Making Pound Dogs Experimental: Race and Labor in the UAB Animal House

The University of Alabama’s new Medical College and Dental School in Birmingham needed new professors, buildings, and a source of cheap, quality dogs in order to function in the 1950s. In response, the long-derided City Pound, an institution primarily tasked with managing Birmingham’s roaming canines, became the site of an intense conflict between possessive university instructors, researchers, city officials, a powerful humane society, and county public health officers. This paper explores how the result—an agreement to place the pound under county control as part of a new anti-rabies campaign—exemplified the process by which city pounds in the United States during the mid-century became proto-lab supply companies feeding university animal houses. It further reveals how the UAB animal house relied on the availability of cheap Black laborers, due in large part to Alabama's heavily segregated labor market, in order to manage and produce "high quality" animals. It highlights the central importance of dog supplies and racist labor hierarchies for sustaining academic research and teaching, opening new avenues for exploring the history of race and labor in 20th century science and medicine.