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America’s Johannesburg: Industrialization and Racial Transformation in Birmingham by Bobby M. Wilson

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Nicknamed “Bombingham,” the city of Birmingham was a center of civil rights protest and repression more than any other Southern metropolitan area. This book asks why and answers that no other industrial city depended more upon the exploitation of Black labor from the days of slavery to an era with a different kind of dependence. “A fresh and original interpretation. The book contributes substantially to the historiography of industrial growth in Alabama. The author provides much insight into the racial dimensions of Birmingham's development. A pioneering work.” -- W. David Lewis. “America's Johannesburg is comprehensive, theoretically-driven, and convincing. America's Johannesburg contributes to the fields of urban studies, geography, and historical sociology by providing a case example of how racial oppression manifests itself in historically and geographically contingent ways. The text will be useful to scholars interested in the micro and macro processes that institutionalized and organized racial inequality in the U.S. southern economy.”  -- Ethnic and Racial Studies. “A powerful addition to academic fields as varied as southern studies and Marxian critical theory. Wilson has written a book of uncommon depth. His melding of critical race theory, Marxian critique, and regional analysis is effective and engrossing. Wilson's work is fascinating and well-written.” -- Economic Geography. “Wilson has constructed a theoretical and conceptual framework that can be used to study the Black experience across time, as well as at specific moments in time. -- Urban Studies. “This book is destined to make the 'required reading list' on Alabama history.”-- Alabama Review. The author is professor emeritus at the University of Alabama and the author of Race and Place in Birmingham: The Civil Rights and Neighborhood Movements.

Athens: University of Georgia Press, a 2019 paperback edition of a 2000 release. 292 pages with a new foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, an Index, Bibliography, notes at the end of each chapter, charts, maps, and photos. Trade paperback.