Avondale Sun
The Avondale Sun was a biweekly newspaper published by Avondale Mills for its employees in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
The first edition was published without a name on June 8, 1923. Company president Donald Comer initiated a naming contest, with a $5 prize for the winning entry. The first edition under the Avondale Sun masthead was dated January 4, 1924.
The Sun published company news, editorials from management, and news about employees and their families from the company's various mills around the state alongside jokes, sports articles, recipes, letters and household hints. The paper shared a downtown Birmingham office with The Advance weekly at 412 21st Street North. It was printed in Sylacauga on the presses of The Sylacauga News.
Editors for the Sun included Bill Irby, Martha Donze, Graham Byrum, and Kelley Wasserman. President and CEO J. Craig Smith (1951–1970) contributed editorials for most of his career and served as associate editor.
The newspaper continued until Avondale Incorporated closed down its operations in July 2006. Chairman and CEO Stephen Felker donated the company's archives, including every edition of the Sun, to the B. B. Comer Memorial Library in Sylacauga. With a federal grant offered under the Library Services and Technology Act and additional funding from the Alabama Public Library Service and the Comer Foundation, they library was able to digitize all 29,998 pages of the newspaper. The Birmingham Public Library indexed the issues and made them available online through its Digital Collections site.
References
- Sinclair, Denise (December 18, 2010) "Comer Library gives public access to Avondale history." The Daily Home
- Wolfson, Hannah (January 1, 2011) "Library archive offers light into 82 years of Avondale Mill life." Birmingham News
External links
- Avondale Sun archived at the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections