Stigma Cities: The Reputation and History of Birmingham, San Francisco, and Las Vegas by Jonathan Foster (review)

In an intriguing study of the role of stigmatization in shaping the reputations of American urban spaces, Jonathan Foster argues that public perceptions help determine the identities of cities. More than physical landscapes, the characteristics that define Foster’s cities include thoughts and ideas, as well as buildings and institutions. Drawing from a variety of disciplinary conventions in history, psychology, sociology, and urban planning, and relying on sources such as newspapers, social media, and oral history interviews, Foster explores the consequences of urban reputations throughout the twentieth century. He concludes that the cities he studies “possess reputations that are rooted in preconceived notions and heavily dependent upon a morass of shifting values, ideals, and historical actions” (p. 194).

The book contains case studies of Birmingham, Alabama; San Francisco, California; and Las Vegas, Nevada, with two chapters devoted to each city. Foster traces the evolution of Birmingham’s stigma of racial violence through the mid-twentieth century and explores how the city’s reputation has affected the course of its history into the present day. Similarly, the book examines the development of San Francisco’s reputation as a “gay mecca” and illustrates how stigmatization can result in positive consequences for a city (p. xii). Finally, Foster explores Las Vegas’s reputation as “Sin City” and highlights how that stigma has resulted in increased profits for the tourism and gambling industries as well as the construction of barriers to the city’s continued development (p. xii).

Readers of the Journal of Southern History will find Foster’s treatment of Birmingham particularly interesting. Once known nationally as “the Magic City” of industrial growth in the New South, the well-publicized and often violent racism during the 1950s and 1960s tarnished Birmingham’s image and placeda seemingly permanent blemish on the city’s history (p. 22). Foster is at his best when demonstrating the ways this stigma has persisted since the civil rights era. Some of Birmingham’s white twenty-first-century residents continue to be reluctant to promote the memory of the civil rights movement in their city, even to the point of showing a reluctance to name the city’s landmarks after prominent movement leaders.

Foster has written an important and accessible study of the effects of reputation and stigma on the perception and historical development of urban spaces. His creative use of source material, such as his use of online local news stories and their accompanying user comments, provides a rich texture to his analysis and reminds readers of the contemporary relevance of his subject. The book is also firmly rooted in a comprehensive and useful theoretical framework provided by Foster’s deft explanation of complex sociological and psychological scholarship on the concept of stigma and the process of stigmatization. Scholars of the urban South, the civil rights era, and public history will find the book especially illuminating. Foster’s study will also find an audience in both undergraduate and graduate courses on urban history, the U.S. South, and historical memory.