Richard Arrington Jr. born in October of 1934 in Livingston, Alabama  was the first African American mayor of the city of Birmingham, Alabama  serving 20 years, from 1979 to 1999. He replaced David Vann and, upon retiring after five terms in office, installed then-City Council president William A. Bell as interim mayor. Bell went on to lose the next election to the current mayor, Bernard Kincaid.

Arrington's father moved his family to the steel-town of Fairfield from rural Sumter County, Alabama when Richard Jr. was five years old to take a job with U.S. Steel. The steady work was an improvement over sharecropping, but Richard Sr. still had to supplement the family income by working off-hours as a brick mason.   more »