Arlie Barber

Arlie K. Barber was a druggist, owner of the Barber Seed Company, and a politician. He was a member of the Birmingham City Commission from 1915 to 1917 and ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Alabama in 1922 and 1934 and to represent the 9th Congressional District of Alabama in 1932.

Barber married the former Wessie B. Lee in Birmingham on August 16, 1894.

Barber's seed company was supplied from a greenhouse on property he owned in Center Point. Barber paid to build an enclosure around a natural spring on the property, now Barber Springs in Reed-Harvey Park.

Barber defeated A. O. Lane in the 1915 Birmingham City Commission election. Though he was opposed by the Birmingham News, he denounced Lane for his vote allowing the consolidation of the People's Home Telephone and Telegraph Company with Southern Bell, producing a monopoly. He was also aided by a promise to work to remove restrictions on the screening of motion pictures on Sundays.

Shortly after the election, Barber announced his membership in the Socialist Party, though he never involved himself in anything that could be described as "radical". He did propose in 1917 that the city should annex the property on which the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company had erected its Ensley and Fairfield Works, in order to collect taxes on the operation. Commission President George Ward argued against the measure on the grounds that it would provide a disincentive to further investment by the company.

Though he served only one term, Barber represented a new wave of suburban Commissioners that, years after the Greater Birmingham annexation, began to dominate city politics.

References

• Harris, Carl V. (1977) Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921. Twentieth-Century America Series. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 087049211X