Birmingham, Alabama: Sweet Home to Everyone That Lives There
Most people don’t realize that Birmingham, Alabama started out as a merger of three little farm towns. It was originally created as a center city where cheaper labor that was not related to a union as well as African American workers could work in the blasting furnaces and steel mill environment. Birmingham has had a checkered past, overcoming obstacles that would collapse most towns. Birmingham is an astounding swirl of sports fans of all venues: football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, motor sports, golfing and more. The scoreboards of any stadium, no matter what the team, are the highlight of the games.
Named after an industrial city in England, Birmingham was established in the post Civil War time period. The original founders were of British heritage, and the plan was to establish an industrial town similar to their sister city. The offering of work, even at a lesser pay scale, brought a multi-cultural draw of people from all over the country. Railroad, steel mill and eventually cotton became the focus of growth for this southern area. Steel and Mill industries eventually made way to a more lucrative focus of banking and investment, and by the twentieth century, Birmingham became a center for additional businesses such as telecommunications, medical care, electrical power transmissions and insurance.
Birmingham, like many of the southern cities, had a hard history. The cholera outbreak combined with the crash of Wall Street in 1873 almost bought the budding city to its knees. But the people of the area are strong and resilient and it wasn’t long after that they began to rebuild their beloved town. The Depression brought another brutal strike to an area that had a mix of both blue collar and white collar jobs. The saving factor occurred during war time, when the steel industry boomed due to the war demand.
A staunch representative of what is known as ‘the deep south’, Birmingham has struggled over the years with the topic of equality and prejudice. Racial conflicts led Birmingham to be the hotbed of the Civil Rights Movement, most notably with the jailing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during a nonviolent protest. By the late 1990’s, the evolution of the racial attitudes made an enlightened break through when Birmingham made a pledge to fight racial prejudice. The grassroots pledge has been used as a springboard to continue this effort across the U.S…
The growth and urban expansion of Birmingham has seen ebbs and flows. The city has set a focus on education as well as the arts and museums. The sports fans of Birmingham are some of the most loyal, found anywhere in the country. Birmingham hosts the famous ‘Dixie Bowl” for their college teams which spun off to a number of other sports host centers. Motorsports is one area that retains popularity in Birmingham, bringing the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Talladega Speedway and other well known motorsports competitions to its doorstep, with scoreboards lit in electric excitement. Birmingham is home to many of the nation’s athletic conferences, including the Southeastern Conference, Gulf South Conference and Southwestern Athletic Conference. There is no doubt that Birmingham is the seat of everything sports.
The people of Birmingham have proven themselves to be strong, with a focus on “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” attitude. It is a city of deep rooted loyalty with a love of country, sports and their beloved city and state. They continue to battle and win against the racial problems, proving themselves as an example for the rest of the country.
