ALABAMA

ALABAMA. Geography has had a great influence on the history of Alabama. The state is bound by Tennessee on the north, Georgia on the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and Mississippi on the west. Alabama is a state of contrasts, with mountainous regions in the north, the prairie lowlands called the Black Belt in the middle of the state, and coastal plain regions in the south. Cheaha Mountain is the highest point in the state, with an elevation of 2,407 feet.

The thirteen major rivers of Alabama construct a framework for intense agricultural production, transportation, and hydroelectric power. The Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers run southeast through the state, the Tennessee River loops through the northeastern part of the state, the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers merge in the west-central part of Alabama, and the Chattahoochee marks a portion of the eastern border with Georgia. Early on, rivers were central to the lives of the native inhabitants for accessing food supplies and for transportation. Early European settlers followed the Native Americans' pattern, establishing communities near water sources first.

Early Inhabitants

Archaeologists estimate that the first human settlements in Alabama date from around 9000 b.c. The first inhabitants lived in communities located near cave and bluff sites around the state, such as Russell Cave in Jackson County. Moundville, situated in Hale and Tuscaloosa counties on the Black Warrior River, is one of the largest prehistoric communities north of Mexico. By the 1600s, most of the Native Americans living in what would become Alabama belonged to four major nations: Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. These nations (which included the Alabama, Apalache, Coushatta, and Mobile tribes) were related through a common language, Muskogean, and many shared traditions. The Native Americans primarily lived in villages located on water sources, such as the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers. The largest group was the Creek Confederation, numbering about 22,000 when the Europeans first landed, but the effects of European communicable diseases were devastating to the Native Americans.

The state's name probably comes from the name of a Native American tribe that lived primarily in central Alabama. A major river in the state was named for this group, and the state was named for the river. Some experts believe that the name has roots in the Choctaw tongue; it is commonly translated as "thicket clearers."

European Contact

According to available documents, the first Europeans to reach Alabama were Spanish explorers Alonzo Alvares de Piñeda in 1519 and Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528. However, a 1507 German New World map depicts Mobile Bay in great detail, suggesting that an unknown individual charted the Alabama coast prior to the first Spanish explorers. Sometime in the 1540s Hernando de Soto entered the region. The treasurer from that expedition, Cabeza de Vaca, offered the first written account of the Alabama land, including the first description of the native inhabitants. A significant battle was fought at the village of Maubila between de Soto's Spaniards and Chief Tuscaloosa's (or Tascaluza's) warriors.

Don Tristán de Luna made the first attempt to establish a Spanish colony on the Alabama-Florida coast, but his efforts failed in 1561. The first permanent European settlement, Fort Louis de la Mobile, was established by Jean-Baptiste le Moyne de Bienville in 1702 at Mobile Bay (then part of Louisiana, ruled by the French). In 1717, Fort Toulouse was established on the Coosa River for trading purposes. The first African slaves arrived in Alabama in 1721, aboard the slave ship the Africane.

In 1780, during the Revolutionary War, Alabama was taken by Spain. The United States took back the Mobile area, considered the center of Spanish power, during the War of 1812. The Alabama Territory was created from Mississippi Territory land, and settlers disputed over rights to the land and fought to gain favor with the Creek Nation. The Creek War of 1813–1814 ended with the defeat of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend. On 9 August 1814, Creek leader William Wetherford surrendered to General Andrew Jackson at Fort Jackson, where he signed a treaty that ceded the Creek lands to the federal government.

Becoming a State

After the defeat of the Creek nation, "Alabama Fever" swept the land. Thousands of settlers flocked to the state, seeking the temperate climate and rich soil that proved perfect for the production of cotton. Small farmers, planters, and professionals brought families from other Piedmont regions of the Southeast. The majority of newcomers to the state were farming-class families who brought with them few slaves and limited supplies. Most settled as squatters prior to land being made available for sale by the government.

William Wyatt Bibb, a former Georgia senator, was appointed the new territorial governor of Alabama in 1817. There have been five state capitals since the 1817 Congressional act that created Alabama: St. Stephens, Huntsville, Cahaba (at the juncture of the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers), Tuscaloosa, and finally Montgomery, on the Alabama River. The state's founders felt that a river location was important for the capital. The first steamboat, The Alabama, was built in St. Stephens in 1818.

Alabama was admitted to the Union on 14 December 1819 as the twenty-second state. The first Alabama Constitution was written in 1819, and William Wyatt Bibb was publicly elected that year as the first governor of the state. The 1830 Federal Census lists Alabama's population as 309,527; 190,406 were white and 119,121 were African American (with 117,549 designated as slaves and 1,572 as free blacks).

The Plantation and War

Alabama's cotton kingdom was built by the hands, minds, and spirits of slaves brought primarily from West Africa. Slavery, called the "peculiar institution," caused complicated social and cultural patterns to evolve in the state, the effects of which are still felt in Alabama. Plantations varied in size and aimed to be self-sufficient, but most farmers in the state worked small farms and owned no slaves.

In the 1830s, Alabama politicians aligned with President Andrew Jackson and his criticisms of the Bank of America and the idea of centralized wealth and power. European settlement continued to expand, and during Clement C. Clay's tenure as governor, the Creeks were exiled from the state. In 1832 the state's first railroad, the Tuscumbia Railway, opened. Its two miles of track ran from the Tennessee River to Tuscumbia. In 1854 the Alabama Public School Act was passed, creating a statewide education system.

As an agriculturally centered state, Alabama's politics were tied to the land. The dominant political parties were the Democrats and the Whigs, with the Democratic Party generally predominating. A fundamentally Jeffersonian and proslavery philosophy guided the Alabama government in the prewar years.

The debate over states' rights became more heated through the 1850s and early 1860s, and Alabama's leading advocate was William L. Yancy. Henry W. Hillard and supporters of sectional reconciliation could not dissuade those advocating secession. On 11 January 1861, the Alabama Secession Convention passed an Ordinance of Secession, making Alabama the fourth state to secede from the Union. The influence of Jacksonian democracy on the state was profound. Alabamians generally supported individualism and a steadfast perseverance for independence, combined with perceptions that hard work was a virtue and that education and wealth lead to corruption.

After the formation of the Confederate States, a government was built in Montgomery in central Alabama, creating the "Cradle of the Confederacy" (and the "Heart of Dixie"). Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as president of the Confederate States of America there on 18 February 1861.

During the Civil War, 202 land and naval events occurred within Alabama's borders and Alabama civilian involvement was great. Not only did 90,000 to 100,000 white men fight for the Confederacy, an estimated 2,700 white men from north Alabama and as many as 10,000 blacks from the Tennessee Valley area enlisted in the Union army. During the war, as in most other Southern states, women and children assisted the Confederacy by supplying as many goods as possible, even as they maintained homes and farms while a significant portion of the working white male population was gone. Women also established clinics in communities and on the battlefield to care for wounded soldiers all across the state.

Beyond the Civil War

After the war, Alabama rewrote its constitution. In February 1868, the constitution was ratified and Alabama was readmitted to the Union. The state was put under Federal control as congressionally warranted, and the new constitution allowed blacks suffrage for the first time.

When the political and social order of the Confederacy fell in spring 1865, Alabama entered a period of upheaval and was forced to redefine itself. Tensions grew between the planter class and the small farmers, between the races, and between political factions. Alabama was riddled with losses from the war—political, financial, and social loss, as well as loss of human life. Alabamians resented the Federal troops that came into the state under President Andrew Johnson's plan of Reconstruction. The state was politically split: the anti-Confederacy contingency in northern Alabama opposed the conservatives in the south, and the racial divide created a great chasm in the state. No group in the state wanted to lose power or status. There was a period of accommodation by white southerners toward blacks, but reactions against the Civil Rights Act of 1866—granting equal rights to people of every race and color—were violent. The freed black population complicated the political structure of the state, and the acts of violence and terror reflected whites' fear that blacks and a federal presence in the state would crumble the old Alabama power. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) moved into north Alabama after its birth in Tennessee and gradually moved through the state. Although federal response to Klan actions effectively stopped the group's activity for a while, the KKK would reappear later in Alabama's history.

Bourbon Democrats, claiming to have redeemed the people of Alabama from federal Reconstructionist rule by carpetbaggers and scalawags, passed a new constitution on 16 November 1875. Political dissension and corruption, along with animosity toward federal involvement in the welfare and control of the state, made Alabama a hotbed for trouble. While slavery had been abolished, sharecropping and farm tenancy systems—established to continue the state's agricultural production—were forms of legalized slavery. After the Civil War came the first movement of blacks away from Alabama: while some former slaves chose to stay where there was work, many immediately left the land and people that had held them in bondage.

Industry emerged in Alabama in the early 1870s. The textile industry made its start in the Chattahoochee River Valley and near Huntsville. North Alabama, especially around Birmingham, was dotted with an ever-growing expanse of coal and iron mines. Birmingham would for many years be the industrial center of the state. All the resources needed to make steel were available within twenty miles of the city, drawing investors like Henry DeBardeleben and James Sloss to the area. The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI) moved its headquarters to Birmingham.

With the boom in industry, Alabama needed to strike a balance between the long-established agricultural constituency and the new industrial one. The level of poverty was intense, especially for farmers: it cost more to produce agricultural goods than they were worth. The Farmers' Alliance quickly gained ground in Alabama, creating cooperatives and becoming a voice of reform. Interest in the Populist Party grew along with reformist sentiments. The established Bourbon hegemony was threatened by the Populists' appeals to the working classes, including blacks.

The Democrats even used legal means to step around the Fifteenth Amendment, disenfranchising blacks and poor whites—thus setting in motion the widely accepted practice of legalized discrimination and violence toward blacks and, to a much lesser extent, other minority groups. In 1901 delegates from across the state met at the Constitutional Convention. They established suffrage requirements of residency, literacy, land ownership, and taxation that disenfranchised most black voters, as well many poor whites. The new Constitution of the State of Alabama was adopted on 3 September 1901.

War and the Great Depression

Alabamians rallied to the World War I effort. The state sent 86,000 men to combat; 6,400 of these were casualties. Military bases throughout the state offered training facilities to prepare soldiers for war.

As in the rest of the country, black and white women in Alabama were seriously advocating for their right to vote in the 1910s. When Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, it was made law. Alabama ratified after that point, even though it was unnecessary. Women played a significant role in Alabama during the Progressive Era, leading education reforms, prohibition, child welfare, and prison reform. Both black and white women fought to improve the social and moral well-being of the state's inhabitants. Julia S. Tutwiler was one such reformer; she is remembered for advancing the educational opportunities for women and girls.

Although the early 1920s postwar era offered riches for some, most of the state remained poor. The boll weevil had come to Alabama in 1909, eventually forcing farmers to diversify crop production because of its devastating effects on cotton. While industry was a definite presence in the state, agriculture still reigned in the years between the World Wars. Because of poor conditions for crop production, the 1920s were a stark time for farmers all across the south. These conditions were echoed throughout the country during the Great Depression.

During the depression, some Alabama politicians played a significant role in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, including the New Deal. Alabama's Senator Hugo C. Black, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, was appointed to the United States Supreme Court in 1937. One New Deal program in particular had an enormous effect on the state: the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The Great Depression was a time of such upheaval for families that many relocated to try to find work and stability. There was a mass migration of blacks leaving the state during this time and into the 1940s, when World War II's production demands offered work opportunities. New York, Chicago, Detroit, and other industrial cities offered blacks an opportunity for a better life.

World War II brought a measure of prosperity to the state. Most folks who wanted a job could find one. The Mobile Bay housed companies that built ships, and Childersburg was the home of the Alabama Ordnance Works, one of the nation's largest producers of smokeless gunpowder. Alabama sent 250,000 enlisted men to the war effort, with over 6,000 casualties.

Civil Rights

A shift occurred in Alabama's political allegiance to the Democratic Party starting in the 1940s, resulting mostly from questions and conflicts over civil rights.

As soon as federal troops left Alabama after Reconstruction, racial segregation was the understood, and eventually written, law of the state. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites were legal. But separate was not equal in Alabama, and the modern history of the state would be formed by the black struggle for equality.

When the KKK returned to Alabama in 1915, its actions were not solely directed toward blacks. Reacting to the heavy influx of immigrants into the state and the Progressive social movement, the Klan struck out against any one that seemed to threaten "traditional American values." By 1924, around 18,000 of Birmingham's 32,000 registered voters were Klan members, making the group a formidable presence.

The 1931 Scottsboro Boys incident placed Alabama and its politics in the international spotlight, raising questions about civil rights, the presence of the Communist Party, and northern political and social influence on the state. The incident started in March, when two white teenage girls riding a freight train near Scottsboro told police they had been raped by some black men on the train. Within fifteen days, nine young black men were arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to die for the alleged rapes. The sentences met with international outrage over the mob atmosphere, and many activists called for a reversal of the rulings. This incident started a social and racial revolution in Alabama that would affect the racial dynamics of the entire country.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate but equal schools were illegal. Alabama's officials chose not to enforce or even recognize this mandate. In 1955 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the University of Alabama to admit two black women who had been denied admission.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s presence in the state started when he began preaching at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. He later wrote "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" after being arrested for his involvement in nonviolent protests. On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the middle of a public bus to a white man. Her action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which crippled the city of Montgomery economically. The boycott was the first significant civil rights victory in Alabama. Black voter registration became an intense focus in the state, bringing Freedom Riders from all over the country to help with the cause.

Violence erupted in response to the civil rights movement, including bombings directed toward King and other prominent nonviolent leaders. In 1963, a bomb killed four girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham, possibly the most infamous act of violence during the civil rights movement. That same year, police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor turned his intimidation tactics, fire hoses, and attack dogs on the peaceful protesters in Birmingham.

Forced federal integration was ordered in 1963. Governor George C. Wallace stood on the stairs at the University of Alabama and professed, "Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever." Driven by what he thought people in the state wanted to hear, Wallace was vocally racist for most of his political career. He was first elected as governor of Alabama in 1962 and served four terms in that position over the next twenty years, with several unsuccessful bids at the White House.

The Selma to Montgomery March, led by King and other civil rights leaders, began in Selma on 21 March 1965 and ended four days later at the state capital. After the conclusion of the march and the speeches, Klansmen murdered a Detroit housewife as she helped take members of the march back home. This act, and others associated with voter registration drives, created a constellation of activism and violence.

The time was one of conflict, but black Alabamians and thousands of their supporters successfully birthed the movement that instigated change. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and other federal interventions, made discrimination based on race illegal.

After the Civil Rights Movement

Divided into sixty-seven counties, the land area of Alabama is 32.5 million acres. In 2000, 28 percent was used as farmland. Although cotton was no longer the dominant crop in Alabama at the end of the twentieth century, it still figured prominently. Cotton is predominantly grown in the Tennessee Valley area, and some is grown in the Black Belt, Mountain, and Plateau regions. Peanuts, soybeans, corn, peaches, and pecans are also important crops. Cattle and poultry are major agricultural assets as well.

Forests are one of Alabama's most important agricultural resources. The timber industry is influential throughout all regions of the state, and it is vital to the state's economy. Other natural resources that figure into the state's economy are natural gas, sand and gravel, lime, clay, and coal.

Alabama has also made historic contributions to space exploration. The first U.S. satellite, Explorer I (launched on 31 January 1958), was developed in Huntsville. The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, established in 1960, has played a significant role in the development of the space shuttle program and the space station.

At the end of the twentieth century, Alabama's rich resources made the state attractive to new industry. Tuscaloosa is known for electronics manufacturing, and Birmingham is home to cutting-edge biomedical research and engineering, and to telecommunications firms. New car manufacturing industries continued to come to the state. In 1989, the manufacturing sector of the state's economy employed 24 percent of Alabama's total workforce.

Alabama's rivers continue to be important to the state, especially for waterborne commerce. Alabama has more than 1,500 miles of navigable inland waterways. The Port of Mobile is a point of international shipping.

Alabama's population grew throughout the last thirty years of the century: 1970's population was 3,444,165, and 1990's population was 4,040,587. According to the 2000 Federal Census, there were 4,447,100 people living in Alabama, with the largest portion of the population aged 35 to 44 years old (685,512). There were 3,162,808 Alabamians who identified as white, 1,155,930 as black, 75,830 as Hispanic or Latino, 31,346 as Asian, 22,430 as American Indian and Alaska Native, and 1,409 as Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Flynt, J. Wayne. Poor but Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.

Jackson, Harvey H., III. Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Alabama. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995.

Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Letwin, Daniel. The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878–1921. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Knopf, 1998.

McKiven, Henry M., Jr. Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Rogers, William Warren, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flynt. Alabama: The History of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994.

KyesStevens

See alsoBourbons ; Civil Rights Movement ; Desegregation ; Ku Klux Klan ; Reconstruction ; Scottsboro Case ; South, the ; Tribes: Southeastern .

Alabama

Country group

For the Record…

Breaking through Style Barriers

Success Follows Alabama into the ‘90s

Selected discography

Sources

Since it exploded onto the scene in the early 1980s, Alabama has been one of the most popular, best-selling, and most vilified groups in country music—all despite scorn by critics. Michael Bane of the Encyclopedia of Country Music wrote, “it was the country music equivalent of fingernails on a chalk board.” On the other hand, said Bane, “when the music worked—Tennessee River’ or ‘She and I’—it transcended its genre.” Part of the negative criticism was probably a normal critic’s reaction to a large, loyal and fanatical audience. Between 1980 and 1997 the band has sold more than 57 million records worldwide, including ten platinum, three double platinum, three quadruple platinum albums and one quintuple platinum album. They had 41 number one singles, before sales began to slump in the nineties. In other words, instead of multi-platinum sellers they are producing mere million seller albums.

“The first country music supergroup,” as Michael Bane called Alabama, got its start when cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry began singing together in the Lookout Mountain Holiness Church up in the hills near the

For the Record…

Members include Jeffrey Alan Cook (born August 27, 1949, Fort Payne, AL; married with one child. Education: Alabama State Technical College, Gadsden, AL), guitar, fiddle, and vocals; Teddy Wayne Gentry (born January 22, 1952, Fort Payne, AL; married with two children), bass and vocals; Mark Joel Herndon (born May 11, 1955, Springfield MA; married with one child), drums; Randy Yueull Owen (born December 13, 1949, Fort Payne, AL; married with three children. Education: Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, AL), vocals and guitar.

Cook, Gentry, and Owen formed band Young Country, 1969; changed name to Wildcountry, 1973; changed name to Alabama, 1977; Herndon joined band, 1979.

Awards: Cashbox “New Vocal Group of the Year” Album and Single, 1980; Billboard, “New Group of the Year,” 1981; Country Music Association, “Entertainer of the Year,” 1982-84; Academy of Country Music, “Entertainer of the Year,” 1982-86; Grammy for Mountain Music, 1983; Billboard, “Top Overall Artist,” 1983; Grammy for The Closer You Get, 1984; Inducted into Alabama Hall of Fame, 1985; Academy of Country Music “Artist of the Decade,” 1980-89; Cashbox “Artist of the Decade,” 1980-89; American Music Award, “Favorite Country Group,” 1982, 1983, 1991-96.

Addresses: Home —Myrtle Beach, SC. Record company— -RCA, One Music Circle, Nashville, TN 37203-4301. Management —Barbara Hardin, Dale Morris & Associates, Inc., 118 16th Avenue South, Suite 201, Nashville, TN 37203-3104. Public relations— Greg Fowles, Alabama Band Promotions, 101 Glenn Blvd. S., Fort Payne, AL 35967. Website —www.wildcountry.com

Georgia state line. When they reached their teens they hooked up with another cousin, Jeff Cook, and started playing together around Fort Payne, Alabama. Their band, Young Country, played whatever gigs it could find: local dances, bars, and picnics. Their first paying job was at the American Legion hall where they earned the princely sum of $5.37 each. An amusement park in the area hired them not long afterwards and they played there three years running, backing up the various artists passing through town, including some from the Grand Opry. Thanks to a local talent show they won, the three cousins were able to visit the Opry themselves.

While playing music on nights and weekends, the band members held down a variety of day jobs, including hanging dry wall, picking cotton, fixing typewriters, and deejaying. In 1973, despite the skepticism of family and friends they decided to quit their day jobs and devote themselves full-time to music. As if to make the attitude official they renamed themselves Wildcountry and headed off for the wild life in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

“When we first got to Myrtle Beach it was an absolute shock,” Randy Owen told the Washington Post “People stayed up all night, dancing and playing music, and where we came from nothing like that was going on. People were on vacation and they were acting wild.” They played at various clubs before finally settling in at the Bowery, a sweaty joint so small there wasn’t even room for dancing. The club was the center of the craziness in Myrtle Beach, and it was where Alabama cut its teeth musically. They did have one advantage, however: they were the only country band in town. But the money they earned came from tips exclusively, so pleasing the crowds was their first priority. The audience could be completely different from one night to the next, demanding anything from rock to R&B to soul music. Wildcountry had to be prepared to play all of it. But, as Owen told the Post, they “drew the line at disco.”

The Bowery was the band’s musical higher education; they learned all the different styles, honing their trademark vocal harmonies to a sharp edge. According to Owen, it taught him that alead singer couldn’t simply stand around and sing, he had to move around on stage. And it helped build their stamina, playing the bar seven years, every night between March and mid-September, five hours at a stretch. “We’d play ‘til we got blisters. Then we’d play ‘til the blisters popped,” recalled Teddy Gentry in the Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia, “but it sure beat working the swing shift at the sock factory.”

By 1977, they were the most popular thing in Myrtle Beach. Fans were traveling to the Bowery from New England and the Midwest in order to hear the band play. That same year they changed their name once and for all to Alabama, and added drummer Mark Herndon two years later. Their first record, which they financed themselves, was released in the late seventies and reached a respectable #77 on the charts. They paid to have some albums pressed as well and would sell them directly to their fans from the stage. Unfortunately, they had been unable to interest any of the larger Nashville record companies in signing them. It wasn’t until their third single, “My Home’s in Alabama,” shot up to the Top 5 and they were asked to perform at the New Faces show at Nashville’s annual Country Radio Seminar that their luck changed.

Breaking through Style Barriers

They must have wondered at first if it was really changing. “Me and Jeff and Teddy had to stand up on stage without our instruments and sing,” Owen told Billboard’s Chet Flippo, “and Mark wasn’t on stage at all. I wrote the song but I wasn’t allowed to play on it.” The reason was that the country music establishment at the time still had a heavy prejudice against “bands.” Groups that sang, like the Oak Ridge Boys or the Statler Brothers, were perfectly acceptable; but bands that sang and played their own instruments were associated with rock ‘n’ roll, and rock was strictly taboo. Despite the handicap, Alabama electrified the DJs with their renditions of “My Home’s in Alabama” and “Tennessee River.” RCA responded by singing the band and released the latter tune as their first single. It was an immediate hit and before long it was at the very top of the country charts. RCA’s commitment to aggressively promoting Alabama’s first album paid off as well. Owen later described RCA’s modest expectations to Chet Flippo: “At the beginning, RCA said that if we sold 60,000 albums, they would consider signing us a good deal.” The album took off almost immediately and ended up selling over two million copies.

The first Alabama albums, influenced by their work at the Bowery, had a style that Michael Bane, in The Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia called typical of the pre-Garth Brooks era in country music: “the hardshell Southern bar music filtered through a distinct 1960s pop group sensibility—sort of The Allman Brothers meet The Beatles.” By the mid-eighties, with the release of albums like Roll On (1984) and 40 Hour Week (1985), the band had moved toward a more traditional, blue collar country sound. It did not hurt their popularity though—those two albums sold a combined five million plus units and produced eight number one singles.

However one feels about their music, their is no denying that Alabama changed the course of country music. The elements they introduced from other popular music, especially rock, ended the dominance of the traditional Nashville sound. The synthesis they created with rock was a bridge that enabled country to reach a new generation of fans too, new fans country desperately needed at the time. Suddenly country became acceptable across the nation. And the new fanswere attracted by precisely those qualities that Nashville considered flaws. Naturally, once the millions started rolling in, they weren’t flaws any longer. The fact that they were the biggest money machine country music had ever seen was, according to the Country Music Foundation’s Country: The Music and the Musicians, “Alabama’s greatest contribution to country music: Its popularity, especially during the industry’s lean years, 1982 to 1986. Alabama’s profitability helped RCA take chances on newer performers and to keep deserving but commercially shaky acts, like Gail Davies, on the roster.”

Those new fans eventually became more knowledgeable and discriminating about country music, however. As they made a more purist breed of artist popular, typified by Garth Brooks and Dwight Yoakam, in the late eighties, Alabama’s fortunes declined, although they did manage to maintain a large and loyal fan base. The band reciprocates that loyalty, taking time after each show to meet fans personally and sign autographs. Their merchandise is very popular, and Alabama was one of the very first country groups to aggressively pursue this avenue of money-making; their well-organized fans are a natural market. The official Alabama fan club has a quarter of a million members, and charges no dues. But members receive, together with regular newsletters, catalogs of Alabama T-shirts, hats, mugs, posters, belts, and more.

Success Follows Alabama into the ‘90s

By the 1990s the band had become an institution: they had won two Grammys and been voted the “Artist of the Decade” by the Academy of Country Music. Their career began to run on automatic. RCA began feeding them songs, as the band’s own songwriting was discouraged. When In Pictures was released in 1995 only one cut was an Alabama composition. But around that time they gave up their plane and started touring by bus again, to have time to unwind between shows. The extra off-time on the road gave them more time together and before long the songs were flowing like never before.

When RCA executives visited Fort Payne to talk about a new Alabama album in 1996, they had briefcases full of music like always, but Owen and the band insisted on playing some of their own songs instead. Dancin’on the Boulevard, released in 1997, contained seven songs written by Alabama. The album was one of their freshest in years, a mix of styles that looked back to their years playing for tips in Myrtle Beach. With this release, Alabama felt fully in charge of their own career again.

Selected discography

My Heart’s in Alabama, RCA, 1980.

Feels So Right, RCA, 1981.

Mountain Music, RCA, 1982.

The Closer You Get, RCA, 1983.

Roll On, RCA, 1984.

40 Hour Week, RCA, 1986.

Alabama Christmas, RCA, 1986.

Alabama’s Greatest Hits, RCA, 1986.

Cheap Seats, RCA, 1993.

In Pictures, RCA, 1995.

Dancin’ on the Boulevard, RCA, 1997.

Sources

Books

The Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia, NY Times Books, 1994.

Country: The Music and the Musicians, Abbeville Press, 1988.

Periodicals

Billboard, September 7, 1985; May 23, 1992; September 2, 1995; March 1, 1997.

Close-Up, June 1997.

New Country, July 1997.

Washington Post, September 12, 1997.

Online

www.wildcountry.com

Additional information was provided by RCA publicity materials.

—Gerald E. Brennan

Alabama ăləbăm´ə , state in the southeastern United States. It is bordered by Tennessee (N), Georgia (E), Florida and the Gulf of Mexico (S), and Mississippi (W).

Facts and Figures

Area, 51,609 sq mi (133,677 sq km). Pop. (2000) 4,447,100, a 10.1% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Montgomery. Largest city, Birmingham. Statehood, Dec. 14, 1819 (22d state). Highest pt., Cheaha Mt., 2,407 ft (734 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Heart of Dixie. Motto, We Dare Defend Our Rights. State bird, yellowhammer. State flower, camellia. State tree, Southern (longleaf) pine. Abbr., Ala.; AL

Geography

Except for the mountainous section in the northeast (the southern end of the Cumberland Plateau) Alabama is a rolling plain with an average elevation of c.500 ft (150 m) in two geologic regions—the Appalachian Piedmont above the fall line and the coastal plain below. These plains, drained by the Alabama and the Tombigbee rivers and their tributaries, are primarily devoted to agriculture. Montgomery is the capital and Birmingham the largest city of Alabama. Mobile is the state's major seaport. Places of interest in Alabama include Russell Cave National Monument, near Bridgeport, the site of caves that were inhabited almost continuously from 6000 BC to AD 1650, and Mound State Monument, near Tuscaloosa, the site of numerous early Native American mounds.

Economy

The central Black Belt , formerly a principal cotton-growing area, is now employed largely for raising poultry (the state ranks third in U.S. broiler chicken production) and cattle, Alabama's most valuable agricultural products. Cotton is still the chief crop; greenhouse plants, peanuts, and vegetables are also important.

Although about half of Alabama's area is devoted to agriculture, manufacturing accounts for a larger share of the state's income. Where the Tennessee River loops across the north, hydroelectric power from the Tennessee Valley Authority has converted much agricultural land to industrial uses. Alabama has the second most extensive (after Georgia) forests in the contiguous United States, and pulp and paper products lead manufactures. Other major industries produce chemicals, electronics, textiles, processed foods, and automobiles. Oil and gas, cement, and stone lead mineral production; the state's once-prominent coal industry is gradually declining. The Marshall NASA Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, Maxwell Air Force Base, and Forts Rucker and McClellan contribute significantly to the economy.

Government, Politics, and Higher Education

Alabama's constitution, adopted in 1901, provides for an elected governor and a bicameral legislature that is made up of a 35-member senate and a 105-member house of representatives. The state elects two senators and seven representatives to the U.S. Congress and has nine electoral votes.

Alabama politics was dominated by the Democratic party from Reconstruction until the 1980s, when Harold Guy Hunt became (1986) the first Republican to be elected governor in over a century. Since then, the two parties have tended to alternate control of the governorship. In 1998, Democrat Don Siegelman was elected governor, but he narrowly lost the office to Republican Bob Riley in 2002. Riley was reelected in 2006, and in 2010 Robert Bentley, a Republican, was elected to succeed Riley.

Among Alabama's educational institutions are the Univ. of Alabama , at Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville; Auburn Univ. , at Auburn; Birmingham-Southern College and Howard College, at Birmingham; Huntingdon College, at Montgomery; the Univ. of Montevallo, at Montevallo; and Tuskegee Univ. , at Tuskegee.

History

Early History to Statehood

Agriculture was practiced by groups such as the Creeks and Cherokee in the east, and the Choctaws and Chickasaws in the west when Spanish explorers arrived. Cabeza de Vaca (and possibly Pánfilo de Narvaez) visited Alabama in 1528, and Hernando De Soto spent some time in the region in 1540. European settlement was begun, however, not by the Spanish but by the French in the Mobile area in 1702. The French and British contended for the furs gathered by Native Americans. In 1763 the region passed to the British, who were victorious over France and Spain in the French and Indian Wars .

At the close of the American Revolution, Great Britain ceded (1783) to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi except the Floridas (see West Florida Controversy ). The Territory of Mississippi, which included parts of present-day Alabama, was set up in 1798, but the land was still largely a wilderness with a considerable fur trade, centered at Saint Stephens, and with only the beginnings of cotton cultivation.

Both the fur trade and cotton production were interrupted during the War of 1812, when part of the Creek Confederacy began attacking under William Weatherford. Andrew Jackson defeated a group of Native Americans at Horseshoe Bend on Mar. 27, 1814. That victory, coupled with the British demand for cotton, ushered in a period of heavy settlement. New settlers poured into the Alabama region, especially from Georgia and Tennessee. The wealthy newcomers settled in the fertile bottomlands and established large plantations based on slave labor, which helped to produce cotton for the markets of Southern ports. Poorer newcomers took over less fertile uplands, where they eked out a living. The population grew to such an extent that the Territory of Alabama, taking Saint Stephens as its capital, was set up in 1817 with William W. Bibb as governor; two years later it became a state.

Civil War and Reconstruction

In Alabama the slave-owning planters were dominant because of the prosperous cotton crop, and as the Civil War loomed closer, the support of Southern rights and secession sentiment grew under the urging of "fire-eaters" such as William L. Yancey. Alabama broke away from the Union on Jan. 11, 1861, when its second constitutional convention passed the ordinance of secession. The government of the Confederacy was organized at Montgomery on Feb. 4, 1861. Union troops held the Tennessee valley after 1862. One of the principal naval battles of the war was won by Admiral D. G. Farragut in Mobile Bay in 1864, but most of the state was not occupied in force until 1865. Alabama ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, but in 1867 it refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and was placed under military rule. That rule ended the following year when a new state legislature operating under a new constitution approved the Fourteenth Amendment. However, federal troops did not leave Alabama until 1876, and African Americans continued to suffer enormous oppression for decades.

In the Reconstruction era Alabama's government was dominated by the so-called carpetbaggers and scalawags , and corruption was widespread. Few reforms emerged during the period; but the mining of coal and iron was expanded by Daniel Pratt and his successor, H. F. De Bardeleben, marking the rise of industry in Alabama.

Industrialization

The railroads built during Reconstruction were a major impetus to the industrialization of Alabama's economy. Birmingham was founded in 1870, and its first blast furnace began operations in 1880. The cotton textile industry developed in the 1880s. At that time farming was still dominant, and the fortunes of the state rose and fell with the market price of cotton. Constant use and erosion, however, began to exhaust the land.

Diversification of crops, much advocated in the 20th cent., was accelerated in 1915 when the boll weevil invaded the cotton fields and the demand during World War I brought high prices for food crops. The Great Depression and the agricultural program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal caused more farmers to produce subsistence crops and took more land away from the wasting cotton culture. Beginning in the 1920s, there was a large migration of African Americans out of the state to northern manufacturing centers.

Industrialization was greatly increased during World War II with the appearance of factories producing machines, munitions, powder, and other war supplies. Huntsville became a center for rocket research, and its population more than quadrupled between 1950 and 1960. Industrialization and commerce increased throughout the state. Adding impetus to that growth was an ambitious development program of Alabama's inland waterways to provide cheap water transportation, more hydroelectric power, and flood-control measures.

The Integration Years to the Present

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision ruling racial segregation in public elementary and secondary schools unconstitutional, and the decision was followed by an intensification of racial tension (see integration ). Alabama has witnessed many civil-rights protests, including a year-long black boycott of public buses in Montgomery in 1955–56 to protest segregated seating and a Freedom March from Montgomery to Selma led by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965.

George C. Wallace , a Democrat elected governor in 1962, fought the federally ordered integration of schools in Alabama. He was reelected three times: 1970, 1974, and 1982, the final time with substantial African-American support. In 1968 he entered the U.S. presidential race as the candidate of the American Independent party. He ran for the presidency twice more—in 1972 and 1976.

Since the late 1970s, public attention has largely shifted to economic issues, and major efforts have been made to achieve growth by encouraging further diversification of manufacturing industries. A notable success in this campaign was the building by Mercedes-Benz of auto assembly plant in Alabama. The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway , connecting the port of Mobile with the industries that have developed in N Alabama and elsewhere along the Tennessee, opened in 1985. In 1995 Hurricane Opal caused extensive damage in Alabama as far north as Montgomery, and parts of the state suffered again in 2004 from Hurricane Ivan and in 2005 from Katrina.

Bibliography

See C. P. Denman, The Secession Movement in Alabama (1933, repr. 1971); L. Griffith, Alabama: A Documentary History to 1900 (rev. ed. 1972); Federal Writers' Project, Alabama: A Guide to the Deep South (1941, repr. 1973); N. G. Lineback and C. T. Traylor, ed., Atlas of Alabama (1973); R. A. Thigpen, Alabama Government Manual (7th ed. 1986); S. W. Wiggins, ed., From Civil War to Civil Rights, 1860–1960 (1987).

Alabama

Country group

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

Alabama is the most successful country group of the 1980s in terms of albums sold and awards bestowed. Consisting of three cousins born in Alabama—Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, and Jeff Cook—and a Massachusetts-born drummer, Mark Herndon, the band won Entertainer of the Year honors from the Country Music Association three consecutive years, making history as the first multi-member group to earn the coveted award. Recognition and million-selling albums have come after years of struggle for Alabama; according to Suzan Crane in Country Music magazine, the band’s music “has the unpretentious sincerity of the truest country tune.”

Saturday Evening Post contributor Bob Allen likewise commented that because of the band’s many fallow years before success came, the music “is redolent of a sense of belonging, of a sense of home and of gratitude for the emotional ties that bind.” Bill C. Malone elaborated on Alabama’s sound in his book Country Music U.S.A.: “Alabama discovered a winning commercial formula by judiciously mixing romantic ballads such as

For the Record…

Originally formed in Fort Payne, Ala., in 1969 as Wild Country; name changed to Alabama, 1977; original group members include Randy Owen (born 1949 in Fort Payne, Ala.), guitar and vocals;Teddy Gentry (born 1952 in Fort Payne, Ala.), bass and vocals; Jeff Cook (born 1949 in Fort Payne, Ala.), guitar and keyboards. Mark Herndon (born 1955 in Massachusetts) joined Alabama as its sixth drummer in 1979 (also sings).

Awards: Named instrumental group of the year and vocal group of the year by Country Music Association, 1982; entertainer of the year awards from County Music Association, 1982, 1983, and 1984; entertainer of the year awards from Academy of Country Music, 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985; named “country artist of the 1980s” by Academy of Country Music, 1989.

Addresses: Management —c/o Dale Morris Management, 818 19th Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37203. Record company— RCA Records 1133 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036-6758.

‘Feels So Right’ and ‘An Old Flame Burning in Your Heart’ with rousing uptempoed tunes like ‘Mountain Music’ and ‘Tennessee River.’ The results have been a balanced and fruitful melange which has brought Alabama an enthusiastic and broad audience of both mainstream country listeners and youthful devotees.”

Three of Alabama’s four principal members were born and raised near Fort Payne, a small town in the Appalachian region of Alabama. Gentry and Owen lived on neighboring farms, where they helped to eke a bare subsistance living from the thin soil. Gentry told the Saturday Evening Post that neither family could afford such basics as indoor plumbing, television, or radio. As boyhood chums, Gentry and Owen sang together at the Lookout Mountain Pentecostal Holiness Church; both came from musical families in the rural gospel tradition. In high school the boys met a distantly related cousin, Jeff Cook, whose Fort Payne family was slightly more affluent.

Cook owned a veritable “arsenal of musical equipment,” to quote Crane, and he teamed with his country relatives to form a band. Their first performance in a local talent show resulted in a first prize—tickets to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. Soon they were playing at theme parks and in small lounges in the vicinity of Fort Payne. Although they wanted to be full-time musicians, they took salaried jobs as carpet layers and as an electrician in order to make ends meet. They shared a rented house, where they spent their off-hours practicing and composing music. Cook told Country Music that late at night, “even with the lights off we’d lay there in the dark and sing until one by one we’d drift off to sleep.”

Finally, in 1972, the young men decided to quit their secure jobs to devote themselves entirely to the band. Calling themselves Wild Country, they hit the road in a battered Dodge van, playing gigs at Holiday Inns and honky tonk bars all across the South. One regular venue was The Bowery, in the seaside resort of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; the band members would perform and then sell albums they had produced at their own expense. No one in Alabama remembers those lean years with any fondness. “After six months another group would’ve given up,” Owen told People magazine. “We started playing music as a business rather than just treating it like a big party.” Cook told the Saturday Evening Post: “We had just about every reason to quit. But we went on anyhow.”

Wild Country changed its name to Alabama in 1977. Cook gave several reasons for the switch to the Saturday Evening Post: “Alabama is a good short name, and you can’ copyright a state name. It’s also a good alphabetical place to be in a music store. That’s the first album that’s gonna be in there.” In 1979 drummer Rick Scott left the band and was replaced by Mark Herndon. Within six months Alabama had its first recording contract. Dallas-based MDJ Records released the single “I Wanna Come Over,” and the song made the top thirty on the country charts. The group’s debut professionally produced album, My Home’s in Alabama (1980), also hit the country charts quickly and remained there for thirteen weeks. In the wake of that success, Alabama signed with RCA and became, in four short years, the best selling group in the history of country music.

Crane wrote that Alabama’s lyrics “take the listener on a journey through their past; bringing us to their home, introducing us to their lovers, and inviting us to share some of their experiences. It’s a scenic ride on American roads and through human emotions. The music won’t allow you to stay in one place too long, though, as tempos and sentiments change with every song. You get to like these boys on vinyl, their honesty and integrity, and especially their loyalty to their roots.”

By all accounts the members of Alabama have remained as down-home genuine as their music. They all still live in Fort Payne, now with their wives and children; they do an annual benefit concert that helps finance numerous local charities, and they forbid public drinking among their retinue during concerts. According to Allen, “You can call it country or you can call it rock, but one thing is certain: Alabama will never put on a show you couldn’t take your children to see.”

Owen explained the band’s philosophy in the Saturday Evening Post: “To me, all these awards we’ve won are something to live up to,” he said. “We’re not a bunch of angels, by any means. But we do believe in promoting the positive things … the kinds of things you’ve got to be aware of as far as the way you live your life.” Having earned country music’s most prestigious awards for songs they have written and performed themselves, Alabama’s members have achieved their greatest goals. Owens told People, however, that he and his partners still nurture ambitions for the future. He called the country music business “a never ending process of wanting to be bigger and go further.”

Selected discography

My Home’s in Alabama, RCA, 1980.

Feels So Right, RCA, 1981.

Mountain Music, RCA, 1982.

The Closer You Get, RCA, 1983.

Roll On, RCA, 1984.

Greatest Hits, RCA, 1986.

The Touch, RCA, 1986.

Just Us, RCA, 1987.

Southern Star, RCA, 1989.

Also recorded Alabama Christmas and 40 Hour Week, both with RCA.

Sources

Books

Malone, Bill C., Country Music U.S.A., revised and enlarged edition, University of Texas Press, 1985.

Periodicals

Country Music, October, 1980.

People, May 3, 1982.

Saturday Evening Post, May, 1985.

—Anne Janette Johnson

ALABAMA

Formed: 1969, Fort Payne, Alabama; Disbanded 2003

Members: Jeff Cook (born Fort Payne, Alabama, 27 August 1949); Teddy Gentry (born Fort Payne, Alabama, 22 January 1952); Mark Herndon (born Springfield, Massachusetts, 11 May 1955); Randy Owen (born Fort Payne, Alabama, 14 December 1949).

Genre: Country, Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Pass It on Down (1990)

Hit songs since 1990: "I'm in a Hurry (and Don't Know Why)," "Reckless," "Sad Lookin' Moon"

Combining country songwriting with the easy percussive sound of pop and rock, Alabama emerged as the most commercially successful country band of the 1980s, scoring twenty-seven number one singles over the course of the decade. Often dismissed by critics because of their slick style, Alabama deserve credit for popularizing the concept of the musical group within mainstream country, a genre in which most stars had been single vocalists during the 1960s and 1970s.

The key to Alabama's enduring appeal was its consistency. Although its albums of the early 1990s made a few concessions to the tougher neotraditionalist sound popular during the era, Alabama's musical foundation of electric bass, hard drums, and cheerful harmony singing did not change. Likewise, the durable appearance of its members—long hair, beards, and blue jeans—cultivated a "just folks" image that appealed to the band's working-class fan base. Blending predictability with professionalism, Alabama continued to score sizable hits throughout the 1990s.

The first cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry, who grew up on separate cotton farms on Alabama's Lookout Mountain, formed the first incarnation of the group in 1969, naming it Young Country. Adding a third cousin, Jeff Cook, to its lineup, Young Country won first prize at a high school talent contest, performing a song by country star Merle Haggard. In 1972, after their members graduated from college, the band adopted the name Wildcountry and began attracting a loyal following through appearances in bars in the southeastern United States. Making one final name change to Alabama in 1977, the group achieved a minor country hit, "I Wanna Be with You Tonight," for the small GRT label. Unfortunately, GRT declared bankruptcy soon after, and, because of hidden contractual obligations, the band was prevented from recording for the next two years.

After addding the talents of the rock drummer Mark Herndon, Alabama reemerged in 1979 with the hit "I Wanna Come Over," released on the small MDJ label. The following year Alabama was signed by the major label RCA and quickly earned a number one country hit, "Tennessee River" (1980).

During the 1980s Alabama issued a slew of albums, each divided thematically between devotional ballads and nostalgic odes to the band's southern upbringing. Of these albums, Mountain Music (1982) is often cited by critics as the finest. The title track, sporting the steady kick of Herndon's drums, became a crossover pop hit because of its smooth, radio-groomed sound. Meanwhile, the string-drenched "Close Enough to Perfect" extols traditional marital values, a theme that resurfaced in the band's later work. Although none of the band's members were especially strong vocalists, their voices blended well together, creating an appealing harmony sound that recalled 1970s pop groups such as Three Dog Night. Despite the group's unprecedented chart success, critics were, for the most part, unkind. The 1982 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, for example, characterized the band's music as "flaccid country-rock." Although albums such as The Touch (1986) and Just Us (1987) sounded even slicker than their predecessors, the band returned to form with Southern Star (1989). Featuring production assistance from R&B keyboardist Barry Beckett, the album is enlivened by traditional-sounding harmonica and banjo on tracks such as "High Cotton."

By the early 1990s Alabama's albums were incorporating a slightly harder-edged sound that reflected neotraditionalism, a popular movement that returned country to a more basic, roots-oriented sound built upon fiddles, drums, and acoustic guitar. "I'm in a Hurry (and Don't Know Why)" (1992) uses this style to achieve a loose, free-spirited quality that contrasts favorably with the band's earlier recordings. At the same time Alabama continued to hit with syrupy ballads such as "Once upon a Lifetime" (1993), in which a father speculates on how his "first born" views the world: "through the innocence you see/the value of a family." Often the group's members displayed their true talent on nonhit album tracks, which allowed them a greater sense of freedom from the dictates of formula. Although In Pictures (1995) promotes the band's standard combination of religion and romance on the hit "The Maker Said Take Her," it also contains "I've Loved a Lot More Than I've Hurt," a rewarding slice of down-home philosophy. Set against gently strumming guitar and rustic-sounding barrel-house piano, the song conveys the wise, seasoned perspective of an aged romantic: "I've hurt a little now and then / But once you're broke you learn to bend." Likewise, "A Better World for Love," from Cheap Seats (1993), is a restrained, ruminative ballad, an anomaly within Alabama's catalog.

By 2001 Alabama no longer scored as high on the charts as it had in the 1980s and 1990s, but they continued to release successful albums such as When It All Goes South (2001). By this time critics observed that the group's lyrical emphasis on nostalgia and southern values was sounding dated, even inappropriate, within the modern climate of multicultural awareness. The album's title track, for example, seems to extol southern Confederate ideology with lines such as "Get yourself some rebel pride." Elsewhere, the song culls slogans that have often been used by racist and segregationist groups: "It really don't matter what state you're in / Some day the South's gonna rise again." While of dubious sensitivity in a thematic sense, "When It All Goes South" benefits from a rhythmic, funky supporting band. The album also features a strong track in "Wonderful Waste of Time," a breezy song whose gentle, Caribbean feel is enhanced by a full-bodied horn section. In 2003, after enjoying more than twenty-five years of success, Alabama's members made the decision to disband.

Alabama's rock-influenced sound and radio-friendly harmonies paved the way for the success of 1990s groups such as Lonestar and the Mavericks. Maintaining a reputation for consistency and professionalism, Alabama deviated little from the successful formula they developed during the 1980s and 1990s, performing songs of tradition and devotion with an assured, polished sound.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

My Home's in Alabama (RCA, 1980); Mountain Music (RCA, 1982); Southern Star (RCA, 1989); Pass It on Down (RCA, 1990); American Pride (RCA, 1992); Cheap Seats (RCA, 1993); In Pictures (RCA, 1995); Twentieth Century (RCA, 1999); When It All Goes South (RCA, 2001).

david freeland

ALABAMA

ALABAMA. In August 1861, James D. Bulloch, a Confederate naval agent, contracted with the Laird shipyard of Liverpool, England, to build a steam sloop-of-war. Known only as "number 290," in order to conceal its true identity, the vessel slipped away on its first shakedown cruise in July 1862, never returning to port. After, traveling to the Azores, the ship was armed and commissioned the Confederate commerce raider C.S.S. Alabama. Commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes, the Alabama left a path of destruction from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, sinking over sixty U.S. merchant vessels and one Union warship, the U.S.S. Hatteras. After twenty consecutive months at sea, and in need of extensive repairs, the Alabama set sail for France to secure dry-dock facilities where the ship could be overhauled. When the ship dropped anchor at the port of Cherbourg on 10 June 1864, news of the Alabama's arrival in France spread quickly across Europe. Just four days later, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, commanded by Captain John S. Winslow, reached Cherbourg and took up post outside of the harbor in neutral waters. With no avenue of escape, and in spite of its poor condition, the Alabama sailed out to give battle to the Kearsarge on 19 June. As the two vessels closed on one another at a high speed, the Alabama opened fire first with no effect. The return salvo of the Kearsarge forced the Alabama to turn hard to port, resulting in both vessels exchanging broadsides as they steamed in a series of circles around one another. One hour later, with massive holes opened in its sides at the waterline, the Alabama sank. Captain Semmes and forty-one members of the crew were able to escape to England aboard the British yacht Deer-hound. During the course of her brief career the Alabama had wreaked havoc on the American merchant marine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1894–1922. Ser. 1, v. 1–27; ser. 2, v. 1–3.

Robinson, Charles M. Shark of the Confederacy: The Story of the C.S.S. Alabama. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995.

Semmes, Raphael. Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States. Secaucus, N.J.: Blue and Grey Press, 1987.

GeneBarnett

See alsoCivil War ; Navy, Confederate ; Warships .

ALABAMA

Birmingham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Mobile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Montgomery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The State in Brief

Nickname: Heart of Dixie; Camellia State

Motto: We dare defend our rights

Flower: Camellia

Bird: Yellowhammer

Area: 50,744 square miles (2000; U.S. rank: 30th)

Elevation: Ranges from sea level to 2,407 feet

Climate: Subtropical and humid; summers are long and hot, winters mild, rainfall abundant

Admitted to Union: December 14, 1819

Capital: Montgomery

Head Official: Governor Bob Riley (R) (until 2006)

Population

1980: 3,894,000

1990: 4,040,587

2000: 4,447,100

2003 estimate: 4,500,752

Percent change, 1990–2000: 10.1%

Percent change, 2000–2003: 1.2%

U.S. rank in 2003: 23rd

Percent of residents born in state: 73.4% (2000)

Density: 87.6 people per square mile (2000)

2002 FBI Crime Index Total: 200,331

Racial and Ethnic Characteristics (2000)

White: 3,162,808

Black or African American: 1,155,930

American Indian and Alaska Native: 22,430

Asian: 31,346

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1,409

Hispanic or Latino (may be of any race): 75,830

Other: 28,998

Age Characteristics (2000)

Population under 5 years old: 295,992

Population 5 to 19 years old: 960,177

Percent of population 65 years and over: 13.0%

Median age: 35.8 years (2000)

Vital Statistics

Total number of births (2003): 59,356

Total number of deaths (2003): 46,598 (infant deaths, 519)

AIDS cases reported through 2003: 7,607

Economy

Major industries: Paper products, agriculture, chemicals, textiles, lumber, wood, metals, electronics, automobiles, food processing

Unemployment rate: 5.2% (November 2004)

Per capita income: $26,276 (2003; U.S. rank: 42nd)

Median household income: $37,419 (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Percentage of persons below poverty level: 15.1% (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Income tax rate: Ranges from 2.0 to 5.0%

Sales tax rate: 4.0%

Alabama, a cruiser of the American Confederate States Navy built by the Laird Company of Birkenhead in 1862 under a contract with Commander James Bulloch of the Confederate Navy. She was a three-masted schooner with auxiliary steam propulsion. The British government, which had declared its neutrality in the American Civil War (1861–5), issued an order of detention on her. However, before the officers enforcing this order could reach Birkenhead the ship steamed down the Mersey without clearance but with a party of ladies and musicians on board, ostensibly to carry out steaming trials. In the open sea she headed for Holyhead, landed her passengers, and, easily eluding the pursuing Federal frigate Tuscaloosa, made for the Azores, where she picked up her armament which had been brought from Liverpool in two British ships. Under the command of Captain Raphael Semmes, she swept the seas of Federal shipping for two years until, on 19 June 1864, she was sunk in the English Channel off Cherbourg by the Federal warship USS Kearsage.

After a long period of arbitration, based on the lack of proper diligence in its duty as a neutral, Britain agreed to pay damages of $15.5 million to the USA in compensation for the direct losses attributed to the Alabama and two other Confederate cruisers built in Britain, the Florida and the Shenandoah.

In 1984 the remains of the Alabama were detected by the sonar of a French warship and in the following years the site was excavated by French and American marine archaeologists who recovered many artefacts, the most significant one being a gun which was still loaded with a shell. Swift-flowing currents made it difficult to work on, and the site is now being used to experiment with marine archaeology techniques in a hostile environment.

Alabama (1891), a play by Augustus Thomas. [Madison Square Theatre, 37 perf.] A quarter‐century after the Civil War, Colonel Preston ( J. H. Stoddart) is still an unrepentant Confederate, still advocating slavery and condemning the North for destroying his way of life. When the hated Northern‐owned railroads come to set tracks along his property, Preston at first fails to recognize that the engineer is his son, Captain Davenport ( Maurice Barrymore), who had gone off as a young man to fight for the Union and who had not been home since. Davenport puts his father's failing estate in order and frees his old sweetheart ( May Brookyn) and her son ( Henry Woodruff) from the clutches of a villainous brother‐in‐law ( Walden Ramsay). Thomas's plot, though it confronted still festering sectional differences, was secondary to his studies of various homespun types such as Squire Tucker, “a large baby of fifty . . . tied for life to the apron strings of his mother.” The play was produced by A. M. Palmer in what was perceived as a highly realistic manner, even to sending magnolia perfume wafting through the theatre during a scene in a magnolia grove. Previous commitments forced Palmer to take Alabama on the road while it was still drawing large houses in Manhattan. Business on tour was so poor at first that Palmer, suffering from a succession of New York failures, was forced to relinquish the Madison Square Theatre, and so ended his career as one of New York's most distinguished producers. Ironically, Alabama eventually caught on with hinterland audiences and remained popular for more than a decade.

Alabama State in se USA in the chief cotton-growing region; the state capital is Montgomery. Birmingham is the largest city and a leading iron and steel centre. Settled by the French in 1702, the region was acquired by Britain in 1763. Most of it was ceded to the USA after the American Revolution in 1783, and Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state of the Union in 1819. It seceded in 1861 as one of the original six states of the Confederacy, and was readmitted to the Union in 1868. It was a centre of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The n of the state lies in the Appalachian Highlands, which have coal, iron ore, and other mineral deposits, and the rest consists of the Gulf coastal plain, crossed by a wide strip of fertile agricultural land. The Mobile river and its tributaries form the chief river system. The principal crops are peanuts, soya beans, and maize, with cotton decreasingly important. Industries: chemicals, textiles, electronics, metal and paper products. Area: 133,915sq km (51,705sq mi). Pop. (2000) 4,447,100.

Alabama

The Alabama (Alibamu), with the Kaskinampo, Koasati (Alabama-Coushatta), Muklasa, Pawokti, and Tawasa, lived in south central Alabama and the northwestern tip of Florida. Their descendants now live principally on the Polk County Reservation in Texas (the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas), in the Alabama-Quassarte tribal town in Oklahoma, and in the Coushatta Community in Louisiana. They spoke Muskogean languages. The population of the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas was 494 in 1980, and that of the Coushatta Community was 196 in 1966. A tourism-based economy has given economic stability to the community.

Bibliography

Bounds, John H. (1971). "The Alabama-Coushatta Indians of Texas." Journal of Geography 70:175-182.

Roth, Aline T. (1963). Kalita's People: A History of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians of Texas. Waco, Tex.

Alabama, USA Alibamo A state and a river with a name derived from a Choctaw word for ‘Thicket clearers’, that is, people who clear a way through the forest, from alba ‘thick vegetation’ and amo ‘to clear’ or ‘to gather’. The area was disputed between the British, French, and Spanish during the 17th and 18th centuries, passing to the USA in 1783. Mississippi Territory having been divided in two in 1817, the eastern part became Alabama and joined the Union as the 22nd state in 1819. It seceded in 1861 during the American Civil War (1861–5) and rejoined in 1868.

Alabama , indigenous people of North America whose language belongs to the Muskogean branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages ). They lived in S Alabama in the early 18th cent. and were members of the Creek confederacy. During the 19th cent. they moved to W Louisiana and E Texas. The state of Alabama takes its name from them. In Texas the Alabama share a reservation with the Coushatta, who also speak a Muskogean language. In 1990, there were over 1,000 Alabama and Coushatta in the United States.

Alabama ship: see Confederate cruisers .

Alabama •Alabama, clamour (US clamor), crammer, gamma, glamour (US glamor), gnamma, grammar, hammer, jammer, lamber, mamma, rammer, shammer, slammer, stammer, yammer •Padma • magma • drachma •Alma, halma, Palma •Cranmer • asthma • mahatma •miasma, plasma •jackhammer • sledgehammer •yellowhammer • windjammer •flimflammer • programmer •amah, armour (US armor), Atacama, Brahma, Bramah, charmer, cyclorama, dharma, diorama, disarmer, drama, embalmer, farmer, Kama, karma, lama, llama, Matsuyama, panorama, Parma, pranayama, Rama, Samar, Surinamer, Vasco da Gama, Yama, Yokohama •snake-charmer • docudrama •melodrama •contemner, dilemma, Emma, emmer, Jemma, lemma, maremma, stemma, tremor •Elmer, Selma, Thelma, Velma •Mesmer •claimer, defamer, framer, proclaimer, Shema, tamer