The Doy Leale McCall Sr. Papers
A section of the last will and testament of John C. Pickens, brother of Alabama's
third governor Israel Pickens. Doye Leale McCall Papers.
The Doy Leale McCall Sr. Collection is actually a collection of collections. It consists of the papers of fifteen different families, and several individuals, as well as more than 13,000 printed items. The papers document the history of the Alabama Black Belt from 1806 to the mid-20th century. The McCall collection includes journals, diaries, personal papers, business records, newspapers, photographs, maps, broadsides, sheet music, flyers, pamphlets, legal records, business cards, and myriad other documents.
The McCall Papers cover such subjects as education, gender, politics, banking, plantation life, sociology, slavery, labor relations, Reconstruction, and the Civil War, to name a few. They reflect the lives of enslaved people, politicians, yeoman farmers, soldiers, merchants, planters, and women. Geographically, they cover the Alabama Black Belt counties of Clarke, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, Marengo, Montgomery, and Pickens. Each family's papers will be available for research after they have been organized and a finding aid to them produced.
The compiler of these papers, Doy Leale McCall Sr., was born at Hoke's Bluff in Etowah County, Alabama, in 1896. McCall served in the military during World War I. Along with his brother L. T. McCall and his father,