n.
City (pop., 2000: 249,459), north-central Alabama, U.S. It is Alabama's largest city.
Founded in 1871 by a land company backed by railroad officials, it was named for the English city. It developed as the South's iron and steel centre. From nearby Port Birmingham a barge canal leads south to Mobile . Birmingham was the scene of civil rights drives by Martin Luther King, Jr. , in the early 1960s, and in 1963 four black girls were killed there in a church bombing; this incident gave major impetus to the civil rights movement .