Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust

Our Story

A Brief History of the
Dynamite Hill-Smithfield
Community Land Trust


The Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust (DH-SCLT) is a 501c3, non-profit and service based community land trust initiated in the Historic Smithfield Community of Birmingham, Alabama. It focuses on the best practices for regenerative community building. The focus areas of the DH-SCLT include permanently affordable housing and home ownership opportunities to low and moderate income families; community stewardship programs; sustainable urban agribusiness cooperatives; and community education and resources. The Smithfield Community constitutes the five neighborhoods of, Lower Smithfield, Enon Ridge, Graymont, College Hills and East Thomas and covers a geographic area of about 26 square miles.

Supported by Magic City Agriculture Project (MCAP), the DH-SCLT was initiated in 2015 by Susan Diane Mitchell. Magic City Agriculture Project’s work include assisting communities in establishing Community Land Trusts, organizing cooperative businesses and democratic institutions in their communities, with a focus on developing sustainable agri-businesses.

Susan, a 25 year resident of Birmingham, Alabama, currently lives at the top of Center Street and 11th Court North, in the heart and at the apex of what was once called “Dynamite Hill.” Upon moving to the East Thomas Neighborhood in the Historic Smithfield Community of Birmingham, Alabama, in 2005, Susan learned from community members and through her own research about the historic and cultural significance of the community in the Civil Rights Movement, educating herself of the spirit and history of the area, and becoming further inspired by the legacy of resistance and self-determination that the residents of “Dynamite Hill” expressed in their narratives about the community. Her work as a volunteer with MCAP led to education and training in the CLT model, which prompted her to lead this initiative.

“Dynamite Hill” became a nickname of the area in Smithfield along Center Street that was the site of numerous bombings against black citizens of Birmingham who were moving into Smithfield after Attorney Arthur Shores overturned segregated zoning laws which allowed them to purchase land spaces and residential housing in the area in the late 1940s. This action led to systematic attacks and bombings on black citizens by the Ku Klux Klan (1947-1965), with impunity under the egregiously oppressive regime of City Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor (1957-1963), which further prompted a neighborhood group commonly called a rifle patrol, aptly named “The Dynamite Hill Defenders,” to defend their properties from attack. Many of the civil rights organizing meetings and meetings between black clergy and moderate whites took place in Smithfield Community churches.

It was from Smithfield and surrounding areas that the children marched from AH Parker High School and other schools downtown to sit in protest of segregation in the Children’s Crusade of 1963. One of the four young girls killed in the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing , Cynthia Wesley, lived near Center Street.

Moreover, the Angela Y. Davis family home is situated at the top of Dynamite Hill and acts as a constant source of visual inspiration from the view of Susan’s porch across the street, Professor Angela Y. Davis is an esteemed human rights leader, scholar, person of honor, and a personal heroine for Susan, and her inspired writings on the liberation of black people informs much of her own studies.

The spirit of prosperity, social justice, academic excellence, a thriving local economy, and strong community relationships was once very vibrant in Smithfield. Due to redlining, disinvestment, neglect and decline over several decades, the community is now experiencing a 41.3% poverty rate, and a 25.6% vacant housing rate. The DH-SCLT is working through the social economic strategy of the community land trust model to catalyze this natural spirit and the wealth of human creative energy it contains with community members as the greatest community assets.

In 2014, Birmingham implemented a Western Area Framework Plan which outlines development of three Western area communities: Smithfield, West End, and Five Points West. In the same year, Birmingham was also chosen as the site of the 2021 World Games, which along with other incentives has helped to accelerate the rapid development of Downtown Birmingham. The Smithfield Community is the first community west of I-65 and Downtown Birmingham, and in clear vulnerability of the vapid gentrification and displacement of low and moderate income residents that often comes with urban renewal.
In 2015, Susan decided to form the Dynamite Hill- Smithfield Community Land Trust in honor of the bravery of the black families who defended their homes and community under oppression, and as a community effort to resist gentrification, preserve the cultural integrity of the Historic Smithfield Community, and catalyze the re-creation of a thriving sustainable business district. Its vision is to be a strong strategy for localized cooperative economic stabilization and community led development as Birmingham engages in its Western Area Framework Expansion efforts during the revitalization of the Magic City.

For Susan, her family of nine children, and many others, Smithfield is home.