“The University that Ate Birmingham”

Abstract

In Birmingham, Alabama, in 1987, a white conservative movement arose in opposition to build a new healthcare clinic in downtown through the use of eminent domain. Critics claimed the Kirklin Clinic reflected urban corruption and the privatization of the public sphere. Municipal officials and white economic elites argued that the clinic secured the city’s economic transition from industrialization to healthcare. The clinic, however, was the manifestation of a twenty-year campaign to privatize healthcare services in a public university as well as the result of market shifts in healthcare disbursement policies. Neoliberal governance guided this urban economic development project. The controversy over the clinic reveals the ideological and class tensions among metropolitan whites, as well as conservatives’ demands for their inclusion and the recognition of their rights by the municipal government.