"The Goodbye Girl"
THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
So forget your past, my goodbye girl, ‘cause now you’re home at last.
David Gates, The Goodbye Girl
The term “redlining” was coined by sociologist John McKnight, and referred to the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate areas where banks would purposefully not invest. By switching the focal point from person to place, discrimination was effectively shielded. Redlining allowed lenders to manipulate future growth and blight patterns simply by restricting or releasing funding. Several US cities with sizable minority populations were adversely impacted by urban disinvestment tactics in general, and by redlining in particular, which drove decline.
1963 Birmingham, for instance, had a population of 341,000 and was 40% African American. By 1978, that number had been reduced to 300,000, with African Americans constituting 45% of eligible voters. That shift was part of what made the election of the first African American mayor, 15 years after Martin’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, possible. But something wasn’t quite adding up. Birmingham was surrounded on all sides by the larger Jefferson County. And while the in-city population dwindled, Jefferson County, as a whole, not only held on to its population of 635,000, it actually grew by over 50,000 residents by 1980.
New, socially white townships just outside Birmingham proper, but still within county limits, sprang up; ringing the city with prosperity. In these townships, electoral control had been restored. The resulting loss of tax dollars led to eroding infrastructure, as national companies who, in the past, would have set up headquarters within Birmingham were drawn to these smaller locales, real estate deals, and other incentives; thereby creating jobs there instead of within the city.
Similarly, local businesses left downtown in droves, heading for the newly built malls and shopping centers. Banks approved housing loans at low interest rates, and separately funded, de facto segregated school systems were established to serve the townships’ kids.
But even into the 1970s, downtown Birmingham was teeming with life. The core had four sizable movie theaters within blocks of each other - the historic and grand Alabama Theatre (which catered primarily to the area’s Euro American population), the equally historic Carver (the only place in Birmingham, during segregation, where African Americans could see first-run films), as well as two others that carried a wide range of movies. My uncles/brothers Don, Ron, Robert and Willie James would often walk to the Carver to see films on Saturday evenings.
I remember, around that time, really wanting to see the film, The Goodbye Girl. No one in my southern, working-class, African American family had the slightest idea why. Granted, it’s not the kind of movie that normally interests a nine-year-old boy (nor was it the first time I’d taken an interest no one else could relate to, but thankfully, my grandmother’s belief that family means unconditional love meant that my weirdness never raised eyebrows). Still, something about the film called to me. Perhaps it was the allure of this massive city that felt like a village, or the fact that, by then, I was already a huge fan of David Gates, who’d written the theme song.
At any rate, no one else was interested, so I opted to go on my own. The theater was only a mile away, and I remember walking up to the ticket booth, this already short for his age, brown kid, and announcing I wanted to buy a ticket to The Goodbye Girl. The person behind the counter, a blond, clean-cut, college-aged boy, looked at me for a moment, trying to make sense of this picture. “By yourself?” he finally asked, and I nodded. He shrugged, sold me a ticket and in I went. The entire experience, from the grand pillars to the pipe organ complete with accompanist, was amazing.
I found a seat directly in the center, a few rows in front of a friendly young Anglo couple who gave me a wave, the only other people in the theater and settled in. And The Goodbye Girl? I loved it as much as I thought I would, and is probably where my love affair with NY began. I’d gone to a matinee, so when I walked out, downtown was bustling with people shopping, transferring busses and heading home after work.
At the time, upscale department stores still lined downtown’s streets. Regional businesses still had their headquarters there, and the same lunch counters, including places like Kress, Loveman’s, Pizitz and Woolworth’s that previously wouldn’t serve coloreds, were now serving everyone. Sidewalks were crowded and I don’t remember seeing an empty storefront. Ten years later, downtown had been gutted, vacant buildings everywhere. The city’s once-thriving commercial core was little more than a ghost town, and its besieged population in economic freefall.
This process of destitution was, by no means, confined to Birmingham. The same thing happened in places like Detroit (which, in 2013, filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of our nation), Chicago, Harlem, and Oakland, as well as Miami, where forty years ago, the Latinx population gained majority status. I remember visiting Miami in the mid-eighties for a Christian conference and being dismayed by the number of residents with both Jesus fish bumper stickers and ones that said, “Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag?”
Today, despite all that’s happened, Birmingham is in the midst of its own rebirth; the same kind of authoring of its own transformation that we touched on with respect to societies back in Chapter 1. Though residency, at 200,000, is about two-thirds of what it was at its peak, and despite an Anglo population that’s shrank to around 20%, there are ample signs of thriving.
Downtown itself has been transformed into an intentional 24-hour mixed use district, with new venues that blend Birmingham’s own brand of southern hospitality with a commitment to radical inclusion. Both the Carver and the Alabama Theaters have been restored, with the former, now part of the city’s burgeoning Civil Rights district, and the latter, hosting everything from Broadway shows to concerts, with Big Bertha, the historic organ, captivating audiences once again. And in 2006, Birmingham’s Visitors Bureau adopted a new tag line – The City of Diversity.
Birmingham shows all of America what’s possible; that, like the characters in The Goodbye Girl, our collective past doesn’t need to define us. That it’s not too late for us to become a place where everyone feels “home at last”. And that by doing so, we save more than our nation – we save ourselves.
David Gates, The Goodbye Girl
The term “redlining” was coined by sociologist John McKnight, and referred to the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate areas where banks would purposefully not invest. By switching the focal point from person to place, discrimination was effectively shielded. Redlining allowed lenders to manipulate future growth and blight patterns simply by restricting or releasing funding. Several US cities with sizable minority populations were adversely impacted by urban disinvestment tactics in general, and by redlining in particular, which drove decline.
1963 Birmingham, for instance, had a population of 341,000 and was 40% African American. By 1978, that number had been reduced to 300,000, with African Americans constituting 45% of eligible voters. That shift was part of what made the election of the first African American mayor, 15 years after Martin’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, possible. But something wasn’t quite adding up. Birmingham was surrounded on all sides by the larger Jefferson County. And while the in-city population dwindled, Jefferson County, as a whole, not only held on to its population of 635,000, it actually grew by over 50,000 residents by 1980.
New, socially white townships just outside Birmingham proper, but still within county limits, sprang up; ringing the city with prosperity. In these townships, electoral control had been restored. The resulting loss of tax dollars led to eroding infrastructure, as national companies who, in the past, would have set up headquarters within Birmingham were drawn to these smaller locales, real estate deals, and other incentives; thereby creating jobs there instead of within the city.
Similarly, local businesses left downtown in droves, heading for the newly built malls and shopping centers. Banks approved housing loans at low interest rates, and separately funded, de facto segregated school systems were established to serve the townships’ kids.
But even into the 1970s, downtown Birmingham was teeming with life. The core had four sizable movie theaters within blocks of each other - the historic and grand Alabama Theatre (which catered primarily to the area’s Euro American population), the equally historic Carver (the only place in Birmingham, during segregation, where African Americans could see first-run films), as well as two others that carried a wide range of movies. My uncles/brothers Don, Ron, Robert and Willie James would often walk to the Carver to see films on Saturday evenings.
I remember, around that time, really wanting to see the film, The Goodbye Girl. No one in my southern, working-class, African American family had the slightest idea why. Granted, it’s not the kind of movie that normally interests a nine-year-old boy (nor was it the first time I’d taken an interest no one else could relate to, but thankfully, my grandmother’s belief that family means unconditional love meant that my weirdness never raised eyebrows). Still, something about the film called to me. Perhaps it was the allure of this massive city that felt like a village, or the fact that, by then, I was already a huge fan of David Gates, who’d written the theme song.
At any rate, no one else was interested, so I opted to go on my own. The theater was only a mile away, and I remember walking up to the ticket booth, this already short for his age, brown kid, and announcing I wanted to buy a ticket to The Goodbye Girl. The person behind the counter, a blond, clean-cut, college-aged boy, looked at me for a moment, trying to make sense of this picture. “By yourself?” he finally asked, and I nodded. He shrugged, sold me a ticket and in I went. The entire experience, from the grand pillars to the pipe organ complete with accompanist, was amazing.
I found a seat directly in the center, a few rows in front of a friendly young Anglo couple who gave me a wave, the only other people in the theater and settled in. And The Goodbye Girl? I loved it as much as I thought I would, and is probably where my love affair with NY began. I’d gone to a matinee, so when I walked out, downtown was bustling with people shopping, transferring busses and heading home after work.
At the time, upscale department stores still lined downtown’s streets. Regional businesses still had their headquarters there, and the same lunch counters, including places like Kress, Loveman’s, Pizitz and Woolworth’s that previously wouldn’t serve coloreds, were now serving everyone. Sidewalks were crowded and I don’t remember seeing an empty storefront. Ten years later, downtown had been gutted, vacant buildings everywhere. The city’s once-thriving commercial core was little more than a ghost town, and its besieged population in economic freefall.
This process of destitution was, by no means, confined to Birmingham. The same thing happened in places like Detroit (which, in 2013, filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of our nation), Chicago, Harlem, and Oakland, as well as Miami, where forty years ago, the Latinx population gained majority status. I remember visiting Miami in the mid-eighties for a Christian conference and being dismayed by the number of residents with both Jesus fish bumper stickers and ones that said, “Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag?”
Today, despite all that’s happened, Birmingham is in the midst of its own rebirth; the same kind of authoring of its own transformation that we touched on with respect to societies back in Chapter 1. Though residency, at 200,000, is about two-thirds of what it was at its peak, and despite an Anglo population that’s shrank to around 20%, there are ample signs of thriving.
Downtown itself has been transformed into an intentional 24-hour mixed use district, with new venues that blend Birmingham’s own brand of southern hospitality with a commitment to radical inclusion. Both the Carver and the Alabama Theaters have been restored, with the former, now part of the city’s burgeoning Civil Rights district, and the latter, hosting everything from Broadway shows to concerts, with Big Bertha, the historic organ, captivating audiences once again. And in 2006, Birmingham’s Visitors Bureau adopted a new tag line – The City of Diversity.
Birmingham shows all of America what’s possible; that, like the characters in The Goodbye Girl, our collective past doesn’t need to define us. That it’s not too late for us to become a place where everyone feels “home at last”. And that by doing so, we save more than our nation – we save ourselves.
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