new face of the South,” says Brett Oates, the mayor’s director of public information. Birmingham’s downtown area has several housing developments in the works designed to help attract people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. “We found that people were getting tired of the [long] commute back home to the suburbs of the city. … The property [downtown] is valuable. African Americans who fled the city are rediscovering [it] as a place to live,” he adds.
Besides an African American mayor, Bernard Kincaid, and a predominately African American city council, an African American woman, Annetta W. Nunn, serves as chief of police of the largest police department in the state of Alabama. Nonetheless, respondents were less than satisfied with the performance of local elected officials and the power and influence the black community wields. Of the top 10, Birmingham had the fourth lowest violent crime rate, mirroring residents’ general satisfaction with public safety.
Birmingham graduates 14.6% of African Americans from four-year colleges. The city’s black high school graduation rate is 74.2%. Respondents were pleased with healthcare. Birmingham has the third lowest medical cost index.
A negative: The black unemployment rate is above the national average. Birmingham also has the least number of black residents per black-owned business among the top 10, as reflected by respondents’ lack of confidence in entrepreneurial pursuits. —A.C.
Main Industries
Medical research, banking, music, technology, engineering, and higher education
Landmarks
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (site of infamous bombing of four little girls), George Washington Carver Interpretive Museum, Booker T. Washington Home
Annual Events
Heritage Festival
Top Black Officials
Bernard Kincaid, mayor; Annetta W. Nunn, police chief; Lee Wendell Loder, president, city council; Artur Davis, U.S. Rep.; Carole C. Smitherman, president, pro tem, city council
Websites
www.informationbirmingham.com
Angela K. Lewis returned last May to her hometown of Birmingham. After completing her graduate work at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, the 31-year-old Ph.D. said that she needed to come back and live in a place where there was a large, progressive black community—73.6% of the total population to be exact.
Lewis works as an assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, teaching undergraduate courses in environmental racism, black politics, and American government. The university is literally just down the hill from where she went to high school.
Even though the city still evokes haunting memories as one of the explosive epicenters of the civil rights movement (“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here,” wrote Dr. King in his famous letter from a Birmingham jail), Lewis believes education will help newcomers understand the city’s past and future potential.
If Lewis has a bone to pick with the city, it’s not with the cost of living or the nightlife. “We do have active church ministries, jazz clubs, salsa classes, and theater. … I’ve met eligible men [here],” she says. However, as a young, single woman anticipating marriage and children in the future, Lewis hesitates at the thought of sending her kids to Birmingham’s public schools. “I am a product of [that] school system. I turned out OK, [so] I know