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Southern Heritage Festival was a two-day music, arts, and culture festival dedicated to the African American population of Birmingham, Alabama. It was held from 2004 to 2006. The festival took place on the site of the future Railroad Reservation Park along Birmingham's "Railroad Reservation" corridor on the first weekend of August. Music styles include hip hop, Old school hip hop, classic R&B, and Gospel.
The Southern Heritage Festival originally began in the 1960s, but ceased to exist by the early 1990s. It was replaced by the now-defunct Birmingham Heritage Festival, which was basically an all-music festival that targeted mostly younger audiences. But in July 2004 the Southern Heritage Festival was revived and given a second chance, with a new name, The Original Southern Heritage Festival, by John Ray, the festival's original organizer.
In 2004 the event was held at the Alabama State Fairgrounds ( 33°29′48″N86°52′17″W / 33.4968°N 86.8714°W ) , but attendance was disappointing. In 2005 the event was moved to Kelly Ingram Park ( 33°30′59″N86°48′48″W / 33.5163°N 86.8134°W ) in Birmingham's Civil Rights District. The 2006 festival was planned for the Railroad Reservation site used successfully by the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil. 2006 performers included Patti LaBelle, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Clarence Carter, and the Little Memphis Blues Orchestra.
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% from the 2020 Census, making it Alabama's third-most populous city after Huntsville and Montgomery. The broader Birmingham metropolitan area had a 2020 population of 1,115,289, and is the largest metropolitan area in Alabama as well as the 50th-most populous in the United States. Birmingham serves as an important regional hub and is associated with the Deep South, Piedmont, and Appalachian regions of the nation.
Helena is a city in Jefferson and Shelby counties in the state of Alabama. Helena is considered a suburb of Birmingham and part of the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area. As of 2022 the United States Census Bureau estimates the population to be 21,560.
Leeds is a tri-county municipality located in Jefferson, St. Clair, and Shelby counties in the State of Alabama and is an eastern suburb of Birmingham. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 12,324.
Wilton, also known by the previous names of Birmingham Junction, Bismark, and Catoosa, is a town in Shelby County, Alabama, United States. It incorporated in 1918. This town is part of the Birmingham–Hoover–Cullman Combined Statistical Area. At the 2010 census the population was 687, up from 580 in 2000.
City Stages was a three-day arts and music festival in downtown Birmingham, Alabama that took place in and around Linn Park from 1989 to 2009. After losses in 2009 amounted to nearly half a million dollars, the organization running City Stages announced on June 25, 2009 that the event would not return the next year.
Birmingham–Southern College (BSC) is a private college in Birmingham, Alabama. Founded in 1856, the college is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). More than 1300 students from 33 states and 16 foreign countries attend the college.
Kelly Ingram Park, formerly West Park, is a 4 acres (1.6 ha) park located in Birmingham, Alabama. It is bounded by 16th and 17th Streets and 5th and 6th Avenues North in the Birmingham Civil Rights District. The park, just outside the doors of the 16th Street Baptist Church, served as a central staging ground for large-scale demonstrations during the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
The Alabama State Fairgrounds are located in West Birmingham, adjacent to the Five Points West shopping area.
WZHT is a Mainstream Urban formatted radio station that broadcasts on the 105.7 MHz frequency licensed to Troy, Alabama, that serves the Montgomery area. It is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc., and is one-third of the all-urban Montgomery cluster, complementing urban AC's WWMG and urban gospel's WHLW. The studios for the three stations are located in East Montgomery near Eastdale Mall, and WZHT shares a transmitter with television station WSFA in Grady, Alabama. The transmitter location gives WZHT an unusually large coverage as such, which has one of the tallest towers in the Southern United States at 1,830 feet; it was acknowledged in its former slogan "The Station You Hear Everywhere".
The Birmingham District is a geological area in the vicinity of Birmingham, Alabama, where the raw materials for making steel, limestone, iron ore, and coal are found together in abundance. The district includes Red Mountain, Jones Valley, and the Warrior and Cahaba coal fields in Central Alabama.
Boutwell Memorial Auditorium is a 5,000-seat multi-purpose arena located in Birmingham, Alabama. It was built in 1924 as Birmingham's Municipal Auditorium, on a site near City Hall, facing Capitol Park.
WPYA is an American radio station licensed to Gardendale, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, United States. It is owned by SummitMedia. It airs a hot adult contemporary format. It shares studios with six other sister stations in the Cahaba neighborhood in far southeast Birmingham, and the transmitter is based atop Red Mountain.
The Carver Theatre, now formally known as the Carver Performing Arts Center, is a theater located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. In its days as a motion picture theater, it was best known as a place where African-Americans could see first-run movies; during that time, only whites were allowed in most theaters because of segregation laws.
The Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame (AJHF) was founded in 1978, and opened a museum on September 18, 1993, with a mission "to foster, encourage, educate, and cultivate a general appreciation of the medium of jazz music as a legitimate, original and distinctive art form indigenous to America. Its mission is also to preserve a continued and sustained program of illuminating the contribution of the State of Alabama through its citizens, environment, demographics and lore, and perpetuating the heritage of jazz music." It is located in Birmingham, Alabama, United States.
The Taste of 4th Avenue Jazz Festival is a one-day jazz festival which has been presented annually since 2003 in Birmingham's Historic 4th Avenue District downtown. In past years, it was sponsored by the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame (AJHoF) and Urban Impact. Beginning in 2011, the festival was presented by Magic City Smooth Jazz. The event offers jazz music, food, swing dance lessons and exhibits, and presents nationally known jazz artists and local jazz artists.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the U.S. state of Alabama.
Westover is a city in Shelby County, Alabama, United States. The city is part of the Birmingham Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city was officially incorporated on January 31, 2001 although it was established in 1901 and had a population of 961 when it was incorporated in 2001.
Railroad Park is a 19-acre park in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, that opened in the fall of 2010. It was designed by landscape architect Tom Leader and built by Birmingham-based Brasfield & Gorrie. The park lies immediately south of the Norfolk Southern and CSX rail lines through downtown Birmingham. It stretches from 14th Street to 18th Street along First Avenue South. UAB Hospital and Children's Hospital of Alabama are several blocks south of the park. The park is a public facility owned by the City of Birmingham and managed by the non-profit Railroad Park Foundation.
WERC-FM is a news/talk radio station licensed to Hoover, Alabama and serving the Birmingham market. It operates at an effective radiated power of 29.5 kilowatts. It is owned by San Antonio-based iHeartMedia. The station has studios at Beacon Ridge Tower in Birmingham and its transmitter is atop Red Mountain.
Rotary Trail is a half-mile linear park in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The trail was predominantly funded by the Birmingham Rotary Club in honor of their centennial anniversary. The trail runs from 20th Street to 24th Street along First Avenue South and connects two major downtown areas: the 19-acre Railroad Park on one side, and Sloss Furnaces, a National Historic Landmark, on the other side. It opened in 2016.