Birmingham, Alabama was first settled in 1813 as the town of Elyton, and was just a small pioneer farm settlement. Though local residents fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, little damage was done to the area because, as one Union General wrote, the area deserved no attack because it was just a "poor, insignificant Southern village." This significance changed when railroads and land barons built a town that was re-named Birmingham, after England's industrial giant. Formally organized in 1871, the new town became a commercial hub, with railroads crisscrossing throughout the city. For many years, Birmingham was synonymous with the steel industry. The area's rich iron ore deposits were used during the American Civil War to help the Confederates build a blast furnace. Besides iron ore, the area had deposits of coal, limestone, bauxite, and sand. The city that also supplied the Confederate troops with ammunition during the Civil War grew rapidly it the 1870s.    

Commercial Train in Early Birmingham

Birmingham Factories

     The city continued to grow rapidly as an industrial center after 1899, when steel was first manufactured. Birmingham was a major iron-and steel-producing center and at one time was known as the Pittsburgh of the South. Birmingham has a diversified industrial base; manufacturers include railroad and aircraft equipment, chemicals, valves, textiles, and cement. Health care services, commerce, banking, insurance, research, and government are also important.  It is important to add that one of the reasons Birmingham's industry was able to grow so quickly was because the steel companies exploited a limitless supply of white and black rural labor.

     The young city sprang up, thrived and grew so quickly that many observers said that it happened “just like magic.” Soon the nickname the “Magic City” was applied to Birmingham. It was also a time when older Alabama cities began to resent the growth and success of their neighbor to the north. They city’s detractors, and there were many, started to refer to the city as “Little Birmy.” The scorn subsided however, when the city was almost wiped out, first by a cholera epidemic and then by an economic depression. The natural abundance of resources, however, assured the resurgence of the little boom town, and Birmingham moved on. Beginning in 1880 and continuing through the Great Depression, this city used Yankee capital and an infusion of labor from former plantations and European immigrants. The mining and metals industries were the catalyst for other enterprises, from banks to barbershops. The controlling influences, however, belonged not to local citizens, but to wealthy industrialists from the North.

Historic District in Downtown Birmingham

Alabama White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

     Long considered the most racially polarized city in the nation, Birmingham became the site for some of the most dramatic confrontations of the Civil Rights Movement. The decades of the 1960s and early 1970s forever changed the image of the city. The executive, judicial and finally the legislative branches of the federal government were instrumental in addressing this problem of such long standing. The most important ingredient in this quest for sanity was the courageous "soldiers" of the Movement. Although many incidents preceded the demonstrations in 1963, that was the year that local and national civil rights organizations launched their combined attack on Birmingham's racial status quo. The city was the site of a "children's crusade" which recruited thousands of elementary, high school and college students for demonstrations, and of retaliations that included mass arrests, attacks by Bull Connor and his henchmen and dogs, and many unsolved bombings. Black men and women held sit-ins at lunch counters where they were refused service and kneel-ins on church steps where they were denied entrance. Hundreds of demonstrators were fined and imprisoned. In early 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Reverend Abernathy and the Reverend Shuttlesworth lead a protest march down the streets of Birmingham. When city police attacked the peaceful demonstrators with police dogs and fire hoses, media triggered a national outcry. The three ministers were arrested and taken to Southside jail. Here King wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail," in response to eight white area clergymen who had called the march untimely and unwise. They also criticized him for breaking the law. King responded to the clergyman indicating that black Americans have waited 340 years for basic rights given to all by God. He also indicated that when a law is unjust, we have a moral obligation not to obey it.

Police Dogs Attacking Peaceful Protesters in Downtown Birmingham

Martin Luther King Jr.

16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham

     On September 15th, 1963, a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, claiming the lives of four young black girls: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. The bombing came as a result of heightened tensions in the city after a federal court ordered its schools to be integrated. Governor George Wallace chose to defy this order and urged his followers to do the same. Such defiance only encouraged Birmingham's bombers to swing into action. Indeed, a local black attorney's house was bombed for the second time in two weeks. In the end, federal authorities won this minor skirmish and the schools were desegregated. Segregationists in Birmingham were not happy. In the basement of the girl’s Sunday school classroom sat a bomb placed by segregationists, designed to kill and maim in protest of the forced integration of Birmingham's public schools. Four members of the Ku Klux Klan were accused of the crime. One man was convicted in 1977, another in 2001. All of these horrific incidents contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights of 1965, and the death of segregation in the South. In the 1970s race relations improved significantly, and in 1979 history was made when the first black mayor was elected.

     The mid-1970s brought the growing influence and reputation of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which had been established in 1969. The University is a public university and medical center complex. It is home to an internationally known medical center that was recently ranked third behind only the Mayo Clinic and Massachusetts nationally. The University brought the old magic back to the city, as smart affluent people associated with the University and other businesses took the lead in the community. Commercial construction drastically changed the skyline of the city, making it broader and even more spectacular. Affluence and education brought with it more cultural and recreational activities. Birmingham is also home to Sanford University, Miles College, Birmingham Southern College, as well as two community colleges. Sites of interest include the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Southern Museum of Flight, the Birmingham Zoo, and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Sloss Furnaces National Historical Landmark commemorates Birmingham’s industrial past. The city also has a variety of cultural offerings, including music festivals such as City Stages, the Birmingham Heritage Festival, and Birmingham Jam.

Birmingham Skyline at Dusk

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

    The opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute did more to heal the city from within and in the eyes of the nation than any other single event in their history. The Institute was conceived as a result of the foresight of two mayors of Birmingham; Richard Arrington and David Vann. In November of 1992, their dream was realized with the opening of the facility that has received more than 100,000 visitors each year. The Institute is the center piece of the city’s historic civil rights district, and is a state-of-the-art facility that houses exhibits that depict historical events from post-World War I racial segregation to present day. Many aspects of the Movement from the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, Voting Rights, the Children's Crusade, and the March on Washington are detailed. More that just a museum, the Institute promotes on-going research and discourse on human rights and issues through its archival and educational seminars.