four young girls were killed. A fifth was seriously injured and several other members of that congregation were injured that day. This is a Birmingham City jail document and this covers the spring of 1963. So it records more than 1,000 people who were arrested for taking part in the civil rights demonstrations. On this page, which is april 12, 1963, we see here, this is the date Martin Luther king was arrested. With him here is his associate and good friend, ralph abernathy. Like all of the demonstrators they are arrested for violating section 1159 of the city code, which is parading without a permit. This is the famous photo from that day. This was taken just moments before they were arrested. Im often asked by students, since the three of them are in the photo, why reverend shuttlesworth name is not on the jail document. It actually is on a different page. But this photo and this document really straight the dynamics what was going on with the sil rights leaders. Shuttlesworth invited king to come to birmingham but shuttles worth was much was the leader of the movement here. And the leaders on this particular day did not want shuttleworth arrested. They wanted him to stay out of jail to organize more demonstrations but shuttleworth did not want Martin Luther king to be the sole face of the movement. So shuttlesworth took part. Birmingham police knew where to find him so they went and arrested him later in the day. And you can see if we go back a couple of pages, april 12th, arrest of fred shuttlesworth. Now, it was during this stay in jail that king wrote the first drat of his letter from birmingham jail. He was responding to an open letter from eight white clergymen in birmingham who were questioning the timing of these demonstrations. He birmingham had a change of governor. These clernlgingmen, like a lot of people, were questioning if this was the time to hold demonstrations. The argument dr. King makes in the letter is that africanamericans had waited long enough and people in power were always telling him, wait a little longer. Wait a little longer. He wrote the first drafrts on scraps of paper in the jail. Those were taken out, typed up. Unfortunately, those handwritten drafts were thrown away as the document was being typed up. Once dr. King left jail, he did more work on the letter. There are various versions of the letter where he crafted it, he edited it. And then over the summer of 1963 it was published. Portions were published in various newspapers and magazines. It was circulated as a mimeograph. Then in the fall of 1963 it was published in this booklet published by the friend society, by the quakers. This has the full text of the letter. It also has this statement from the clergymen that king was responding to. What weve looked at today is a small selection of documents out of our archives. We focused on items dealing with race, the struggle for civil rights in america. Weve done that not only because we were remembering important events from 50 years ago and also because the birmingham story is a story for the whole world. Biming ham has become a symbol for people all over the world to Freedom Fighters and its a symbol of not only racial intolerance and racial reconciliation and what happens when people stand up and demand their civil rights. The story is universal. Its a story that is constantly generating new interests. People are constantly finding new ways to look at this story. Here at the Birmingham Public Library were very pleased that those who came before us had the foresight to collect this material, to preserve this material so that we can have it to learn from, stud y make it available to the puck. And as we move into the Digital World its being made available to the world through the worldwide web. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. To join the conversation like us on facebook at c spahn history