The "Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920–1980

Center Books

by Charles E. Connerly

"Birmingham is well known for its civil rights history, particularly for the violent white-on-black bombings that occurred there in the 1960s, resulting in the city's nickname "Bombingham." What is less well known about Birmingham's racial history, however, is the extent to which early city planning decisions influenced and prompted the city's civil rights protests. The first book-length work to analyze this connection, "The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 uncovers the impact of Birmingham's urban planning decisions on its black communities and reveals how these decisions led directly to the civil rights movement." Connerly effectively uses Birmingham's history as an example to argue the importance of recognizing the link that exists between city planning and civil rights. His demonstration of how Birmingham's race-based planning legacy led to the confrontations that culminated in the city's struggle for civil rights provides a fresh lens on the history and future of urban planning, and its relation to race.

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2005

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The primary purpose of this book seems to be to show that in Birmingham, as in many other places, land use and transportation policy was racist: zoning excluded blacks from certain neighborhoods, urban renewal projects usually destroyed black neighborhoods, etc. But these things happened in cities that are arguably less racist than Birmingham, so little in this book is surprising. Moreover, in some ways these policies had little long-run impact; Connerly admits that "neighborhood racial change has negated the racial segregation played by these boundaries"- in other words, that neighborhoods once reserved for whites are now mostly black.

To me, the most interesting thing about Birmingham is that while other southern cities grew in the late 20th century, Birmingham shrank. Connerly fingers a few possible suspects: 1) the city was founded because of its proximity to natural resources, and continued to be dependent on heavy industry; 2) its industrial leadership discouraged other businesses from relocating to Birmingham in order to limit competition for labor; and 3) its suburbs rejected annexation in order to avoid school integration.