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Birmingham - Alabama - History |
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Birmingham has been through a lot for a city so young. Unlike many older cities, Birmingham, now in its 128th year, is still in the stages of becoming.
The natural abundance of coal, iron ore and limestone, however, assured the resurgence of the little boom town, and Birmingham moved into its third epoch with remarkable vitality. Beginning
about 1880 and continuing through the Great Depression, this city used
Yankee capital and an infusion of labour from former plantations and
European emigrants. The mining and metals industries were the catalyst for
other enterprises, from banks to barbershops. But the controlling
influences belonged not to local citizens, but to wealthy industrialists
from the North.
The decade of the 1960s and early '70s was the fifth epoch. It brought events that would forever change the image of the city. This was the historic era of police dogs and fire hoses turned on Civil Rights demonstrators, of the bombed-out 16th Street Baptist Church. The city's national reputation was near ruins. The horrors of the 1960s still haunt the city today and have turned a permanent global spotlight on race relations — good and bad — in Birmingham. But in the mid-1970s, the growing influence and reputation of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the strength of a thriving business/service economy ushered in the sixth epoch. The old magic was back as smart, affluent people associated with UAB and other businesses took the lead in the community. Commercial construction drastically changed the skyline of the city, making it broader, more spectacular. Affluence and education brought with it more cultural and recreational opportunities. |
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Local
historians divide the city's history into six epochs. The first, from the
1830s to the late 1860s, was a time when the area we now know as
Birmingham was called Elyton and was just a small pioneer farm settlement.
There was no town of any consequence---the great Alabama cities were
Mobile, Selma and Montgomery. Though local residents fought for the
Confederacy during the Civil War, little damage was done to the area
because, as one Union general wrote in his diary, the area deserved no
attack as it was just a "poor, insignificant Southern village".
The
second period, from about 1870 to 1880,
was a time when railroads and land barons built a town that was named
Birmingham, after England's
industrial giant. Formally organized in 1871,
the new town became a commercial hub, with railroads crisscrossing
throughout the community. The new community sprang up, thrived and grew so
quickly that many observers said it happened "just like magic."
Soon the nickname "The Magic City" was applied to Birmingham. It
also was a time when older Alabama cities began to resent the growth and
success of their neighbour to the north. The city's detractors, and there
were many, started referring to the city as "Little Birmy".
Their
scorn subsided somewhat when the town was nearly wiped out, first by a
cholera epidemic and then by economic depression.
The
fourth distinct period began with the Depression and ran through the late
1950s. During this time of wartime economy and shaky post-war recovery,
the city suffered greatly. The mills kept producing, but not a single
major commercial building was built downtown from the 1920s until the
early 1960s.
