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Birmingham, Alabama, 1906. "Southern Club and Birmingham Athletic Club, 20th Street." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
This is the northwest corner of 5th Avenue north and 20th Street. There's not much in the photograph that remains today. More about the Southern Club here:
The Birmingham Athletic Club was located at 502 20th Street North. It and the Southern Club have been replaced by the Regions Center, completed in 1972.
Anytime I see a title that includes "athletic club" I think of the movie "How to Murder Your Wife".
And it seems that with rare exceptions, we don't have athletic clubs anymore, we have gym memberships. Big difference between a social club where members can socialize and exercise versus a gym where a customer exercises with minimal socializing with others.
The Southern Club is where future Supreme Court justice Hugo L. Black met Josephine Foster, whom he married in 1921.
Ironically, the only justice with a Ku Klux Klan background was appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Black had joined the Klan in 1923; most biographies and Supreme Court histories say he did this solely to further his political career in Alabama (oh, OK). Later, he said that he had resigned from the Klan in 1925 and abandoned its views (which apparently is correct).
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