Birmingham Alabama

After leaving Tennessee, we spent a night in North Western Georgia on a private gated estate. We enjoyed a private 2 bedroom cottage where the gracious and generous host even brought us breakfast. We left early to drive several hours south across rural Alabama taking state roads. This is cattle country, dotted with small family farms.

We had planned to spend 2 nights in Birmingham. We approached the city on back roads and found ourselves lost in the industrial side of town. Our GPS soon guided us into the segregated black side of town. We were hopelessly lost. We were surrounded by MILES of the most severe urban poverty we’ve ever witnessed in a Western country. The shocking condition of the tiny single family houses would be condemned as unsuitable for human occupation in any other American city ( I hope). . The poor inhabitants are living in rotting collapsing shacks where the city’s inspectors obviously look the other way. We were horrified and shaken by the abject poverty surrounding us. We finally found our way out of this vast ghetto, only a short distance from city center where our Airbnb was. We arrived at our pleasant Carriage House but were disturbed and frightened by what we had witnessed. I’m sure Birmingham has much to offer but what we saw made us feel unsafe. This grimy industrial city has some big problems. We are going to do a bit of sightseeing and depart after one night. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph the poverty, it didn’t seem right.