After gunmen unleashed gunfire in the nightlife district of Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday, killing four people and injuring 17 others, Mayor Randall Woodfin evoked the 1960s and another era of violence.
“I tell people, when America gets a cold, it’s possible that Birmingham gets the flu,” he said at a Sunday morning press conference. “We’ve seen this in the ‘60s during segregation. At the height of it, unfortunately, we were the poster child. We find ourselves in 2024, where gun violence is at an epidemic level, and the city of Birmingham finds itself at the tip of that spear.”
About 150 miles separates Atlanta and Birmingham, but the similarities go beyond mere proximity. Both cities were backdrops for era-defining setbacks and victories and, of course, intense violence.
Birmingham set the stage for Atlanta-born Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for desegregation. In the 1960s, he frequently visited a city with the ignominious nickname “Bombingham” because of terror attacks on Black people trying to move into segregated white neighborhoods.