From grief to leadership: Randall Woodfin’s journey in ‘Son of Birmingham’

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Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin really likes music. That’s one of the throughlines in his new memoir Son of Birmingham which is out January 21. In it he touches on his time in office, the influence of his older brother who died at the hands of gun violence, and of course, his favorite tracks. He spoke with WBHM’s Kelsey Shelton.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

In this book, you talk a lot about movies and books, but you especially talk about music. What’s up with that? Tell us about your connection to music. 

I’ve always had a fascination and love for music. Not just vocal, not just hip-hop and rap, but actual instruments, the sound. I had an older brother and that fascination of all forms of music turned to hip-hop and rap. And so what I appreciated about rap, even in the 80s and the 90s, was that it sampled all the things that I remember listening to at my mom and growing up in my mom’s house or my aunts’ houses.

You brought up your brother. Was he a part of developing that love of hip-hop for you?

100%. I remember [being] probably 11 and 12 years old. He had a lot of cars. He had Chevy Impalas and all these different type of cars, big body style 80s and 90s vehicles. He wasn’t living with us, but he would come visit my mom while he was in the house. I would easily run to his car and just play and listen to whatever he was listening to. He had the stereo system and all the speakers and the tweeters, six by nine speakers inside the vehicle. And I would just jam out. 

My brother tragically lost his life to gun violence. And so did my nephew. I talk about that in the book, but I am honest with the influence he had on me. One of those influences was his love for music, which definitely passed on to me in a different type of way, but passed on to me.

Well, taking a step backwards now, or I guess forwards, depending on how you look at it, to your first mayoral campaign, you talk about having a bulleted list of things that you wanted to accomplish. And that list included revitalizing neighborhoods and building support for the LGBTQ community. How do you feel about those goals now? Do you feel like those goals have been accomplished?

I do. I think anything we said we were going to do, we’ve started and or it’s in progress and or we’ve accomplished. Many things weren’t invested in for years. So we come in office behind the eight ball. We removed thousands of blighted structures to the tunes of millions of dollars. And I think we’re investing in our city’s infrastructure. We literally have invested right at $60 million in street paving over seven years. That’s not chump change. And as much gun violence as we received, we’ve also been very proactive, taking over 15,000 illegal guns off the streets since I’ve been mayor.

In the book, you write about how you had some tense conversations with Attorney General Steve Marshall over things like mask mandates and, you know, tearing down the Confederate statue. Do you have to conduct yourself in a certain way as a Democrat in a Republican led legislature, do you think?

When we vote every four years, there’s no D or R next to my name. It’s literally nonpartisan. As mayor, you have to be pragmatic. You have to be on the solution ends of things solving problems. The pothole is not Democrat or Republican. The victim of gun violence doesn’t care about party politics. They care about what pragmatic things are you doing to improve my quality of life? Here’s an example. The exhibition driving bill was passed by majority Republican legislators. That was a real issue in Birmingham. I came to them and thanks to them, they created and supported a bill that was passed and signed by the governor.

Well, to push back a little bit, what about issues related to gun violence? Do you feel like you can make progress in a state like Alabama, in a state where the Second Amendment is extremely important to people.

The Second Amendment is important to me. I want to state that and I’m not afraid to state that. I also believe that if people are going to ride around in their car, take a gun, stick it out of the window and shoot into other occupied homes or other occupied vehicles, that person or persons should have a pistol permit. That’s not trying to take their gun. That’s safety to make sure we can keep citizens safe. And here’s what I would say. 

In Alabama, when there’s an opioid crisis, you see laws passed immediately on the enforcement hand, on the treatment hand, on the support. Financially, resources are just given. All I want in the state of Alabama is to treat gun violence the same way you treat the opioid crisis. And we would be just fine.

Happy to be here. Thank you.