Yung Birmingham: The Genesis (Part 1)

The Ultimate Chronicle of Birmingham’s Young Professional Evolution

Post #10 of #20: I am celebrating 20 years in Birmingham with #20For20 — a series of reflections, insights and homages to my journey. Visit www.medium.com/HonestlyEd to read the full #20For20 series.

Four-Part Series

Yung Birmingham: The Ultimate Chronicle of Birmingham’s Young Professional Evolution

Part I: The Genesis (read below) Part II: The Pivot Part III: The Avalanche Part IV: The Legacy

Energy is neither created or destroyed. — Julius Robert Mayer

We all inherit something from the generation that precedes us. We don’t get to choose what we get. That’s up to the odds and the gods. Our inheritance is derivative of the decisions of our foreparents. In the end, all of their victories and vicissitudes inure to us.

That energy must go somewhere, even if it seemingly dissipates into thin air. Even then, the quality of the air we breath is the legacy.

This series, Yung Birmingham, is about that energy and that legacy.

The Genesis

Birmingham’s Baby Boomers were born into a city with a population approaching 275,000 (headed toward 340,000), it was 60% white, the nation’s exemplar of segregation, and Alabama’s largest economic driving force — UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) did not even exist. The post-World World II economy was good for Birmingham’s business titans. As they thrived, Birmingham’s skies darkened with industrial soot. The air quality was not good.

The Birmingham that Baby Boomers inherited in their youth was decidely different than the Birmingham they would eventually yield to us.

Young people were reshaping Birmingham’s identity following the tumult of the 1960s. Many of the courageous individuals that helped usher in an era of peace and policy reform were settling into their positions, building relationships and finding their collective vision. This includes the 45-year-old Dr. Richard Arrington who was elected Mayor of Birmingham in 1979. We often consider his election singularly significant because he was the first Black person elected Mayor in a city with a deep and recent legacy of injustice toward Black people. This is true. However, Arrington’s election was also a shift in generational leadership as he took the mantle of leadership from David Vann who was 11 years his elder.

Arrington’s election also represented a significant generational shift in leadership in Birmingham.

An 11 year age difference doesn’t seem like much, but consider the drama of 1960s in Alabama and America. Assassinations, riots, war, rock and roll, color television, dogs and water hoses; a bonafide cultural revolution. As bad as 2020 was for our generation, I shudder to imagine life in the 1960s. Indeed, the 11 year age difference between Arrington and Vann were more like dog years, so to speak.

And, while young people of the 1970s were introducing new technologies and Hip-Hop to the nation, the energy and industrial revolution taking place in other parts of the world were having a dramatic impact on Birmingham’s core industrial sectors. The city’s new leadership had to innovate and find ways to keep the city financially and physically healthy as markets and the regulatory environment evolved. The big mules were weakening and the skies were clearing in more ways than one.

By the mid-1980s a massive civic awakening was underway as the Baby Boomer generation of young professionals were taking on leadership roles in every substantial sector of the City.

They were creating new organizations — Leadership Birmingham, Birmingham Venture Club, Project Corporate Leadership, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, among many others that I eventually found myself engaging in one way or another. All of these entitites were initiated or created between 1984 and 1989, as if the legacy of their entire generation depended on their ability to build new organizations within this specific time frame.

It wasn’t easy for them. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute was voted down by Birmingham voters twice before it was eventually pushed through with a bond referendum by Mayor Arrington for a third and final attempt.

Young leaders should take note — sometimes the efforts and initiatives you believe are right and must be done may be rejected by the same people you seek to help.

The 1980s and 1990s saw my generation, Generation X, whose social awakening was rising even as the Berlin Wall was coming down, coming into the workplace en masse. Our values were shifting as the American divorce rate rose as consistently as the rate of white flight in Birmingham — nearly than 20,000 people fled Birmingham within ten years of the day Arrington was elected Mayor.

1980 Birmingham Census: 284,413 1990 Birmingham Census: 265,968 Source: U.S. Census Bureau

The Birmingham my generation inherited from the Baby Boomers was a Birmingham in decline — public schools, neighborhoods, corporate headquarters and community ego.

I have read much of Birmingham’s history, but that history rarely includes the narrative of our generation and our voices and our time (post 2000).

That is why I am writing this series. To honor those that have done the work, to center our perspective and to make clearer the path from which the next generation will build. Please, read the posts that follow and share them.

READ Yung Birmingham Part II: The Pivot

I am celebrating 20 years in Birmingham with #20For20 — a series of reflections, insights and homages to my journey. Follow me on Medium, LinkedIn and Twitter to be notified of new posts.