Birmingham – a tragic tale

I heard it said a few times that Birmingham grew from a railway crossing in a cornfield. Something else about it surprised me - the first impression from the air of a lush green valley edged by rolling woodland hills. Early settlers lived in this beautiful pastoral setting, surrounded by red rock outcrops, fertile land, clear streams with plenty of fish and wildlife to stock the larder. Davy Crockett passed thro in 1819, and spread the word that Jonesboro, as it was then called, was a great place to settle.

The area was rich in mineral wealth – coal and iron ore – but it wasn’t until after reconstruction and the railroad that transport out of the area became feasible. That kind of wealth was a curse for the working classes as well as a blessing for just a few.

Life in frontier towns was never easy. When Birmingham was founded in 1871, life there was further complicated by competition between land speculators over the site for the new city. The winning bid put profit over reason, and settlers had to solve the problem of getting water from seven miles further away than if the other bid had won. The cost was decades of poor sanitation, high mortality and chronic ill health. Cholera and scarlet fever were common, and typhoid an annual caller over many years. Threats of bankruptcy and a fluctuating population added to the burden of the settlers’ choice to build two of everything, churches, schools, bus station waiting rooms… how else could segregation be supported after slavery was abolished?

A well known fact about Birmingham is that the Ku Klux Klan was a powerful force there. What I didn’t know about the organization that moved on to condone murder and other atrocities, started out as a civic club with broad public support and influential citizens among its members. Its founding aim was to protect moral standards that were ‘threatened by industry and urbanization’. The number and variety of churches around Birmingham leave little need to guess what kind of morals those were, or what traditions the city was built upon. This one was obviously built when the city was seeing better days.

On another side of the junction at Five Points South, a different congregation displays Jesus in a lovely shade of brown. Don't go as far as curly hair though.

Like many industrial cities, Birmingham suffered from poor labour relations until the mid-20^th century. Mining and steel workers demanded better compensation for appalling working conditions, and the right to be paid in dollars rather than scrip that could only be spent at the company store. Unemployment soared during frequent depressions and the eventual decline of the industries that once kept the city alive. The rules may have changed, but the shadow of slavery stayed to haunt the workers whose energy it fed on - and didn't discriminate between black and white.

The worst depression hit in the early 1930s. Absentee landlords manipulated the local economy for their own advantage. Loan sharks from other cities nearly bankrupted it once again. Statistics painted a grim picture. Birmingham was the ‘murder capital’ of the world, ranked no 2 in the US for the rate of STDs, had most illiterate people and the lowest disposable income. I read somewhere that a human trait is to stand on the backs of others so you know you are improving yourself. Might that help to make sense of the atrocious treatment of blacks by anyone who could claim to be one step higher?

To quote one local source, ‘Birmingham… failed to develop a real community spirit. The future continues to lie in hands that have milked and hamstrung it for 75 years.’

And there was more. A US Supreme Court decision in 1954 legally ended segregation and kick started the worst period of the ill-fated city’s history. Birmingham’s police commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor - sounding remarkably like a recently retired president - summed up his views with the statement that ‘no whites and no negroes will segregate together while I am police commissioner’. Could they be related? Attended the same English class maybe?

Connor was already infamous for heavy-handed ways of dealing with perceived threats, and certainly rose to the challenge of the civil rights movement in his own inimitable way. In a backhanded way, he did a lot to further the cause of equality when news of what he was up to reached the rest of the US and the world. Thankfully, in 2010, the civil rights struggle is confined to the annals of history, and the city seems to have recovered to a degree.

Alternatives to heavy industries have grown up. A massive university medical facility now dominates the south side of the city, offering white-collar jobs to help stop everyone young with an education heading off at the first opportunity. There has been more than one black mayor and membership of the representative council is reasonably well split.

But to a casual visitor nearly 50 years on from the era of violence and unbelievable bigotry, it seems the problem has not gone away. Private schools for white kids started up when segregation in state schools was ruled unconstitutional. People who didn’t want to integrate and could afford to, shifted out of the city to surrounding municipalities that remain administratively separate from Birmingham. Technically they are integrated communities, but I didn’t get a chance to look into the actuality. If I did, I suspect I’d find all sorts of people with opinions and prejudices like anywhere else. There may or may not be lines drawn on the basis of colour, but I expect there are lines. There is talk of rationalizing the regional councils, but the word on the street is that it’s too hard. (They should come and talk to Auckland – in fact, I wonder if they’d like Rodney Hide – gift wrapped!)

Poverty, unemployment and low educational standards are disproportionately black problems. The mentality that chose, in the 1960s, to close public parks, swimming pools and other amenities rather than integrate them did not disappear overnight, or even over a half century in some cases. And then there are black people’s perspectives, which I had very little opportunity to explore…

By the time segregation legally ended, there was a parallel society with its own economy and distinctive culture. Parts of the historic black business district around 4^th Avenue North have been preserved.

On my long Sunday walkabout, I could see that people coming and going from numerous churches were separated down colour lines. One or two blacks may have joined the white churches, but I didn’t see a single white in a black congregation, except for what looked like a multi-coloured group of tourists coming out of 16^th St Baptist with a guide.

The renowned ‘southern hospitality’ looks like hard glaze on the surface but what lies beneath it, I am left to wonder.

To close on a lighter note, I found a fabulous second hand shop to browse.

I also took some shots that could have passed for Birmingham England with the red brick buildings, factory chimneys and a fading industrial facade. The pristine blue sky gives it away!

I never did quite catch why the name Birmingham was chosen – there must be some connection methinks. I also think I succeeded in getting off the popular tourist trail with that brief stop over. Amazing what can be covered in two short days. I haven't even mentioned the afternoon I spent in the magnificent public library, though if you wondered about my sources, that's the answer.

Next stop is somewhere completely different - Georgia Southern University in Statesboro for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference. Might skip writing that one up and go direct to Savannah, the south coast and Sea Islands.