Braxton Bragg Comer was an American politician who served as the 33rd governor of Alabama from 1907 to 1911, and a United States senator in 1920. As governor, he achieved railroad reform, lowering business rates in Alabama to make them more competitive with other states. He increased funding for the public school system, resulting in more rural schools and high schools in each county for white students and a rise in the state's literacy rate.

The Avondale Mills were a system of textile mills located predominantly in Alabama, but also in Georgia and South Carolina, with headquarters in Birmingham, and later in Sylacauga, Alabama. The Birmingham neighborhood of Avondale was chosen to be the site of the first mill, hence the naming of the company. Founded in 1897, the mills employed thousands of Alabamians throughout its 109-year history until they closed in 2006. Avondale Mills was founded in 1897 by a consortium of investors including the Trainer family of Chester, Pennsylvania, the future governor of Alabama, Braxton Bragg Comer, and a group of Birmingham civic leaders including Frederick Mitchell Jackson Sr.