“The Stirring of the Water” 11    They selected a site on the outskirts of Montgomery, which became known as Maxwell Field. While the training school was relatively short- lived, aviation remained a permanent feature of the city’s economy. Over the coming decades, Montgomery became home to two air force bases, 4 introducing a reliance on the federal government into the local economy. The increase in military personnel reshaped the city’s job market and demographics. Following the Civil War, African Americans outnumbered whites until around 1910, by which time whites had pulled even with blacks. The white population continued to grow more rapidly over the next forty years, resulting in a 1950 population of more than 110,000, with roughly 60 percent white. This increase can be attributed to an in- flux of working-class whites who greatly reshaped municipal politics as the old political machine slowly lost control of the city. The military em- ployed hundreds of Montgomery’s new residents, who had no ties to historically elite families that had monopolized local political power. The city leaders’ failure to attract and develop major manufacturing further weakened their hold. The populist Dave Birmingham capitalized on this growing distrust of political leaders in his 1953 campaign for a seat on the city commission. He went so far as to accuse politicians and city fathers of poisoning the city water supply, a claim that resonated with the suspicions of some of the town’s newer residents. With the support of an effective al- liance of a few registered African Americans and the white working class, Birmingham shocked the establishment with his election to the city com- mission. New political realities were but one indication that the city was 5 undergoing significant social change. The economy and social structure of Montgomery depended upon the affordable service labor of the region’s African American men and women. In the late 1950s, Baptist minister Ralph Abernathy estimated that service-oriented occupations accounted for 75–80 percent of the Af- rican American workforce. Approximately two-thirds of the black women in the area found employment as domestic workers. The lack of alterna- tive industrial jobs significantly limited their earning potential. According to the 1950 U.S. Census, the median family income for African Ameri- cans in Montgomery in 1949 was $908, while in Birmingham, where the availability of industrial jobs bolstered the earning power of black resi- dents, the median income was $1,609. While a small percentage of the