Uniquely Alabama: Birmingham's 150th Birthday

BIRMINGHAM, AL — On December 19, 1871, the City of Birmingham was incorporated, beginning a 150-year history that includes some of the most iconic moments in U.S. history — for good and for bad reasons.

I have been a Birmingham resident my entire life, aside from school in Tuscaloosa, and I live here by choice. I have had several opportunities to leave, but have stuck around because Birmingham is home to me.

The city was the nation's premier producer of steel for decades in the early 1900s (in fact, Birmingham is the only place in the world where all three raw ingredients for steel — coal, limestone, and iron ore — occur naturally within a ten-mile radius), and its rapid growth during that time gave Birmingham its nickname as The Magic City.

Birmingham was ground zero during the Civil Rights Era, as Martin Luther King, Jr. authored his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 shifted the world's focus to Birmingham.

Birmingham became synonymous with racism, and largely still does to this day. I recall during the 2017 Senate election involving Doug Jones and Roy Moore when journalists from all over the country flocked to Alabama to cover the election, that normally educated people assumed that Birmingham was still segregated and was some poor country city with nothing more than fire hoses and police dogs.

It was a strange realization to me, that to people who have never been here, the city has not shaken the stigma of the Civil Rights Era.

Birmingham surely has a lot of work to do in regard to racial equality, but the city is nothing close to what it was like pre-1960s. In fact, Birmingham truly has a lot to offer.

Birmingham missed out on a lot due to its inability to shake the ghosts of the past. The international airport in Atlanta could have come to Birmingham instead. But the city's history and the inaction by city and state leaders put an end to that idea.

Birmingham could have had a Major League Baseball team in the late 60s. The Kansas City A's owner Charlie Finley wanted to move the team to Birmingham (Birmingham was the A's minor league affiliate at the time), but when Finley arrived at the airport in Birmingham, no city leaders were there to greet him. No state influencers showed up, just sports writer Ben Cook of the Birmingham Post-Herald.

Cook said Finley never left the airport. He boarded a plane to Oakland and moved the team there.

But despite its shortcomings, Birmingham has a great deal to offer. We have friendly people, an incredible restaurant scene, a hidden gem in the city's music scene and some of the best craft breweries around.

Here are five unique facts about Birmingham:

• Birmingham was the first city in the country to celebrate Veterans Day, and hosts the country's oldest Veterans Day parade.
• Birmingham's iconic statue, Vulcan (built in 1904 by Giuseppe Moretti) is the largest cast iron statue in the world, and the second largest statue in the U.S. next to the Statue of Liberty.
• The multi-colored dance floor at The Club in Birmingham was director John Badham’s inspiration for the flashy set-up in "Saturday Night Fever."
• Rickwood Field, which opened in 1910, is the nation's oldest ballpark still in use. Baseball greats such as Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lorenzo “Piper” Davis, Willie Mays, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Rollie Fingers and Reggie Jackson all played at Rickwood.
• Alabama native Hank Williams spent the last night of his life at Birmingham’s Redmont Hotel before leaving for a New Year’s Day performance January 1, 1953, in Canton, Ohio. Somewhere along the way, Williams’s friend and driver found him dead in the back of the famous blue Cadillac.

Birmingham is by no means a perfect place to live. But luckily, it is not where it used to be. And it is closer to what it CAN be than it ever was. Happy 150th birthday, Birmingham!