What's Montgomery Alabama like?

Question

My husband has an (over the phone) interview tomorrow with a chance for our family to move down to Montgomery. We have two small children 4, 6 and live in Canada. What are the normal past times. What are the schools like? Just about anything you can tell me. Is crime high low? The company he works for is Johnson Controls. What are nice areas to look into? Just wondering.

Answer 1

I live there. Its ghetto.Fair comes in October for about 2weeks.Civil Rights Movement happened here.A few schools are Capital Heights Junior High,Lee High School,Jeffreson Davis High School(JD).Crampton Bowl is where the football/pep rallies happen.Not alot of ppl are truly friendly. Alot of ppl are open minded down here.Alot of ppl like Rap down here.The last thing ppl were excited for is when a Walmart got built in Highland Park(neighborhood).Not really exciting down here.Most schools are crowded.About 70%black,20% white,10% other.There are 3 malls and 2 movie theaters in Montgomery.Pits are the most owned dogs in my neighborhood.People usually hate their neighbors,i did.3 films ever1 love that was filmed or Alabama are "Forrest Gump",the Rosa Parks autobiography movie and "Big Fish".I guess crime is medium. Hope ur kids have high self esteem and are sociable because after 5th. grade ppl get mean.

Answer 2

I live in Birmingham and was repeatedly offered a job in Montgomery.

Let me put it this way. If you love to eat at great restaurants and enjoy a rich and varied cultural life, then Montgomery is not the place to be. Aside from a very good Shakespeare theatre (I'll give them their due on that), Montgomery is pretty much a wide spot in the road. And public schools are terrible too. Most people in Montgomery send their kids to private schools if they can at all afford it.

Culturally, it's very much Old South in the worst sense of the word. Very insular and mistrustful of outsiders. That's not to say that you won't make friends, but it will prove more difficult.

Essentially, the place is a sleepy government town. If it weren't for the Hyundai plant it would not have a reason to exist.

However, if your husband gets offered a job in Birmingham, consider it strongly. It's really a great town in so many ways. We were delightfully surprised when we moved here from Chicago. We're never leaving. In fact, lots of people live in Birmingham's southernmost suburbs and make the daily drive to Montgomery. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes when driving the speed limit.

Overall, Alabama is a pretty neat place. The racism is not nearly what I expected to find, even though you can still find traces in the older generation. Sure, there's a lot of country people in places, but you also find sophisticated folks, too. And, as long as you recognize that things such as college football (Just do yourself a favor and pick Auburn or Alabama and kind of follow it--It's an easy way to make a lot of friends n a hurry. By the way, Auburn football is great) are just part of the culture, and can be fun to experience, then you'll be fine.

Answer 3

I was in Montgomery for only about an hour, but I liked it quite a bit. It doesn't have all that great of high culture, but it the downtown defenetly had that southern feel to it. We went to the Rosa Parks Muesem, which was nice and saw the capital building.

I know that Alabama is a really nice place though with really nice people.