Birmingham, The Alabama Black Experience

The city of Birmingham was founded in 1871 on the crossroads of three major railroads, the Alabama Great Southern, the South Alabama, and the North Alabama railroads. The town was established as a mining town that mined minerals for railroads. While no data exists regarding the number of blacks that lived in the city at the time of the founding but out of the 130,000 people that lived in the city in 1910, about 39% of the city was black (~50,700 people).

In his article, "What is a City?", Mumford Lewis describes the city is a drama theatre were the inhabitants are acting out a play and the play is where daily activities like art, politics, education, and commerce are acted out and where activities not practiced in the countryside are practiced and includes a population that is replaceable (Mumford Lewis, "What is a City?", 1937).

Since the city was founded during the Reconstruction-era South, there was a strong emphasize for mining iron for the construction of railroads to expand the industry in the South since agricultural emphasize was damaged following the Civil War and slavery was declared illegal. However, the remnants of slavery and racism still existed in the labor hierarchy of the city. White craftsmen at the top performed less dangerous tasks than their black colleagues and paid more than black laborers. The decline of the iron industry in the mid to late 20th century was credited to the civil rights movement because the decline of the iron industry leads to the rise of the service industry in the city like medical, education, health care, banking, and insurance and the governmental regulations in the 60s and 70s that shut down iron industries and led to more open-minded children that read more because of more educational material- leading to the May 1963 protests (Gregory Jeane, "Birmingham", 2006).

With the rise of the iron industry in 1910, white farmers that lived in the outskirts of the city at the time moved into the city to take advantage of the economic opportunities that the city offers and to counter the white immigrants moving into the city. Black laborers were moving into the mix through radicalized agricultural sentiment that formed many labor unions. Capitalists used that to push racist propaganda to weaken organizing powers and unskilled labor powers of black laborers. This lead to social and economic changes that reached politics at its very core. The formation of white supremacists groups like the KKK to create homogenous societies through violence and fear, keeping black laborers powerless and the supremacists enjoyed the financial support that it came with (Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, 2015).

The city has a population that consists of more African Americans than whites. According to the 2010 census data, a population of 212,237 people shows a 73.4% population of African Americans, a major change from an 1890 data when in a population of 26,178 people, ~43% of the population was black. On October 2nd, 2017, the city elected the 30th and current mayor of the city, Randall L. Woodfin.

The presidential election of 2016, the mayoral election of 2017 and the Alabama special election of 2017, the city of Birmingham leaned more moderate but blue in 2016. The elections of 2017 showed the city leaning more blue, as evidence by democratic mayor Woodfin. The democratic leadership had control of the city since the Civil Rights movement of the 60s and 70s, as represented by the power shift that the movement represented with the democrats being the party of civil rights while the Republicans represents the party of business.

The Civil Rights movement in Birmingham produced iconic and troubling moments during the movement. Peaceful protests such as sit-ins, marches, and boycotts on merchants were met with violent attacks from police such as firehoses and attack dogs. In his 1963, publication, Letters from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses the idea of justice upholding the human spirit while forces of injustice work to unravel it. On May 2nd, 1963, high school aged children (mostly black students) staged a protest in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham. Children were more likely to stage protests in cities to coincides with the primary material that they read in school and make decisions that will impact their lives. The May 2nd protests represent what children wanted to see in an integrated society (Susan Santoli, Black History Bulletin, 2002).

"Bombingham" was the term used to describe the era in Birmingham history of racism (1947-1965). During this period, 50 dynamite explosions were set off by white supremacists to incite fear in the black residents of Birmingham to prevent integration. This caused the value of property in the city to go down and vacant lots to be destroyed to prevent black residents from moving into white neighborhoods. Black residents were then moving into congested neighborhoods while white families were moving to the suburbs, surrounding black families (Glenn Eskew, "Bombingham: Black Protest in Postwar Birmingham, Alabama", 1997).

The city of Birmingham has a plan to increase the population of the city that has taken a downturn in recent years. A plan to increase the population of the city, increase economic development, and preserve major historical monuments in the city include building new housing in the Civil Rights district, creating the International Global Forum for Freedom and Justice to bring awareness to the Civil Rights District.

Economic developments are the main concern regarding policy in the city. The mining and iron depots that shut down in the 20th century left empty lots in the city and the decline of jobs in the city, leading to the population decline in the city.

The city is filled with whispers of black culture. There are museums, businesses, and streets that are echoes of Birmingham's past with racism and violence. In Joe Trotter's article, "African Americans in Cities", he describes the formation of racial equality groups like the NAACP as a result of white supremacist violence following the Civil War. Following Emancipation, black southerners experienced racism on every level from social to economic to political. Black laborers experienced similar or exactly the same type of racism in the north as they did in the south. Labor and race organizations like the NAACP and the National Medical Association to help people of color find equal opportunity in the city (Joe Trotter, "African Americans in Cities", 2007).