Birmingham Recordings Available

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Hi all! I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted an update on the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection, but don’t worry – we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes getting a number of things ready to go public. One of these is the set of cassette tapes containing recordings of mass meetings held during the Birmingham Campaign in 1963.

These tapes are actually re-recordings of the original audio reels, a fact I suspected when I did some research into audio cassettes and discovered that they weren’t commercially available until a few years later. Luckily, the man in charge of transferring the recordings onto cassette annotated the recordings, which lets us know who did the originals and the transfer, as well as some basic information about the recordings – namely when and where they were recorded.

The original recordings were done by C. Herbert Oliver, who is also working on the cassette recordings alongside Charles H. Oliver II. C. Herbert Oliver annotates each recording, usually giving a date and where each recording was made, which is often the 6th Avenue Baptist Church. The recordings date from April 9 through May 10, which spans almost the entire length of the Birmingham Campaign.

These files were digitized late last year and we’ve been working to get them online ever since. This work has included metadata creation, including description work, as well as getting the recordings professionally transcribed for accessibility. Many folks these days may not have ever heard the unique sound known as “cassette tape hiss,” so transcription can be incredibly useful – not to mention faster for researchers to skim.

Once the transcription was finished, it was easier to do what librarians call subject analysis. For these recordings, that mostly meant reading through the transcriptions to see what the various speakers discussed, who was speaking and who was mentioned, then putting this information into structured subject headings. These subject headings are displayed online, so researchers can get a general idea of what’s being discussed in each recording even before looking at the transcription or listening to the audio.

All ten recordings – each cassette, front and back – are available online through our Digital Collections site, which is also where the oral histories have been put online. Future digital material, including born digital and digitized, will also be made available on this site, so keeping it bookmarked might not be a bad idea. For the Birmingham recordings, however, I recommend going through the library’s Walker Collection Birmingham tapes webpage. The recordings weren’t transferred to cassette in perfect chronological order, so trying to sort through them without any guidance can get a little confusing. To help listeners out, we created the Birmingham tapes page to give direct links to each meeting and its transcription. Feel free to listen and read at your leisure!

I will be back soon with another #WyattWalkerWednesday post, so keep an eye on this spot – and on the library’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds – for more updates!

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