Titusville is a historic neighborhood in

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fro ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

southeast of Ensley near UAB's campus. It is centered on 6th Avenue South between downtown Birmingham and Elmwood Cemetery. It includes its neighborhood associations with North Titusville, South Titusville, and Woodland Park.

History

In 1910, Robert Ingersoll Ingalls, Sr. (1882-1951) founded Ingalls Iron Works in Titusville.Decatur Parks and Recreation
/ref> (He later went on to found

Ingalls Shipbuilding Ingalls Shipbuilding is a shipyard located in Pascagoula, Mississippi, United States, originally established in 1938, and now part of HII. It is a leading producer of ships for the United States Navy, and at 12,500 employees, the second largest ...

Pascagoula, Mississippi Pascagoula ( ) is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States. It is the principal city of the Pascagoula Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi–Pascagoula Combined Statistical Area. The population was 22 ...

in 1938). Since the early twentieth century Titusville has been a neighborhood of middle-class

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslav ...

families, including architect Wallace Rayfield; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...

; Birmingham mayor William Bell; former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford; Birmingham city councillor Carole Smitherman; and

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had ma ...

-winning journalist Harold Jackson.Jeremy Gray
Rich history of Birmingham's Titusville celebrated
''

The Birmingham News ''The Birmingham News'' is the principal newspaper for Birmingham, Alabama, United States. The paper is owned by Advance Publications and was a daily newspaper from its founding through September 30, 2012. After that day, the ''News'' and its two ...

'', July 11, 2010 In June 1993, Titusville residents took the Birmingham city government to court in an attempt to block completion by

Browning-Ferris Industries Browning-Ferris Industries was a North American waste management company that was bought out in 1999. History BFI was founded in Houston, Texas. The company was initially known as American Refuse Systems, and it opened its first landfill in 196 ...

(BFI) of a garbage transfer station in their community.''Not in Anyone's Backyard! The Grassroots Victory over Browning-Ferris Industries'', video, 26 min. (

Greenpeace Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to ...

, 1994)Laura Westra, "The Faces of Environmental Racism: Titusville, Alabama, and BFI," in ''Faces of Environmental Racism: Confronting Issues of Global Justice,'' 2d ed., ed. Laura Westra and Bill E. Lawson (Lanham, Md., 2001) . This action succeeded in halting the project and was widely celebrated as a grassroots victory over

environmental racism Environmental racism or ecological apartheid is a form of institutional racism leading to landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal being disproportionally placed in communities of colour. Internationally, it is also associated with ...

. the city and county governments agreed to jointly purchase the former Trinity Steel Industries property in Titusville for redevelopment."Birmingham, Jeffco to buy Trinity plant property," ''Birmingham News'', September 27, 2005 The neighborhood includes a high school, the Ullman High School, a public park, Memorial park, and several churches, including Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Condoleezza Rice's father and grandfather were pastors.

History

References

See also