50 free Birmingham, Alabama trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Birmingham, Alabama trivia questions with answers. Birmingham trivia for Alabama's Magic City - the Birmingham founded in 1871 and named for the English one. The quiz covers why the city exists at all (the only place on Earth with iron ore, coal and limestone side by side), the Vulcan statue that won a prize in St. Louis before it ever stood on Red Mountain, Sloss Furnaces, the oldest ballpark in America and the Black Barons who played there, and the 1963 campaign - Bull Connor's hoses, the Children's Crusade, the Letter from Birmingham Jail and the four girls killed at 16th Street Baptist Church - that pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress. There are questions on modern Birmingham too: UAB as the biggest employer, the Fortune 500 companies still headquartered downtown, the 2022 World Games, the museum that is the largest in the Southeast and the 2020 census that handed the state's biggest-city title to Huntsville. Easy questions any local will get open the set; the later ones will test a Jones Valley historian. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Birmingham, Alabama, was founded in 1871 by which developer?
Elyton Land
The neighbouring town of Elyton and several others were absorbed into the city in 1911.
Q 02Birmingham, Alabama, takes its name from an English namesake known for what?
Being the UK's second-largest and an industrial hub
The founders wanted an industrial city to match; the ironworks came within a decade.
Q 03Which nickname did Birmingham earn from its explosive growth between 1881 and 1920?
The Magic City
It was also called the Pittsburgh of the South for its steel output.
Q 04The Birmingham District is the only place where which three steelmaking raw materials sit close together?
Ore, coal and limestone
That accident of geology is why the city was planted in Jones Valley in the first place.
Q 05Birmingham is the seat of which Alabama county?
Jefferson
Jefferson County's 2011 bankruptcy filing was the largest by a US local government at the time, though the city itself stayed solvent.
Q 06Which city overtook Birmingham as Alabama's largest after the 2020 census?
Huntsville
Birmingham peaked at 340,887 people in 1960 and had fallen to 200,733 by 2020, though its 1.19 million metro is still the state's biggest.
Q 07What was Birmingham's peak population, recorded in the 1960 census?
340,000
The non-Hispanic white share of the city fell from 57.4% in 1970 to 21.1% in 2010 as suburbs grew.
Q 08Which institution was the Birmingham metro area's largest employer in 2024?
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
UAB's medical centre anchors an economy that also hosts Fortune 500 firms Regions and Vulcan Materials.
Q 09Which two Fortune 500 companies were headquartered in Birmingham in the early 2020s?
Regions Financial and Vulcan Materials
In 2012 the city ranked as the ninth-largest banking hub in the US by locally headquartered deposits.
Q 10Birmingham's 10% sales tax, which applies fully to groceries, holds what distinction?
Highest among the 100 largest US cities
Alabama is one of the few states that still taxes groceries at the full rate.
Q 11The Vulcan statue on the ridge south of downtown is the world's largest statue made of what?
Cast iron
Vulcan is the Roman god of fire and the forge; the 56-foot figure was made to advertise Birmingham's iron.
Q 12Vulcan was originally cast for which event, where it won a Grand Prize?
The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
Sculptor Giuseppe Moretti's figure did not reach its Red Mountain perch until 1936, with WPA money.
Q 13From 1946 to 1999 Vulcan held a neon torch instead of his spear. When did it glow red?
After a traffic fatality in the city
Q 21The Children's Crusade of May 1963 saw Bull Connor's men turn what on young marchers?
Fire hoses and police dogs
More than 3,000 people were arrested, almost all of high-school age; the images shocked the nation.
Q 22By 10 May 1963 Birmingham's business leaders agreed to desegregate what?
Lunch counters, restrooms and fitting rooms
The deal also promised to hire Black sales staff; Kennedy's civil rights bill followed and passed after a 75-day filibuster.
Q 23On what date in 1963 was 16th Street Baptist Church bombed, killing four girls?
15 September
It shone green otherwise; a $14 million restoration from 1999 to 2004 returned the spear.
Q 14Which suburb is the butt of the long-running joke about the view of Vulcan's bare backside?
Homewood
'Moon Over Homewood' has been a local gag for decades; the statue's head alone weighs 11,000 pounds.
Q 15Sloss Furnaces produced pig iron in Birmingham from 1882 until which year?
1971
It became a National Historic Landmark in 1981 and reopened in 1983 as the only 20th-century blast furnace preserved as a museum.
Q 16Rickwood Field, which opened on 18 August 1910, holds what distinction?
Oldest professional ballpark in the US
Industrialist Rick Woodward named it after himself; the Barons beat Montgomery 3-2 on opening day.
Q 17Which baseball legend began his pro career with the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field in 1948?
Willie Mays
Mays died just days before MLB played its first-ever regular-season game in Alabama at Rickwood in June 2024.
Q 18Which two teams played the first Major League game in Alabama, at Rickwood Field in June 2024?
Cardinals and Giants
St. Louis won 6-5 in a game honouring the Negro Leagues and Juneteenth; the annual Rickwood Classic throwback game dates from 1996.
Q 19Which local minister invited Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC to Birmingham for the 1963 campaign?
Fred Shuttlesworth
The effort was code-named Project C, for confrontation, and began with sit-ins and marches designed to fill the jails.
Q 20Where was Martin Luther King Jr. when he wrote his famous Birmingham letter in April 1963?
In a cell after his Good Friday arrest
He was arrested on 12 April 1963; the letter answered white clergymen who called the protests unwise and untimely.
Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson were 14; Carol Denise McNair was 11.
Q 24How many sticks of dynamite did Klansmen plant beneath the steps of 16th Street Baptist Church?
19
Robert Chambliss was convicted in 1977, Thomas Blanton in 2001 and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002.
Q 25Which filmmaker made the documentary '4 Little Girls' about the church bombing?
Spike Lee
The four victims were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2013.
Q 26Which green space beside 16th Street Baptist Church was the staging ground for the 1963 marches?
Kelly Ingram Park
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute stands across the street from the church, now a National Historic Landmark.
Q 27Who became Birmingham's first African American mayor in 1979?
Richard Arrington Jr.
He served five terms, until 1999.
Q 28Birmingham lies in which long depression, flanked by parallel ridges?
Jones Valley
Red Mountain rises immediately south of downtown; Ruffner Mountain to the east hosts one of the largest urban nature reserves in the US.
Q 29Which international multi-sport event did Birmingham host in July 2022?
The World Games
The city was chosen in 2015 for the 2021 edition, delayed a year by the pandemic.
Q 30What regional distinction does the Birmingham Museum of Art claim?
Largest of its kind in the Southeast
The Alys Stephens Center, home of the Alabama Symphony and Opera Birmingham, is another cultural anchor.