Uncirculated
Published by Ehler News Co. ~1940s or late 1950s
Printed by E.C. Kropp
How could I not pick up this postcard with a big sign proclaiming "the Magic City." Who doesn't want to live in a magic city? (Some would say that I do--one of the favorite aphorisms about Ithaca is that the city is "10 square miles surrounded by reality." But I digress...)
As I thought about it, though, it's clear that, especially when the postcard was printed, Birmingham was magic only to some. In the 1960s, the city was the site of bitter and bloody civil war battles, with four African-American girls killed in a 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan, ostensibly to murder the civil rights leaders who often used the church as a meeting place.
Even today, Birmingham is plagued by crime and rates among the top ten most dangerous cities in the United States.
1 comment:
Maybe if you say it often enough and erect big signs then it eventually come true.
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