We still have segregated churches, and we still have segregated
neighborhoods. Most of the whites that are have money are on south side
Birmingham. At one time that was going really down fast and then it was
a renewal of getting these hundred year old houses. Well, Birmingham is
a relatively young city compared to what I'm used to in Kentucky. But a
house that I at one time could've bought for like 17,500, it had like
four or five bedrooms. I probably just as well I didn't know it was for
sale because I could have never kept it up. One of these big barns. But
now it's probably worth three or four hundred thousand or more. But I
think, as the blacks become more influential, they're going, they're
moving out into these other areas. At one time you wouldn't find any
person of African American descent in Vestavia, which is probably at one
time was the up and coming white area and they, there's now regularly we
have families—. When I phone, use the phone or black families I realize
it's Vestavia. Mountain Brook at one time would not allow anyone in
there that was Catholic or Italian and certainly not blacks. It was one
of and now it has a few wealthy—. That's the old wealth of Birmingham.
Homewood where I live, I was, it always, when they integrated, they
integrated something called Hollywood and Edgewood and there was another
wood
Page 42somewhere, and they all argued about what name
they should take. So they finally ended on Homewood. At the time they
formed this city, they took in a black section of Homewood called
Rosedale and so, Homewood, the city of Homewood has always been
integrated from its earliest days in that sense, but that neighborhood
is traditionally black. But now I'm beginning to see kids walking to
school. Homewood is great because it actually has sidewalk. Kids can
walk to school, and they can walk home and they—. So I'm beginning to
see some black kids that are not in my immediate neighborhood but
obviously close enough around the corner or somewhere. Across the street
I see black kids playing with, there's a family of them that has two
kids, and they moved from a very wealthy district to Homewood because
they wanted to have a middle class background. So I see those kids
playing together, and the problem with Homewood though, this little
house that I bought for 17,500 is now taxed at 200,200, $220,000, and I
haven't anything to it except keep it up. I did add a room and a second
bath. Very few starter families can afford that kind of housing when
you're starting out. I don't like that because I don't want it to be, I
tell my neighbors across the street who are psychiatrists, I said I hope
they never find out my salary or the neighbors will petition to get me
out of here. Teaching in a school like that. Rosedale, the thing I don't
like about Rosedale, and I sort of course belong the association that
serves as a watch dog for these council is the community of Rosedale has
been divided by two highways. One of them going through Homewood and
across the 280 also. So as a result they're fractured into three or four
areas, and they don't have as much of a community. Now it's all
integrated. They used to have their own swimming pool, and now they
don't. They just integrated. They still have a community center that,
Page 43but all the activities at the two centers are
integrated. But it has gone down, and it's not just because, it's not
totally planned that way. It's just a very wealthy man owned a lot of
property, a black man owned, and he was in his eighties. He owns about
nineteen houses, and he didn't fix them up. He let the relatives live in
them. Well, now the houses are owned by people who don't live in the
state. This is high commercial property because these streets have, as I
said, blocked it off and they want, they're not fixing the houses up.
The people who still live in Rosedale want the neighborhood not to go
commercial, but when you get, half a million dollars for this property
and it's just a house on it. So they're encroaching a little bit into
the community, and this association is trying to save it by making a
historical thing and keeping all these big companies out that want to
buy out this property and be on this, it's an entrance to a highway
rather than a highway. So right now it's a fight because they, it
probably is older than the Edgewood and these other cities, but we feel
like that we should make these homeowners, we're trying to keep them
from selling their property to the commercial. I'm not actively
involved. I just get the newspaper and keep up with it. And trying to
keep them from being able to sell it and go commercial, and maybe they
will now be interested in fixing up these houses. I couldn't understand
why the people who wanted to move out the inner city why they didn't
move into Rosedale because they'll get into a nice community school, and
then I began to realize they can't buy into it because all these family
members living elsewhere won't sell the property. I think they were
waiting for it to go commercial before they sell it.