It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham
"It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham" is a slogan used since the 1950s to promote the city of Birmingham. The slogan, promulgated by the Young Men's Business Club, the Downtown Action Committee, the Birmingham Jaycees, and the City of Birmingham, was used on welcome signs at the Birmingham Greyhound Station and Birmingham Airport, as well as on bumper stickers, buttons, novelty license plates and other memorabilia. A "billboard" truck bearing the slogan was used in parades and cruised around Legion Field during events. Birmingham businesses, such as Don Drennen, used the slogan on their own promotional items, as well. The Birmingham Police Department even included the slogan on a leaflet of traffic regulations given in lieu of tickets to minor traffic offenders in 1962. The leaflet was signed by Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor.
The irony implicit in the slogan being used by a city that was especially unwelcoming to African-Americans has been noted in many accounts of the Civil Rights Movement. It was pointed out contemporaneously in a 1958 radio interview with Frank Dukes on WENN-AM, in a 1963 speech by Fred Shuttlesworth at St James Baptist Church, and in an article by Shuttlesworth entitled "Birmingham Shall be Free Some Day" which appeared in the Freedomwayspolitical journal in early 1964. A 1970 Newsweek article quoted a satirical reworking of the phrase used by African Americans in reference to the city's series of unsolved bombings: "It's Nice to Bomb You in Havingham".
Welcome signs featuring the slogan are visible at the entrance to Boutwell Auditorium in the 1976 feature film "Stay Hungry".
The slogan was revived in 2007 by "The Terminal" publisher André Natta, for a line of t-shirts and also for series of video interviews with Birminghamians. Inspired by those t-shirts, the Friends of Rickwood used the slogan, along with an illustration of Vulcan, on a "vintage" outfield wall mural at Rickwood Field for the 2010 Rickwood Classic.
In 2013 a line of screen printed t-shirts with the slogan were marketed by Yellowhammer Creative at craft shows and pop-up shops. A large "It's Nice to Have You in Birmingham mural" was commissioned from the Magic City Mural Collective for a wall facing a parking lot at 55th Place and 1st Avenue South in Woodlawn.
References
- Kihss, Peter (September 28, 1962) "Birmingham Is Quiet as Negroes Meet." The New York TImes
- Newsweek (1970) Vol. 76, p. 198
- Manis, Andrew (1999) A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817309683
- McWhorter, Diane (2001) Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743226488
- Crowe, Christina (July 10, 2008) "Terminally Optimistic" Black & White