Alabama

Alabama became the twenty-second state of the Union on December 14, 1819. Located in the eastern part of the south central United States, it borders Tennessee , Georgia , Mississippi , Florida , and the Gulf of Mexico. Its capital is Montgomery, and the state motto is “We dare defend our rights.”

During the sixteenth century, Spanish expeditions explored the region now known as Alabama. In 1702, two French naval officers established Ft. Louis de la Mobile, the first permanent European settlement in the region. It remained under French control until 1763, when it was turned over to the British.

The Spanish took control of Mobile in 1780 during the American Revolution (1775–83). American troops seized the city in the War of 1812 (1812–15). West Florida, which included Mobile at the time, was the only territory added to the United States as a result of that war.

Native Americans still held most of present-day Alabama at the start of the nineteenth century. As American settlers began moving into the area, the Creek tribe was forced to sign a treaty giving about 40,000 square miles (103,600 square kilometers) of land to the United States. This opened up about three-fourths of the present state to white settlement.

Statehood and secession

Alabama fever took hold of Americans as they poured in from Kentucky , Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia , North Carolina , and South Carolina . Alabama became a territory in 1817 and adopted a state constitution on August 2, 1819. Four months later, Alabama became a state.

Alabama seceded (separated) from the Union in January 1861 and joined the Confederacy. Montgomery served as capital of the Confederacy until May, when the seat of government was moved to Richmond, Virginia. Historians estimate that at least twenty-five thousand Alabamians were killed in the American Civil War (1861–65). The state was readmitted to the Union in 1868.

Industry

Alabama's economy was based on cotton . The abolition of slavery brought about an attempt by the state to help build a “New South” in which agriculture would be balanced by industry. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, approximately twenty towns in Alabama claimed to be iron-working centers. Birmingham became the leading industrial center.

Alabama became home to industries such as coal and steel in the late nineteenth century, and other industries such as clothing, textiles, and wood products followed. Even with this diverse economic base, the state still fell behind in wage rates and per capita income in the early 2000s. Manufacturing grew at just over half the rate of all state goods and services in the years between 1974 and 1983. When recession (a significant decline in economic activity for an extended period of time) hit from 1980 to 1982, it affected Alabama harder than it did the nation as a whole. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the nation entered another recession, and many people working in manufacturing and the textile industries lost their jobs.

Civil rights

Alabama was the backdrop to civil rights demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s. One of the most famous events of the civil rights movement was the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, begun when Rosa Parks (1913–2005) refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus. Some demonstrations and protests became violent, such as the 1963 Birmingham Baptist Church bombing in which four young African American girls were killed. Alabama's governor at the time was Democrat George Wallace (1919–1998), who served four terms. Like most traditional Southerners, Wallace was in favor of segregation (keeping races separate).

Alabama spent the last decades of the twentieth century trying to improve its educational system as well as its health care system. Widespread poverty worked against the state, and in the twenty-first century it remained one of the nation's poorest states. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Alabama had the fifth-lowest median (average) income ($38,783) in the nation in 2007. The median income for the United States as a whole was $48,451.