Dispatch From Our Most Bible-Minded City

Historically Birmingham has been notorious for its divisions. Martin Luther King Jr. targeted Alabama’s largest city for protest marches because, as he told President John F. Kennedy, it was “by far the worst big city in race relations in the United States.” Thanks to King and his marchers, racial segregation has long since ended. To be sure, many of the same divisions persist along geographic and economic lines. But now the city’s attention focuses on more benign rivalries, particularly between the University of Alabama and Auburn University’s football teams.