The Past Meets The Present

Teaching Women's History In The Urban South

Abstract

When asked to participate in a panel discussion about teaching women's history back in June 1988, I responded enthusiastically. I knew the occasion would provide an opportunity for me to speak about the students I had taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham over the preceding five years. "UAB," as the university is called, is an urban campus that sprawls over 60 square blocks of the city, about one and one-half miles from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and two miles from Birmingham's infamous City Hall. The undergraduate college at UAB was 20 years old in 1989; organized after the Birmingham civil rights movement, the college is a vibrant symbol of the "New Birmingham." Today, the University is the city's largest employer, with a student body of 15,000 that is twenty percent black. Students come from an area once known as "The Birmingham District," the mountains and valleys of north central Alabama, rich in the coal and iron-ore that formed the bedrock of Birmingham's economy.