Birmingham

Birmingham, city, north central Alabama, United States, at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. It is the largest city in Alabama and a regional hub of transport, commerce, and culture. Also a port, the city is linked by barge canal and the Black Warrior River to the Gulf of Mexico, and has a diversified industrial base. Products manufactured here include railway and aircraft equipment, chemicals, textiles, vehicle components, plastics, and cement. Port facilities on the nearby Black Warrior River link the city to the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway and to the Gulf of Mexico, and the city is served by an airport.

Places of interest include a botanical garden, a Japanese garden, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Southern Museum of Flight, and a 17-metre (55-foot) iron statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, perched on the summit of Red Mountain. Among the city’s many educational institutions are the University of Alabama in Birmingham (1969)—the city's largest employer—as well as Samford University, Birmingham-Southern College, Miles College, and Southeastern Bible College.

The site was first settled by Europeans in 1813 as the town of Elyton. The area's rich iron-ore deposits were used during the American Civil War, when the Confederates built a blast furnace. In 1870 the modern city was founded and named (after Birmingham in England) by a land company at the intersection of two newly constructed railtracks. From 1899, when steel was first manufactured, the city grew rapidly as an industrial centre and became known as the Pittsburgh of the South. With the decline of the steel industry in the 1970s, city leaders implemented a plan to diversify the city’s economy.

In the 1960s, as one of the South's most segregated cities, it was an important focus of civil-rights activities. In early 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders organized large demonstrations at lunch counters (cafés) and other sites to protest against racial discrimination. When city police attacked the peaceful demonstrators with police dogs and fire hoses, media coverage triggered a national outcry. Here King wrote his famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”, which set forth his theory of non-violent direct action. Richard Arlington, Birmingham's first black mayor, was elected in 1979. Population 229,424 (2006).