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 ironworking 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.