Birmingham Audio Tours

Birmingham was incorporated on June 1, 1871, built from scratch on a patch of Alabama land where iron ore, coal, and limestone happened to exist in the same valley. It grew so fast and with such industrial force that people called it the Magic City. By the early 20th century it had earned the nickname Pittsburgh of the South, and the Vulcan statue, the largest cast-iron figure in the world, was erected on Red Mountain in 1938, looking down over the valley where it all happened.

In the spring of 1963, Birmingham became the centre of the American civil rights movement in a way its business establishment had not anticipated.

Project C, coordinated by Fred Shuttlesworth, sent over 3,000 protesters including hundreds of high school students into the streets, filling the jails until the system buckled. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on September 15, 1963, killed four Black girls during Sunday school. That address, at the corner of 16th Street and 6th Avenue North, is now a National Historic Landmark, and its presence reshapes everything around it.