If you would like additional information on the background of the men who labored at Sloss Furnaces, please visit the Mervyn H. Sterne Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Oral History Collection Website and follow these simply steps:

Mervyn H. Sterne Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Oral History Collection

» click on Browse by Topic
» click on Industrial Workers in Birmingham
» click on a specific worker to listen to audio interview or see written transcript

The reminiscences of these individuals offer a rare glimpse of an earlier Birmingham and a way of life that has all but disappeared. For further information on Sloss Furnaces Oral History Collection, contact Curator Karen R. Utz.

This magic little city of ours has no peer in the rapidity of its growth....its permanent mountains groaning to be delivered of their wealth....the El Dorado of iron-masters.

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"This collection... represents state-of-the-art women's history. It proves the point that women historians have long asserted but not always demonstrated: that unless women's lives are considered, the history of societies' economic, political, and social realms will remain incomplete and inadequately understood."
--Victoria Blunt, author of Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South.

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By the turn of the century, 48 African-American tenements had been erected along 32ndStreet (site of Sloss today). The residents, mainly ex-sharecroppers seeking economic advancements during Birmingham’s industrial boom, called their neighborhood “the Quarters.”

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[32 mb, QuickTime Format, QuickTime 6 Required]  A video documentary on Sloss Furnaces.

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[65 mb, QuickTime Format, QuickTime 6 Required]  A video documentary on Sloss Furnaces.

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[Adobe Acrobat Format, Adobe Reader Required]  The history of Alabama can easily be broken down into three broad time periods. The first is the antebellum period, where agricultural interests dominated the state. The second is the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. The third is the period following the Reconstruction, sometimes called the Redemption, that marked the beginning of the New South, when broad economic changes ushered in large-scale industrial ventures.

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