07-15-2015, 07:46 AM
07-15-2015, 10:43 AM
The tone/attitude is very similar to what Atlanta was selling 50 years ago.
07-15-2015, 02:32 PM
Birmingham, Alabama is a work in progress. Until the mid1960s its City Commission government was dominated by such forces as the KKK and the White Citizens Councils of Alabama who carried out the bombings, beatings and murders that made the city a target of Civil Rights activities and a code word for racism. When the federal Rights Laws of the 60s made many of the population uncomfortable, many moved out to areas where their prejudices could be maintained with greater comfort.
Only since the 70s have the "minority" workers been able to rise in jobs in national and state companies that were closed to them for over a century. The city was virtually dumped into the hands of people who a few years before were not even allowed to vote, much less hold public offices. Just like with the early American government, the first decades were not always smooth as leaders were forced to learn "on the job" to run schools, public services and governmental practices.
The racial problems of the city are only a complication, a "detail in the painting", of the whole picture / history of the city and its county. B'ham has drawn the enmity of many powerful persons in Alabama long before the Civil Rights era and since. For almost 70 years since 1901, the state legislature violated the Constitutional requirement that it reapportion itself according to the current census. During those years Jeffco and the city had only one of 35 State senators and seven of 104 state Representatives. This discriminatory behavior had almost nothing to do with racial policies - just hatred for B'ham and its home county.
This pattern of state hostility (carried over into some of the funding problems that UAB has had as well) hobbled the growth of the city which in my youth was the same size as Atlanta (both about 350,000). Such backward state management has resulted in a stagnant state growth so it lost TWO House seats in Congress since the 1940s, and it may cost at least one more in 2020.
Only since the 70s have the "minority" workers been able to rise in jobs in national and state companies that were closed to them for over a century. The city was virtually dumped into the hands of people who a few years before were not even allowed to vote, much less hold public offices. Just like with the early American government, the first decades were not always smooth as leaders were forced to learn "on the job" to run schools, public services and governmental practices.
The racial problems of the city are only a complication, a "detail in the painting", of the whole picture / history of the city and its county. B'ham has drawn the enmity of many powerful persons in Alabama long before the Civil Rights era and since. For almost 70 years since 1901, the state legislature violated the Constitutional requirement that it reapportion itself according to the current census. During those years Jeffco and the city had only one of 35 State senators and seven of 104 state Representatives. This discriminatory behavior had almost nothing to do with racial policies - just hatred for B'ham and its home county.
This pattern of state hostility (carried over into some of the funding problems that UAB has had as well) hobbled the growth of the city which in my youth was the same size as Atlanta (both about 350,000). Such backward state management has resulted in a stagnant state growth so it lost TWO House seats in Congress since the 1940s, and it may cost at least one more in 2020.
07-15-2015, 04:55 PM
Nice piece.
07-16-2015, 07:56 AM
They should have included stadium certificates.