Brighton is a city near Birmingham, Alabama, United States and located just east of Hueytown. At the 2020 census, the population was 2,337. It is part of the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in 2010 had a population of about 1,128,047, approximately one-quarter of Alabama's population. It is one of four cities in Jefferson County named after cities in Great Britain. Many of the city's early settlers were of English descent; they named the town after the English tourist and resort city of Brighton, which is located on the English Channel.

History

Brighton was not settled by European Americans until the late 19th century. Brighton was officially founded in 1892, when developer G.B. Edwards subdivided a tract of land and sold lots. It was named after Brighton, East Sussex in England UK. It was situated along a dummy railroad line built in 1889 by the Bessemer & Birmingham Railroad Company to connect those two growing industrial cities.

The Old Huntsville Road was renamed as Main Street and the city was incorporated in 1901. By that year, at least 100 families were living in Brighton. The town had a population of 1,502 by the 1910 census, with seventeen commercial establishments, including eight grocery stores.

The city's fortunes have been closely linked to those of Woodward Iron Company. Together with coal mining in this area, the iron company was integral to the industrial development in this part of Alabama, which is based on the much larger cities of Birmingham, Bessemer, and Gadsden. After industrial restructuring in the late 1970s and when the iron company moved out, the town has declined in population since its peak in 1980.

Brighton Cemetery, which is still operating, contains the graves of persons of Scottish, English and German descent who came to work at Woodward.
In August 1908, coal miner and union leader William Miller, who was black, was accused of blowing up the home of a white mine operator Finley Fuller. It was during a period of labor unrest as mine workers tried to organize unions. Miller was lynched by a white mob that dragged him out of the Brighton jail. They hanged and killed him not far from Brighton City Hall. Later, it was found that whites opposed to unionization had bombed Fuller's home; by linking the crime to a black man, they intended to increase general opposition to the union's drive for better wages.

In 2015, after the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) published its study Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, the city of Brighton resolved to place a historical marker to commemorate Miller for his work with the union and as a victim of lynching. They worked in cooperation with EJI and placed the marker in a ceremony near City Hall. Brighton was the first city in Alabama to install such a memorial. In a related effort, scholarships will be awarded to high school students for writing essays about Alabama's racial history.

City Government

Mayor : Eddie Cooper

Demographics

Brighton's population according to the 2010 Census was 2,945. Of that number, 81 percent identified themselves as African American, 13.8 percent as Hispanic, 6.5 percent as white, 1 percent as Native American, and 0.9 percent as two or more races. The town's median household income was $25,929 and the per capita income was $14,858.

Population

The city of Birmingham has a population of 209,880 (U.S. Census Bureau estimate, 2019) and is the central hub of the Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area with a population of 1.1 million. The Birmingham-Hoover Metro is the largest population and economic region in the state of Alabama.

Education

Schools in Brighton are part of the Jefferson County School District; the town has approximately 350 students and 28 teachers in one middle school. The city lies within 10 miles of five colleges and universities, including the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Birmingham-Southern College.

Transportation

Interstate Highway 59, running north, lies approximately one mile west of Brighton. The city is about 10 miles southwest of Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

Employment

Brighton's workforce in 2010 was divided among the following industrial categories: