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Titusville /ˈtɪtəsvəl/ is a historic neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, United States 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. (He later went on to found Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi in 1938).

Since the early twentieth century Titusville has been a neighborhood of middle-class African American families, including architect Wallace Rayfield; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Birmingham mayor William Bell; former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford; Birmingham city councillor Carole Smitherman; and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Harold Jackson.

In June 1993, Titusville residents took the Birmingham city government to court in an attempt to block completion by Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI) of a garbage transfer station in their community. This action succeeded in halting the project and was widely celebrated as a grassroots victory over environmental racism. As of 2005 the city and county governments agreed to jointly purchase the former Trinity Steel Industries property in Titusville for redevelopment.

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.

References

1. Decatur Parks and Recreation
2. Condoleezza Rice, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, Crown Archetype, 2010, p. 38; 68-69
3. ^ Jeremy Gray, Rich history of Birmingham's Titusville celebrated, The Birmingham News, July 11, 2010
4. ^ Not in Anyone's Backyard! The Grassroots Victory over Browning-Ferris Industries, video, 26 min. (Greenpeace, 1994)
5. Rel: City of Birmingham v. Horn, Supreme Court of Alabama, Special Term, 2001
6. ^ 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) ISBN 0-7425-1248-7.
7. "Birmingham, Jeffco to buy Trinity plant property," Birmingham News, September 27, 2005

See also

List of Birmingham neighborhoods

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