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The story of Richard Arrington Jr., the first African American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama

During the 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama was the central battleground in the struggle for human rights in the American South. As one of the most segregated cities in the United States, the city of Birmingham became infamous for its suppression of civil rights and for official and vigilante violence against its African American citizens, most notoriously the use of explosives in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing and the bombing of the home of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
 
In October of 1979, Birmingham elected its first Black mayor, Richard Arrington Jr. He was born in the rural town of Livingston, Alabama. His family moved to Birmingham when he was a child. A man of quiet demeanor, he was nevertheless destined to bring to fruition many of the fundamental changes that the Civil Rights Movement had demanded. This is his story. Not a conventional political or Civil Rights history, Back to Birmingham is the story of a man who demonstrated faith in his region and people. The work illuminates Arrington's sense of place, a quality that enables a person to claim sentimentally a portion of the natural and human environment. Franklin passionately underscores the importance of the attachment of Southern Blacks to their land and place. 
 
Back to Birmingham will appeal to both the general reader and the serious student of American society. The book endeavors to bridge the gap between popular and scholarly history. It is guided by the assumption that Americans of whatever description can find satisfaction in comprehending social change and that they are buoyed by the individual triumph of those who beat the odds.
 

On a sultry September morning in 1955, a young African American man, the son of share croppers, boarded a Greyhound bus in Birmingham, Alabama, to leave his home state for the first time in his life. He was headed for the University of Detroit on a teaching scholarship from MilesCollege. Richard Arrington could not have guessed then that his future as a teacher would be postponed for decades by big-city politics--and that he would serve a record-setting five terms as chief executive of Alabama’s largest city.

Under Arrington’s leadership, Birmingham rebuilt itself from a foundering, steel-driven industrial center to one of the most diversified metropolitan areas in the Southeast, with an economy fueled by health care, biomedical research, engineering, telecommunications, and banking. As mayor, Arrington’s economic legacy is impressive. When he left office, Birmingham boasted a record number of jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in its history. Additionally, Birmingham had built the strongest tax base in Alabama, expanded its city limits by 60 square miles, reduced crime to its lowest level in 25 years, and funded a $260 million school construction program. Today Birmingham is financially sound and is the only city in the Southeast with a $100 million endowment fund.