Homewood: The Life of a City

Homewood: The Life of a City. By Sheryl Spradling Summe. Homewood, Ala.: Friends of the Homewood Public Library, 2001. xvi, 280 pp. $30.00. Available from the Friends of the Homewood Public Library, 1721 Oxmoor Road, Homewood, Alabama 35209.

Over the past two decades, local writers have produced histories of several Birmingham neighborhoods and suburbs, including books on the Forest Park and Glen Iris neighborhoods and the suburbs of Mountain Brook and Hoover. In recent years the quality of Birmingham local history writing has improved significantly, especially with the publication of Vestavia Hills, Alabama: A Place Apart (Vestavia Hills, Ala., 2000) by Marvin Yeomans Whiting and Worthy of Remembrance: A History ofRedmont (Birmingham, 2002) by Cathy Criss Adams. To this list of recent and much improved local histories we can add Homewood: The Life of a City by Sheryl Spradling Summe.

The city of Homewood was incorporated in 1926 with the combination of three existing communities: Edgewood, Rosedale, and Oak Grove (with Hollywood added later). Situated across Shades Mountain from Birmingham, Homewood allowed residents to live in a rural setting that was just minutes from Birmingham by streetcar or automobile. Today Homewood is a thriving suburb popular for its 1920s-era houses and quaint shopping district.

In contrast to most Birmingham suburbs, Homewood included a significant African American population from the time of its founding. The author steps lightly on the subject of racial discrimination, but unlike many writers of local history, Summe does not ignore the topic. She discusses the inadequate city services provided to African Americans and the practice by white elected officials of chipping away at the residential character of the predominately black Rosedale neighborhood by encouraging white-owned commercial development in the area. The author also includes brief but worthwhile discussions of African American schools and community organizations.

The primary audience for Homewood: The Life of a City will be residents and former residents of Homewood. The book is geared to this audience with a large number of illustrations and good use of anecdotes. For historians of urban history and suburban growth the book will be useful, but not as useful as it might have been. The author's decision not to explore more fully Homewood's periodic annexation battles with Birmingham is disappointing. Throughout the twentieth century, civic leaders in Birmingham worked to annex adjacent suburbs in part because residents of the suburbs (who one former Birmingham city commissioner referred to as "daylight citizens") enjoyed the services provided by Birmingham without bearing a fair share of the taxes required to pay for those services. And while the author acknowledges that at various times as many as one-third to one-half of Homewood's residents favored annexation into Birmingham, she does not explain why.

Most readers will be pleased with what they find in this volume. The author's writing style is clear and graceful. She provides readers with present-day landmarks to help locate historic sites and has included an annotated bibliography. The author includes a large number of well-chosen photographs-although some are incorrectly credited-and adds a large, foldout color reproduction of Totten's 1929 map of Homewood that is useful for reference and suitable for display. In spite of the concerns raised in this review, Homewood: The Life of a City is still one of the best local histories yet written for the Birmingham area.

JAMES L. BAGGETT

Birmingham Public Library Archives

Copyright University of Alabama Press Apr 2004
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