Tag Archives: Birmingham

In Celebration of American Archives Month

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It’s almost the end of October, so that means it’s almost the end of American Archives Month. In honor of the meaningful work being done at archives throughout this land, I want to reintroduce a conversation I had with Jim Baggett, chief archivist at the Birmingham Public Library.

My grandmother – and Bob Dylan – used to say “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.” I’m not sure if that’s true of Dylan, but I believed my grandmother, a life-long student who died days shy of her 92nd birthday.

If James L. Baggett, head of the Department of Archives and Manuscripts at the Birmingham Public Library, told me that, I’d believe him, too. How could I not? He has worked more than 20 years among more than 30,500,000 documents, photographs and drawings, and other artifacts. And if you’d ever been blessed to attend one of his walking tours, then you know he could rattle off a timeline on Birmingham history in his sleep.

I spoke with Baggett in his basement office at the Central Library. You can join the conversation below.

Are you from Birmingham?

James L. Baggett: Yes, I was born here.

Where did you attend college?

UAB and Alabama. I received my bachelor’s and master’s in history at UAB, and at Alabama I did a Master of Library Science.

How did you become interested in what you are doing now, in archival work?

Sort of by accident. I was a history major at UAB and when I entered the master’s program, I thought I was going to do a straight history master’s, but they offered a public history program, which is about archives, museum management, historic site management. So I did the public history master’s and interned down here with Marvin Whiting who was my predecessor. And then I entered the Ph.D. program at Ole Miss. I thought I wanted to be a history professor, and I found I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy teaching. I had really enjoyed archives so I came back. I was lucky enough to get a job here and I did the library master’s. I never regretted it.

Did you like Oxford at all?

I liked Oxford a lot. I really liked living there. I liked Ole Miss and I’m glad I went. I finished the classwork; I learned a lot. I just realized the academic world just wasn’t where I wanted to be.

Does it get pretty lonely as an archivist?

Not really. Well, it depends. It doesn’t here. You know there are a lot of archivists who are known as lone arrangers, and they are “one-person shops.” That might get kind of lonely. Down here we have a full-time staff of five. We always have interns, volunteers. So at a given time we’ll have anywhere from six to 10 people working down here. And we serve 150-200 researchers a month so it’s a pretty heavily used collection.

A number of authors have given your department “a shout out” because of your assistance.

There are now more than 300 books that have been published out of this collection. That includes five winners of the Pulitzer Prize. And the last time I counted, there have been over 50 documentaries and film productions researched here, and that includes one winner of the Academy Award, Emmy Award winners, and Peabody winners. There have been at least 30 museum exhibitions researched here. But then you know, we also serve local college students and people researching a house or a building so it’s a broadly used collection.

So, what does the collection consist of, what do you house down here?

We have a variety of things. We focus on the Birmingham area, but within that, it’s a pretty broad collection. We’re the archives for the city so we house city records of historic value. We have papers of the mayors from George Ward to Richard Arrington. We serve as the archives for a lot of local organizations like OMB and the Chamber of Commerce, the YMCA, YWCA, the League of Women Voters, a lot of local clubs. We have company records, family papers. We have the largest collection in existence on the civil rights movement in Birmingham. We have the largest collection on women’s history in Birmingham. We have something in the neighborhood of 30,000,000 documents and half a million photographs.

Of course, you know, when we talk about archives, we’re talking about letters, diaries, notebooks, maps, blueprints, office files, church registers – pretty much anything you can think of, you can use to record information.

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve come across in the collection?

Probably fragments from the second Bethel Baptist Church bomb.

That’s my church, actually.

The second bomb, you know the one Will Hall [one of the men who voluntarily guarded the church] picked up and carried out into the streets, we found its fragments in the Birmingham police files. We found metal fragments of the bucket the bomb was placed inside of and pieces of shrapnel from that bomb. Some of those are now on display at City Hall.

How do you keep everything catalogued?

We inventory things at a file level. We can’t inventory all the documents. There’s tens of millions, there’s just no way to do that. So we create finding aids. It’s a guide to a collection that will list each file and tell you what’s there. We try to give a researcher a good general idea of what’s in a collection so they can know which files they might need to look into and which files they could pass over.

What’s your favorite thing about your work?

I guess there are several. Working with researchers is one. People come in with really interesting ideas, really interesting projects, and we find out how we can use our collections in ways that have never been thought of. It’s always fun to start with the research in the beginning, and when it’s done, they produce a book or an article or a Ph.D. dissertation. And finding new collections is fun.

If you could categorize the focus of the researchers, what would it be?

The biggest would be local architecture and historic buildings, and in that you would include land use. In a normal month, we’d have about 100 people come in doing either land use or historic building research. Civil rights is probably the second, especially right now with the 2013 anniversary coming up. We are getting a number of requests.

One thing I try to do when I talk to students is interest them in the other subject areas that are down here. We have lots of material here that’s just not used. With students, I ask do we need another paper on the Black Barons or the Father Coyle murder or would you like to do something new and different.

Have you ever thought about writing a book [Baggett is the author of five books] on one of those unrecognized subjects?

I’ve been working for 10 years on a biography of Bull Connor so I don’t know if unrecognized is the word – barely understood would be a better term. As much as Connor’s been written about, he hasn’t been written about in any complexity. I’m looking at him as a political figure, not just his civil rights study. I’m trying to understand him in a way no one has done.

Are you trying to show him in a more compassionate light?

It’s to try and help the reader understand him. They’re still not going to like him, and they are not necessarily going to be sympathetic to him, but I hope when I finish this, readers will come away with a better understanding. What you find when you start looking at figures like Connor, is how like us they are. Connor loved his family and he took his grandson on vacations. He was a complete person, which is what has never been explored with him before.

We want people like Connor to be totally different from us. We want to keep our distance. I find people get very uncomfortable when I talk about him and they often think I’m defending him when I’m not. I’m just trying to understand him.

Regarding Louise Wooster [Birmingham’s most famous madam, whom Baggett has written a book about], did she and John Wilkes Booth actually have a love affair?

It’s possible. Clearly, Lou embellished the story over the years. It is possible that they could have met and had some sort of relationship. Booth was in Montgomery in 1860 for six weeks, performing. And Lou was working in a brothel in Montgomery at that time. And Booth is known to have frequented brothels, so they both were in the right place at the right time. There could have been an encounter or a brief relationship. She would have been in her late teens at that time, and Booth was a huge star. It would be like having an affair with Brad Pitt now. Now the stories Lou tells later are clearly made up because she turns it into some great love affair. It simply didn’t happen.

Baggett also loves the kids. Photo courtesy of the Birmingham Public Library.

Baggett also loves the kids. Photo courtesy of the Birmingham Public Library.

Civil Rights Trail expansion honors Smithfield heroes

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The first child born to Jefferson County early settlers John Smith and Sallie Riley Smith grew up to become a physician. Joseph Riley Smith would later marry and father 12 children, and in 1882, after he had retired from medicine, Smith became a merchant and real estate developer. John Witherspoon Dubose, in his 1887 book, “Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama: Historical and Biographical,” wrote that Smith was “probably the largest individual real estate owner in Jefferson County.” Smith later developed a suburb for black professionals on one large tract of land, and he named this suburb Smithfield. Those in Smithfield were often called a “Number One Black” since they were members of Birmingham’s burgeoning black middle class. A.H. Parker, principal of Industrial High School (which today bears his name), lived in Smithfield.

However, with the passage of Birmingham’s race-based zoning laws in the early 20th century, by the 1940s, Smithfield, and surrounding areas, became ground zero in the fight to claim the American Dream of home ownership. It was not unusual for black residents to learn that houses that were once “black” were newly zoned for white residents or for them to be threatened if they dared to purchase homes on the white side of Center Street.   Arthur Shores, NAACP attorney, sued the city numerous times to contest the zoning ordinances. In 1947, a court judgment allowed Samuel Mathews to purchase a home in North Smithfield. Not long after, Mathews’ house became the first one of many to be bombed in and near Smithfield.

On Saturday, March 8, Rebecca Evans of College Hills, and a small crowd, stood in front of the Smithfield Public Library for the unveiling of a new extension of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Trail. Evans said she’s glad that now those who fought for fair housing are being remembered. The trail “will remind us of what we’ve been through,” she said.  Her friend, Lois Packer, who is a member of Smithfield’s Thirgood Memorial CME Church, agreed with Evans and was excited that there is now a safe place to walk. “It’s a great thing, what’s happening. It says a lot about who we are now. It’s a blessing, and I’m so proud of everyone and what they’re doing,” Packer said.

Birmingham Mayor William Bell led the ribbon-cutting ceremony that was also attended by Councilor Marcus Lundy, Barbara Shores, daughter of Arthur Shores, and Wendy Jackson, who is the executive director of Freshwater Land Trust, one of many organizations that collaborated on the project.

The 4-mile trail also winds its way through parts of the East Thomas and Enon Ridge neighborhoods. The trail, which is part of the Red Rock Ridge and Valley Trail System, was funded with $10 million from the federal TIGER program (TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery). Several local non-profits, in addition to Freshwater, contributed to the project.  According the Freshwater’s website, the Red Rock Ridge and Valley Trail System is a proposed network of more than 750 miles of trails, bike lanes and sidewalks that will connect communities throughout Jefferson County.

Mayor Bell sees the trail as a melding of the past with the present and future.  He said while the trail honors the contributions of those Smithfield residents who were vital in the fight for civil rights, “we also recognize how far we’ve come as a community, and the changes that have come to our community so that all people could be the best that they could be and live the type of lives they want to live.”

(l to r) Wendy Jackson, Barbara Shores, Mayor William Bell, Dr. Mark Wilson, public health officer for the Jefferson County Department of Health

(l to r) Wendy Jackson, Barbara Shores, Mayor William Bell, Dr. Mark Wilson, public health officer for the Jefferson County Department of Health

Sign located on Center Street North

Sign located on Center Street North

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Bicyclists enjoy new Civil Rights trail extension

Bicyclists enjoy new Civil Rights trail extension

Farewell to the ‘Most Hated White Man in the South’

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The first thing I noticed when arriving at Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church of Collegeville today for the “homegoing” service of the Rev. Lamar Weaver, 85, was the hearse from Poole’s Funeral Chapels, Inc.

How fitting since it was the Poole brothers, Ernest and John, who helped save Weaver’s life 56 years ago.

On March 6, 1957, a day after the Alabama Public Commission ruled that waiting rooms designated for interstate travel must remain segregated, Weaver met the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Birmingham’s formidable civil rights leader and Bethel’s pastor, and his wife, Ruby, at Terminal Station. The Shuttlesworths had bought tickets to Atlanta and sat in the whites-only waiting room in defiance of the ruling. Weaver, a white man, had come to the station to show his support. As the Shuttlesworths and Weaver waited for the train, a crowd of about 100 segregationists, led by “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss (one of the men responsible for bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963), began to harass them. Before long, police ordered all those without tickets to leave the waiting room, and this included Weaver.  In his 2001 autobiography, “Bury My Heart in Birmingham,” Weaver recounted that long walk to his car:

A police officer pushed me out on to the sidewalk and the door closed behind me. I was surrounded by this angry mob. I was terrified. I turned toward the area where my car was parked and started walking slowly to my car. The mob was so close to me; I could feel their hot breath on the back of my neck. I knew if I ran I would most certainly be killed much like a pack of wild dogs would do when they chase after prey. Then suddenly, someone hit me from behind with a suitcase and knocked me to the ground. Some of the persons in the mob began kicking me. I struggled back to my feet trying desperately to make it to my car. The mob followed me. The news media were there taking pictures. Thank God for those reporters. If they had not been there with their cameras, I’m sure I would have been killed. Getting to my car seemed like an eternity. Finally I made it and managed to somehow get inside.

The hostile crowd threw cement blocks and rocked the vehicle, attempting to flip it over. Weaver described Chambliss being at the front of his car, sneering and cursing while rocking it.

Weaver managed to back up but not before someone in the crowd opened the car door and began beating him.  A reporter from a national media outlet pushed the man away and Weaver was able to speed off. However, the police charged Weaver with running a red light and reckless driving.  He opted for an immediate trial and was able to stand before a city judge that day. The judge fined Weaver $25 and ordered him to leave town.

The Poole brothers paid Weaver’s fine, hid his car and drove him to the funeral home. Here’s Weaver’s account of what happened next:

I hid there for the rest of the day and that night. A Negro informant told the police that I was hiding at the Poole Funeral Home. When they couldn’t find me there, the mob continued their search for me throughout the city. At least twice during the late hours of the night, angry Whites came into the funeral home looking for me. [Three employees] of the Poole Funeral Home had hidden me in a casket.

According to Weaver, the next day, he was taken to the airport and flew to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on civil rights. (He had made his airplane reservations under the pseudonym James Bishop to remain hidden.) While waiting to testify, Weaver was told by his congressional representative, “Don’t ever go back to Birmingham. You’ll never be welcomed. You are a disgrace. You are the most hated white man in the south.” Weaver did not let the representative’s words deter him from testifying.

Weaver’s deeds were not without consequences.  He had made many enemies, especially when he decided to run against Eugene “Bull” Connor for his seat on the Birmingham City Commission. During his campaign, a bullet was fired into his house, almost hitting one of his daughters. Soon after, his first wife divorced him and moved to north Alabama. Weaver also lost the election to Connor.

During today’s eulogy for Weaver, Bethel’s current pastor, the Rev. Thomas L. Wilder, Jr., asked, “Why would a white man in the middle of segregated Birmingham risk everything?” Wilder told the small group of mourners of an event that Weaver witnessed at a young age that may have been the impetus for his life’s work.  In Weaver’s words:

I was about four years old and we were traveling down an old dirt road near [Centre], Alabama. I thought it must have been on the weekend because as we approached a crossroad I saw a large group of people standing around in a festive atmosphere. There were so many people that they were partially blocking the road. As we drew closer, I was not prepared for what I was about to see. I witnessed one of the most horrific things I have ever seen even to this day. What I witnessed was a horrible experience for me. As our car stopped, we saw some White men, some dressed in robes, standing on platform with a Negro boy who I think could have been anywhere from fifteen to eighteen years old. There he was standing stripped of his clothing and the Whites were savagely beating him. Then they brought out axes and they began hacking his body to pieces, killing him before our very eyes. It was like a slaughterhouse. Blood was everywhere. My father, mother and I watched in horror. I just sat there horrified. It was a sight I will remember for the rest of my life. Looking back now, that experience made an impact on my life that may have been the reason my life took the path that it did.

“Please for the rest of your life, remember Rev. Lamar Weaver. Remember those who risked it all for the sake of the cause,” Wilder admonished us.

Weaver’s son, Robert Lamar, also spoke at today’s service. He reminded everyone of the circular nature of life.  Weaver, who had been living in Kennesaw, Ga., had once again returned to Birmingham, the city he loved and fought to change. “And today, with God’s plan, we will bury my father’s heart in Birmingham.”

Weaver shaking hands with Shuttlesworth as Shuttlesworth's first wife, Ruby, looks on. Weaver was on hand at Birmingham's Terminal Station to show support of the couple as they waited in the whites-only waiting room. Credit: Birmingham News/Alabama Media Group

Weaver shakes hands with Shuttlesworth as Shuttlesworth’s first wife, Ruby, looks on. Weaver was on hand at Birmingham’s Terminal Station to show support of the couple as they waited for their train to Atlanta in the whites-only waiting room. Credit: Birmingham News/Alabama Media Group

A mob surrounds Weaver's car as he attempts to leave the terminal. Credit: Birmingham News/Alabama Media Group

A mob surrounds Weaver’s car as he attempts to leave the terminal. Credit: Birmingham News/Alabama Media Group

‘Color Guards’ with no flags

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Local communications expert Carl Carter has written an honest recollection about standing guard in front of Woodlawn Baptist Church to ensure “nobody of the wrong color wandered in by mistake.” Read his story below, and check out Carl’s blog, Carl’s Lost & Found.

Dad had color guard duty, but there was no flag. It was a pretty simple task: You stood around in the front of Woodlawn Baptist Church to make sure nobody of the wrong color wandered in by mistake. Dad let me stay outside with the men. He liked having me around, and maybe he figured I’d learn something. Color guard was an important job, because colored folks trying to attend a white church were bound to create trouble. We had one try every now and then – not when I was out there, but I heard about it – and they were advised to go worship with their own kind. Churches were known to split over the matter of whether to invite coloreds. The men – at least when I was around – avoided the less polite word for black people. They didn’t seem to hate coloreds or want to harm them. They just didn’t want them in our schools and restrooms. Or eating in our restaurants. Or, God forbid, dating their daughters. On one color guard morning, I had just come from Sunday School, where we’d sung, “Jesus loves the little children. All the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…” Something felt wrong. There was no moment of great revelation, where I understood the evils of segregation and bought in to the entire civil rights movement. The grownups around me didn’t seem to hate black people so much as the Communists, who were using them. Sure, Dad got regular phone calls from Police Commissioner Bull Connor – because of his role with the bus system and because, as Connor told him, “I can’t trust any of these people over here.” I also remember how excited he was when he got to eat next to black businessman A.G. Gaston. No, it wasn’t the coloreds so much as the Communists stirring them up, making them discontent, and trying to overthrow our way of life so they could take away our freedom of worship. At least in Dad’s mind. Jesus loves the little children… What about the children that might want to come to our church with their parents? Would Jesus love a colored child in my Sunday school class? Would she have a disease? Would one of them cut me with a knife? I wasn’t sure, and went on with my life. But the image of Color Guard duty became one of two snapshots in my mind that changed me in ways I wouldn’t understand for many years. The other snapshot was captured downtown, in front of Loveman’s department store. Mother and I had taken the bus downtown to do some shopping, and we always looked for a seat around the second row, a safe distance from the colored section in the back. The long seat in the very back looked like a more fun place to be, but that was out of the question. There, outside Loveman’s, there was a little girl my age, and she was crying. She pulled at her mother’s skirt. “But I’ve got to go,” she said. “Shh. Be quiet now,” her mother said. I asked Mother, “What’s wrong with her?” “There aren’t any colored restrooms here. She’ll have to wait.” “Why can’t she use the same ones we do?” “Because they’re whites only. Hush now.” Hush. That was the key word that made everything OK. Red and yellow, black and white… There was no getting away from it. Water fountains were clearly labeled “White” and “Colored,” and the ones labeled “Colored” always seemed to be dirty. I hated to think what the inside of the colored restroom would look like. But the changes were coming, and there was no holding back the tide. The Civil Rights Bill was about to become law. The Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, which declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” had come down when I was about seven months old. Bull Connor and George Wallace were running out of time. Arthur Shores, a Birmingham black attorney who had to finish his law education through a correspondence school, made it all the way to the Surpreme Court in 1955 in his effort to allow black students into the University of Alabama. And while I lived in a pocket where the racism seemed more tempered, there was most assuredly hate. In 1963, Shores’ home was firebombed in retaliation for efforts to get black parents to register their children at white schools. It was only 11 days before the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls. They are precious in his sight.

How Far Have We Come?

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A panel discussion on “Lessons from the Past: Civil Rights Today” will take place tomorrow, March 12, at Birmingham Southern College at 6 p.m. in the Bruno Great Hall. Odessa Woolfolk, president emerita of The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, will moderate.

Panel includes the Honorable William Bell, mayor of Birmingham; Carolyn McKinstry, eyewitness to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing; Scott Douglas, executive director of Greater Birmingham Ministries; Isabel Rubio, founder of the Hispanic Coalition of Alabama; Howard Bayless, LGBT civil rights leader; and the Honorable Helen Shores Lee, judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit.

Many will agree that blacks in Birmingham, and the U.S., have made great strides in 50 years, but we are far from a post-racial society as some would have us believe. Read the comments that follow any story related to race or one that features a person of color in the Birmingham News, New York Times, USA Today, etc., and you could see that this country is far from being color-struck.

In an editorial for The Minnesota Daily, Trent Kays said the last presidential election proved to him that our country was still in the throes of racism. “Equally disheartening is that we still don’t know how to deal with it. This sickness is symptomatic of a culture and society beginning to embrace 1950s ideologies again rather than moving forward with an eye on the future horizon,” wrote Kays.

I think conversations about race, like the one scheduled for tomorrow, help to foster meaningful interactions, but do these talks reach the people who are holding fast to their antiquated thoughts on race and diversity? Do they help us move a step closer to “dealing with it?”

I doubt if the person who commented on AL.com that giving blacks the right to vote has been the downfall of this country will be in attendance. I doubt if the many commenters who routinely disrespect President Obama for any little perceived offense (but swears they are not racist) will want to have this conversation.

I am all for people sharing their opinions, and so be it if they don’t line up with mine, but the racial discourse in this city, in this country, has taken an ugly turn. (Look at this awful attempt by Philadelphia magazine. The writer says he wanted to have an honest dialogue about race, but ended up with a story that’s full of negative stereotypes and the worst kind of race-baiting.) I pray that tomorrow’s discussion can do some good in getting us to talk about why are we still talking about race in 2013.

What do you think?

How far have we really come?

Legendary broadcasters to discuss Birmingham’s golden age of radio

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Doug Layton started his Birmingham radio career at WSGN, Birmingham’s first rock-and-roll station. From there he moved on to WYDE where he teamed up with Tommy Charles for Birmingham’s first “two-man” radio team. However, Layton may be best remembered for what took place in 1966 at WAQY, in which he was part owner. Layton participated in a Beatles’ boycott to protest John Lennon’s claim that the group was more popular than Jesus. In addition to banning their records, Layton and Charles asked listeners to send in their Beatles records and memorabilia to be included in a bonfire on August 19. The boycott garnered national attention and other stations, particularly in the south, followed suit.

Tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 21, Layton will participate in a panel discussion on Birmingham’s golden age of radio, along with Shelley Stewart, Bob Friedman and Courtney Haden at Vulcan Park and Museum. Greg Bass will moderate. A cash bar opens at 5:30 p.m. and the panel’s discussion will begin at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 if purchased in advanced online or $15 at the door.

In a year that’s filled with numerous nods to Birmingham history, Cristina Almanza, director of marketing and public relations at the park, says they want to offer a different perspective. “We are trying to unveil some historical aspect people may not be familiar with.” Tomorrow’s talk is the first of three events in the park’s 2013 “Birmingham Revealed” series. Music historian Bobby Horton headlines “Music, Migration, and Industrial Birmingham on March 21; the series will close on April 18 with “Crossing Lines: Birmingham and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare.” In 1938, the conference drew Eleanor Roosevelt, Hugo Black, Mary McLeod Bethune and Virginia Foster Durr to Birmingham to help bring the New Deal to the south.

See http://www.visitvulcan.com/eventInfo/BirminghamRevealed.html for more information.

Robert Chambliss and the Tale of Two Nieces

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The Archives department of the Birmingham Public Library is making Robert Edward Chambliss’s jailhouse correspondence available to the public today, the 35th anniversary of the start of Chambliss’s trial.  The papers were given to the library by the FBI. In 1977 Chambliss was convicted to a life sentence for the murder of Carol Denise McNair, 11. McNair, along with Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14, was killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to review the letters, which were written on yellow legal paper and in cursive.  Chambliss wasn’t concerned with modern grammatical conventions as he disregarded many commas and periods and capitalized words at random.  Given the age of the letters, I was surprised to find that the ink had not faded.

Many of the letters are written to his niece Willie Mae Walker.  Chambliss addresses the envelopes with “To My Best Niece Mrs. Willie Mae Walker.” Within the letters, he would make numerous requests of Walker from sending him money for cigarettes to contacting “Good White” lawyers who could help get him released from prison either for good behavior or medical reasons. 

In one letter, Chambliss asked Walker to contact the local newspapers and place the following ad:

Who Will Help an 80 year old innocent convict to get out of Prison.

His Doctors Say He Will Never Be Well Again.  He is Being Held a Political Prisoner

Who needs to Be Free Before He Dies. Please Write R. E. Chambliss, 119771

St. Clair Prison Hospital P.O. Box 280 Odenville Alabama 35120

Sure enough, Walker sent a typed letter to the Birmingham News’s advertising director Harris Emmerson to find out ad rates for a two-week run. 

Chambliss also asked Walker to track down another niece, Elizabeth Cobbs or Libby Ann as Chambliss called her.  Many observers of Chambliss’s trial say it was Cobbs’s testimony that sealed his conviction.  Cobbs, a Methodist minister, was the prosecution’s star witness.  In Spike Lee’s 1997 seminal documentary, Four Little Girls, Howell Raines, the former executive director of the New York Times and Birmingham native, said “The old man [Chambliss] looked over his shoulder and sees this woman walking in and he turns around. His attorneys lean over to him and ask him ‘Who is that?’ And it’s clear they’re totally unprepared for this witness.” 

Cobbs testified that while watching news reports of the bombing, her uncle said, “It wasn’t meant to hurt anybody. It didn’t go off when it was supposed to.”

Chambliss wanted Walker to find Cobbs so she could “repent” of her testimony.  Chambliss blamed Cobbs for his conviction.   In one letter dated December 18, 1983, Chambliss wrote, “…She Swore Lies on Her Uncle and got Him Charged with 4 Murders and got Him a Life Sentence.”  He thought the Methodist church may have known of Cobbs’s whereabouts; he told his niece to contact them.  Chambliss never mentioned he knew that Cobbs underwent a sex change in 1981 and changed his name to Petric Smith. In 1994, Smith wrote Long Time Coming, in which he recollects about growing up with violent segregationists and how he felt during the trial. Chambliss died a prisoner on October 29, 1985.  Smith died in Birmingham in 1998 from lung cancer. He was 57.  

Historians and journalists have given no treatment to Walker.  I want to know more about her, this best niece. Did she believe in her uncle’s innocence? Did she feel a sense of relief after his death? Is she still alive?  As with any important find, we are left to discover answers through additional digging. If you were able to ask Walker one question, what would it be?

The Archives department is located in the Linn-Henley Research Building and is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday – Friday.  

One of the letters Chambliss wrote from prison

Envelope addressed to niece Willie Mae Walker