What was an urban sophisticate like me doing in a place like Birmingham? Well, if you must pry (I must, I must), it was all because of Mensa, an organization I joined in my more innocent youth and which has provided me with the occasional diversion. Each year around the Fourth of July some lucky local chapter gets to put on a nationwide gettogether known as the Annual Gathering (presumably because it happens once a year and people all gather in the same place for it; see, I do belong!)
Anyway, the 1997 AG took place in Birmingham. And a combination of soon to expire frequent flyer miles, an opportunity to capture some pictures for my web site and no other plans convinced me to go. And in among the many intellectual pursuits for which such events are famous, I managed to spend a little time capturing the city for posterity.
From a distance, Birmingham looks like many other cities of its age
and size. The skyline shows a nice combination of modern skyscrapers
and older buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. There's a lot of brick, which makes a nice change from
earthquake-prone California. It's as you wander around on a sunny
Saturday that you realize that something is wrong. All those beautiful
new buildings empty out for the weekend. And the older buildings
emptied out a long time ago. On this particular Saturday, downtown
looks like a movie set that's waiting for the cameras to show up. No
cars, not many people, no reason anybody would want to be there.
Birmingham's history really began with the end of the Civil
War. Before the war the area had a few small communities, large
cotton fields and some elegant homes for the idle class. The one on
the left was a summer house, saved from Sherman's torches by some
horse trading on the part of the quick thinking civic leaders.
Everything changed when an enterprising gentleman named Sloss decided
to take advantage of the arrival of two railroad lines and abundant local
supplies of iron ore, limestone and coal. Within a short while he had
turned a sleepy agricultural area into a major center for the
manufacture of steel.
At one point there were around a thousand steelmaking furnaces around
the new city. Birmingham became known as the Pittsburgh of the South
and the Magic City because of the speed with which it grew. It was
also known as the entrance to Hell, with perpetual smog and the gentle
smell of sulphur wafting on the breeze.
The Sloss plant shut down in 1971 and is now a tourist attraction, a
sort of monument to the city's roots. It's a horrible place, a
reminder of long hours, backbreaking work, unbearable heat and noise
and danger to life and limb with every step. These days the major
industry in town is medicine, with a particular emphasis on sports
medicine. The air is certainly better for the change.
I get the feeling that Birmingham (and Alabama as a whole) was always
a carefully segregated place, from its antebellum days and continuing
unabated through its growth as an industrial center. So it isn't too
surprising that it was here that the Civil Rights movement had its
greatest challenges. The struggle to win equal rights for black
Americans is recorded and told at the
Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute. It's a solemn place marking an important part
of our recent past and, as it would hasten to point out, our present.
The Institute's location is part of its history, sitting across the
street from one of the churches bombed by racists during a time when
newspapers called the city Bombingham.
It's interesting what a town's locals think of as the most interesting
landmarks. The Sloss Furnace, the Civil Rights Institute, an
antebellum mansion, the botanical
gardens. And this guy, the iron statue of Vulcan
that sits atop Red Mountain to the south of the city and honors (if
that's the right word) Birmingham's industrial history. Vulcan, as
the guidebooks point out, is the largest iron figure ever cast and
second in size only to the Statue of Liberty in the category of metal
sculptures. Which description leads to expect something a bit more
impressive than this chubby fifty-five foot tall fellow. I have to
give him credit for inspiring those cool Moon Over Birmingham
t-shirts. Although it seems only right to point out that he's
not really mooning the city; he's pointing the wrong way for that.
On our tour we passed the castle on the right a couple of times.
During a long walk around the city I finally found out what it is: an
apartment building! Nice to know that someone around here has a sense
of humor.
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