1979 Birmingham inaugural address

The 1979 Birmingham inaugural address was the first speech delivered by Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr upon being sworn into office as the city's first African-American mayor on November 14, 1979.

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Four years ago, at the inauguration ceremonies for City Council members, I briefly related the story of my parents' decision to come to Birmingham. I want to repeat that story here today because of what I see as its relevance to this occasion.
Sometime in 1940 my father, who had spent his adult life as a sharecropper in Southwest Alabama, decided that better fortunes for his family lay in coming to Birmingham.
He had no money to pay the bus fare for the 110-mile trip from Livingston, Ala. to Birmingham. So he asked his brother, who had already come to Birmingham to work, to send him bus fare for the trip.
He came to this city and found a job in the steel mill and immediately moved his family to a duplex house in the western section of the city. It seems now like not only an interested but a unique story when seen in the light of today's historic occasion.
But on reflection, it's not a unique event, for in the history of this city it has been repeated many times by family after family.

The story of my parents' quest for a better quality of life and their faith that it could be found in this valley is the story of amy other families who came to Birmingham seeking a little better chance. And though they have not all fared as well as they had hoped, thank God that the overwhelming majority have seen many of their dreams realized. In this valley they have been able to make a decent living, to educate their children and to watch this valley grow; and for some, like my parents, to see their children attain positions of responsibility they never dreamed of.
Since its founding in 1871, Birmingham with its God-given natural resources has faced and overcome several crises in its young lifetime. At times its future seemed to hank by the most tenuous thread but its people held on with goodwill and tenacity. Some watched it overcome a cholera epidemic when it was only two years old. Other witnessed it struggle through the Depression years and most of us here today watched it come to grips with racial strife. From each crisis the city rebounded, each time stronger than before.

With all of its natural resources, its most important resource has always been and remains even today, its people and their endurance.
I approach this historic occasion humbly but with keen awareness of its significance. My election as the first black mayor of this city is to me and many others an example of the reality of the American dream, the depth of the American ideals and the commitment of Birminghamians to the basic tenets of our democracy.
The decision of a majority of the voters in Birmingham to elect a mayor who is black has focused national and international attention once again on Birmingham — perhaps in a manner which is paralleled only by the publicity received during our racial strife of earlier years
But it must be clear that the cause of our attention today, my election, is a clear indication of our progress in human relations. As a resident of this city and one privileged to serve in city government for the past eight years, I know that the Birmingham of today is very different than the Birmingham of yesteryear which was wracked by racial strife.