 Economic competition among the new workers in the city also raised tensions.It was a rough environment of mill and mine workers in Birmingham and Bessemer, and the Ku Klux Klan was active in the 20th century, often with many police being members into the 1950s and 1960s.In a study of lynchings in the South from 1877 to 1950, Jefferson County is documented as having the highest number of lynchings of any county in Alabama.