Charles Zukoski
Charles Frederick Zukoski Jr (born Charles Edward Zukoski September 24, 1898 in St Louis, Missouri; died August 24, 1996 in Tucson, Arizona) was a banker, opinion columnist, and first Mayor of Mountain Brook.
Charles Edward was the son of Charles Frederick and Adele Biebinger Zukoski of St Louis. He chose to take his father's name at age 10. He attended Harvard College and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School. He married the former Bernadine Edom in 1924. In 1926 he was recruited by Oscar Wells to establish a trust department at First National Bank of Birmingham and relocated to Birmingham.
Over the next 3 and a half decades, he built his trust department into one of the largest in the Southeast, with more than a half billion dollars in assets. After losing an a 1-year-old daughter and being forced to sell their large house on Southwood Road during the Great Depression, they moved to a more modest home on Old Leeds Road, where they raised two sons, Edward and Charles III.
During the 1930s, Zukoski assembled a group of leaders including James Simpson, Mervyn Sterne, Rucker Agee and Hugh Kaul to lobby the Alabama State Legislature for action on economic recovery, and also served as president of the Jefferson County Coordinating Council of Social Forces. Later that decade he led residents of Mountain Brook Estates and surrounding neighborhoods through the process of incorporating as a city, and was elected as Mayor in 1942.
Zukoski oversaw the establishment of the Mountain Brook Police Department and Mountain Brook Fire Department, as well as planning, zoning and other administrative offices. He was re-elected without significant opposition in 1944, 1948, and 1952. Under his leadership the city began operating with a city manager. He also chaired the advisory committee for Shades Valley High School.
In 1943 Zokoski founded the Birmingham Committee on Foreign Relations, an affiliate of the Washington D.C.-based American Committees on Foreign Relations. In 1948 Zukoski began contributing a weekly editorial column to George Watson's Shades Valley Sun newspaper, using the pen name Button Gwinnett. Through that column, he advocated for equal justice and improved schools for Black citizens. He condemned racially-motivated bombings and defended the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
After leaving office, Zukoski, as Gwinnett, also called for consolidating Birmingham's suburbs, noting that "those in outlying areas" are "dependent on the character of the central city," which he perceived to be experiencing a "decline in the quality of participation at the hub of the democratic process."
Suspicions that Zukoski was behind the Gwinnett columns escalated to personal threats and to complaints lodged with his employers. After consulting with the bank's leadership, he ceased contributing opinions to the Sun in December 1957. He retired in 1962 and joined the law firm of [[Berkowitz & Lefkovits].
In July 1963, following the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's successful Birmingham Campaign, Zukoski was one of the leaders who participated in the Community Affairs Committee. Shortly after the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, he co-signed a letter with James Head advocating for the desegregation of public facilities and the hiring of Black officers to the Birmingham Police Department.
The Zukoskis were prominent supporters of the arts, including service with the Birmingham Civic Symphony Association, the Birmingham Music Club, and the Birmingham Film Council. In retirement he and his wife volunteered overseas with the Boston, Massachusetts-based Pathfinder Fund, promoting family planning in less-developed countries.
Zukoski died in Tucson, Arizona in 1996 and is buried at Elmwood Cemetery.
Publications
- Zukoski, Charles F. (1990) "Voice in the Storm: The Button Gwinnett columns written during the civil rights stuggles and other writings." Birmingham Public Library
- McPhillips, Frank (May 12, 2024) "The stunning story of Mountain Brook's first mayor." Comeback Town / AL.com
External links
- Charles Frederick Zukoski Jr at Findagrave.com