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Episodes tagged "Birmingham, Alabama": 1 through 10 of 11

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  1. The Convict Lease System in Alabama
    date 1909 to 1928map Jefferson, Alabamatags Birmingham, Alabama, convict lease

    https://acrobat.com/#d=ZZMWZ19C-VOVGrdmiX2CFA The picture above shows a group of men tearing up a Birmingham city street in 1909.  At first glance this picture might seem innocent enough.  These men could very well be day laborers just trying to make enough money to get by.  However, they are, in fact, prisoners who had been leased to a private company which Birmingham was paying to do road work. ...

  2. Black Worker Finds Dignity at Sloss Furnaces
    date January, 1925 to 1940map Jefferson, Alabamatags Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama

               On a cold January evening in 1925, the Sloss Furnaces graveyard shift clocked in at seven. From ground level of the plant, one could see brilliant light almost as bright as the sun flowing from the ladles into the troughs as men worked frantically to obtain their quotas of pig iron. In an 1984 interview, Alonzo Gaines revealed life as a black worker at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham,...

  3. Understanding A Letter From Birmingham Jail
    date April 16, 1963map Jefferson, Alabamatags letter, Birmingham, Alabama

    After being arrested in downtown Birmingham on a Good Friday, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous letter, “A Letter From Birmingham Jail” responding to the criticism demonstrated by eight prominent white clergy man. This letter has been found important through out history because it expresses King’s feelings toward the unjust events and it is an example of a well-written argument....

  4. James Nelson Makes Plea to the City
    date 1955 to 1980map Jefferson, Alabamatags Urbanization, Birmingham, Alabama, Theatre

    He called it a "rape of history." Birmingham News art critic James Nelson made this charge as part of his plea to the citizens of Birmingham to save the historic Fox building. The Fox once housed one of the city’s many theatres; however, that was not the reason Nelson wanted to save it. The building was an architectural marvel and a structure he believed was Birmingham’s equivalent to Chicago’s...

  5. EPA enacts clean air act, aggravating public
    date November, 1970 to December, 1971map Jefferson, Alabamatags Environmental History, Iron and Steel Industry, Birmingham, Alabama

    “I’ve lived with pollution 50-something years.  I guess I can put up with it” quipped Eugene Campbell on the day the Environmental Protection Agency ordered the shutdown of Birmingham, Alabama’s steel plants. The plants were shut following a court order under the aegis of the 1970 Clean Air Act which set safe levels for particulates in the atmosphere, levels that Birmingham had routinely exceeded....

  6. Birmingham's Air Pollution Crisis and Federal Intervention
    date November 18, 1971 to November 20, 1971map Jefferson, Alabamatags Clean Air Act, Air Pollution, NEPA, EPA, Environmentalism, Birmingham, Alabama

    Birmingham’s pollution trouble had long been a recurring theme. For years, many had simply lived with the pollution as an everyday part of life. However, in 1971 the County Health Department issued pollution alerts on two separate occasions with daily particulate counts well above national averages. These measurements collected over separate areas of the city could not be ignored any further as a...

  7. Sexist Laws: Are Prostituion Laws Sexist?
    date August 30, 1974map Jefferson, Alabamatags Seventies, Birmingham, Alabama, Women, prostitution laws

    In 1974, the city of Birmingham, Alabama prostitution ordinance survived the first challenge in court. A federal judge denied a request from a Foxy Entertainment employee who called the ordinance unconstitutional. A woman, Lynn Floyd, is appealing her prostitution conviction. Floyd’s suit says that the ordinance is unconstitutional because it seems to only apply to women. Linda LeMoncheck found in...

  8. Making Money
    date June 24, 1975map Jefferson, Alabamatags Seventies, Birmingham, Alabama, Prostitution

    Prostitution in Birmingham, Alabama and the surrounding areas was bad in the seventies. It was so bad that in June of 1975 the city of Homewood passed a new ordinance that reduced the number of hours prostitutes were allowed to be on the street. The week before the ordinance was passed, three prostitutes were arrested for working out of a motel. Mayor Bob Waldrop said that Homewood was working to deal...

  9. Committing a Crime
    date March 16, 1977map Jefferson, Alabamatags Prostitution, Birmingham, Alabama, Seventies

    In 1977, a Jefferson county, Alabama man learned the price of being with a prostitute. According to police records, a man paid a prostitute twenty dollars and took the woman to a friend’s house. The next morning, the man woke up and discovered that the prostitute took all of his belongs, including his car, a suitcase full of clothes, his wallet, money, and the pants he was wearing. Learning that...

  10. The Birmingham District Rises in the Late 19th Century
    date December, 1989 to 1989map Jefferson, Alabamatags Birmingham, Alabama, Steel and Iron Industry

        According to an 1889 article found in the Chautauquan, a popular weekly news magazine, Birmingham, Alabama was the future of the iron and steel industry in America. Seated in Jefferson County, which is located in central Alabama, Birmingham was named after the industrious steel city of Birmingham, England. Also known as the “Magic City” and “Pittsburgh of the South”, Birmingham had earned...

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