After a week of controversy over a doctored photograph used in one of her recent mailings, the mayoral candidate C. Virginia Fields said there would be “internal changes” in her campaign.

During a telephone interview last night about a fund-raising trip she has scheduled to her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., today, Ms. Fields, borough president of Manhattan, said the decisions about those changes had already been made.

She would not elaborate or say whether anyone on her staff would be fired, and her top campaign consultant, Joseph Mercurio, declined to comment.

It is not uncommon for candidates to switch top campaign aides after a public-relations crisis. One of the other three Democratic mayoral candidates, Fernando Ferrer, shook up his campaign staff earlier this year.

In Ms. Fields’s hometown, the mayor, Bernard Kincaid, planned a reception for her at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Fund-raising cannot be done at the institute, but Mr. Kincaid said he was hoping to raise $25,000 for Ms. Fields during her visit.

The mayor of Birmingham, which with a population of more than 240,000 is Alabama’s largest city, and the New York City mayoral candidate do not know one another but share a friend, Deborah Hill, a member of the City Council in Warrensville Heights, Ohio. Mr. Kincaid grew up with her and Ms. Fields was her college roommate.

“She mentioned to me that C. Virginia Fields was from Birmingham and was quote-unquote my home girl,” Mr. Kincaid told The New York Sun.

He said it was an “honor” to support a Birmingham native like Ms. Fields, who has risen through the political ranks.

For her part, Ms. Fields, youngest daughter of a steelworker and a seamstress, said she was “very appreciative” that Mr. Kincaid agreed to hold the event and was looking forward to spending time with members of the Birmingham, Ala., community and the business leaders scheduled to attend this afternoon’s reception.

Ms. Fields’s career of activism started in that city, when in 1963 she marched in the civil-rights movement with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and was arrested and jailed for six nights.

The fund-raising event is not her first outside the five boroughs. In late March, Ms. Fields had one in Atlanta, and she she said yesterday that she has another event planned in Boston.

Ms. Fields, who has raised roughly $1.4 million for her campaign, and the other candidates have until Monday to raise money that will be declared before the next filing deadline.

Donations from residents who do not live in the city are not eligible for public matching dollars.

Mr. Kincaid said that in his first campaign for mayor in 1999, he raised $130,000 and beat a candidate who had raised $1.3 million.

Mr. Kincaid said he was not aware of this week’s controversy involving the campaign photo.

Ms. Fields said again yesterday, as she did earlier this week, that the photo would no longer be used. The picture, which featured her at a news conference in the middle of an ethnically diverse group, was patched together electronically from several different images.