Richard Arrington

Richard Arrington, Jr (born October 1934 in Livingston) was the first African American mayor of the city of Birmingham, serving 20 years, from 1979 to 1999. He replaced David Vann and, upon retiring after five terms in office, installed then-City Council president William Bell as interim mayor. After a short term, Bell went on to lose the next election to the current mayor, Bernard Kincaid.

Childhood

Arrington's father moved his family to the steel-town of Fairfield from rural Sumter County when Richard Jr was five to take a job with U.S. Steel. The steady work was an improvement over sharecropping, but Richard Sr still had to supplement the family income by working off-hours as a brick mason.

Arrington's parents emphasized self-reliance, choosing to rent a home rather than stay in workers' housing and shopping at a black-owned cooperative store rather than accept credit at the company commissary. Richard's mother, Ernestine, kept the table filled with home-grown vegetables and made sure that her children made use of the opportunities given them through church and school.

Richard, while still a teenager, served as secretary of the Sunday School at Crumbey Bethel Primitive Baptist Church. Soon he was Sunday School superintendent, a member of the choir, and eventually elected to the Board of Deacons. He was also a standout student at Fairfield Industrial High School, where he had first decided to study tailoring. With those classes full, he instead learned dry cleaning, graduating in 1951 at the age of 16, he took a job at a cleaner and applied to Fairfield's Miles College.

Academic career

Arrington majored in biology at Miles and excelled in the classroom and as a leader, rising to the presidency of his chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was also an officer in the Honor Society and the Thespian Club. In his third year of college, while still living at home, he married Barbara Jean Watts. He graduated cum laude in 1955 and took a position as a graduate assistant at the University of Detroit. While there he first experienced an integrated social environment and gained the perspective necessary to effectively critique the established segregation of his home town. He earned a master's degree in 1957 and returned to Miles as an assistant professor of science where he taught for six years before entering the University of Oklahoma doctoral program in zoology in 1963. He was, therefore, away from Birmingham during the most violent clashes between African-American protesters and city authorities in Birmingham. He earned his doctorate at Oklahoma in 1966, completing a dissertation on the "Comparative Morphology of Some Dryopoid Beetles", and, at the urging of Miles president Lucius Pitts, returned to Fairfield as acting dean and director of the Miles College summer school. He was quickly promoted to chair of the Natural Sciences Department and was eventually named Dean of the College.

References

• Franklin, Jimmie Lewis. (1989) Back to Birmingham: Richard Arrington, Jr., and His Times. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817304355
• Kelly, Mark (October 20-November 10, 2005) "Toward a New Birmingham: A Four Part Series on the Life and Times of Richard Arrington, Jr." Birmingham Weekly.