http://www.archives.state.al.us/geninfo.html
ALABAMA HISTORY
TYPE EACH OF THE FACTS BELOW AND SAVE THE FILE AS
ALABAMA EMBLEMS SYMBOLS HONORS
STUDENTS WILL BE TESTED ON EMBLEM/SYMBOL AND
NAME OF EMBLEM/SYMBOL (NOT DATE ADDOPTED)
DATE OF TEST: FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2009
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Emblem/Symbol |
Name of Emblem/Symbol |
Date Adopted |
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State Bible |
1853 |
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State map showing major rivers |
1939 |
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Crimson Cross of St. Andrew/white field |
1895 |
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Yellowhammer |
1927 |
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Alabama State Poets Laureate |
1930-1999 |
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Alabama |
1933 |
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1939 |
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We Dare Maintain Our Rights |
1939 |
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Alabama’s Creed |
1953 |
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(Fighting) Tarpon |
1955 |
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Camellia |
1959 |
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Hematite (Red Iron Ore) |
1967 |
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Marble |
1969 |
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Racking Horse |
1975 |
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Largemouth Bass |
1975 |
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Wild Turkey |
1980 |
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Square Dance |
1981 |
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Pecan |
1982 |
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Basilosaurus cetoides |
1984 |
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Florence Renaissance Faire |
1988 |
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Horse Show |
1988 |
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Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
1989 |
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Monarch Butterfly |
1989 |
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Alabama Red-bellied Turtle |
1990 |
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Star Blue Quartz |
1990 |
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Scaphella junonia johnstoneae |
1990 |
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William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker |
1991 |
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Demopolis Christmas on the River Cook-off |
1991 |
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Dothan Landmarks Park |
1992 |
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Stockton Fall Horseshoe Tournament |
1992 |
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AL Theatre for the Performing Arts |
1993 |
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The Incident at Looney’s Tavern |
1993 |
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Southern Longleaf Pine |
1997 |
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Bama Soil Series |
1997 |
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Pine Burr Quilt |
1997 |
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Oak-leaf Hydrangea |
1999 |
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Red Hills salamander |
2000 |
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Blackberry |
2004 |
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Conecuh Ridge Alabama Fine Whiskey |
2004 |
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Black Bear |
2006 |
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Peach |
2006 |
Alabama does not have an official nickname. It is commonly referred to as “the Heart of Dixie” and that phrase has appeared on state automobile license plates since the 1950s, but it is not an official nickname. Alabama has also been known as the cotton state and the yellowhammer state.
In 2002 the phrase “Stars Fell on Alabama” began to appear on license plates. It refers to the night of November 12, 1833, when a fantastic meteor shower seen across the Southeast caused this night to be known as “the night stars fell on Alabama.” The shower created such great excitement across the state that it became a part of Alabama folklore and for years was used to date events. A century later it inspired a song and book.
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STUDENTS WILL BE TESTED ON EMBLEM/SYMBOL AND NAME OF EMBLEM/SYMBOL (NOT DATE ADDOPTED) |
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DATE OF TEST: FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2009 |
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ALABAMA HISTORY TIMELINE |
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TYPE EACH OF THE FACTS BELOW AND SAVE THE FILE AS |
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ALABAMA HISTORY TIME LINE |
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STUDENTS WILL BE TESTED AND MUST KNOW AT LEAST ONE FACT FOR EACH YEAR |
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(NO NEED TO KNOW CENSUS DATA) |
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DATES OF TESTS: |
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1817 – 1910: FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2009 |
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1910 – 2009: FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2009 |
| 1817 March 3: The Alabama Territory is created when Congress passes the enabling act allowing the division of the Mississippi Territory and the admission of Mississippi into the union as a state. |
| 1818 January 19: The first legislature of the Alabama Territory convenes at the Douglass Hotel in the territorial capital of St. Stephens. |
| The Alabama, the area’s first steamboat, constructed in St. Stephens. |
| Cedar Creek Furnace, the state’s first blast furnace and commercial pig-iron producer, established in present-day Franklin County. |
| November 21: Cahaba designated by the territorial legislature as Alabama’s state capital. Huntsville would serve temporarily as state capital. |
| 1819 March 2: President Monroe signs the Alabama enabling act. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| July 5 – August 2: Constitutional Convention meets in Huntsville and adopts state constitution. |
| September 20-21: The first general election for governor, members of Congress, legislators, court clerks, and sheriffs is held as specified by state constitution. Territorial governor William Wyatt Bibb is elected the state’s first governor. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| October 25 – December 17: General Assembly [legislature] meets in Huntsville while the Cahaba capitol is constructed. |
| October 28: Legislature elects William Rufus King and John W. Walker as Alabama’s first U.S. senators. |
| December 14: Alabama enters Union as 22nd state. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1820 1820 Federal Census: Alabama population=144,317 White population=96,245 African-American population=48,082 Slave population=47,449 Free black population=633 Urban population=n/a Rural population=n/a |
| 1820 May 8: The Alabama Supreme Court, composed of Alabama’s circuit court judges, convenes for the first time. |
| July 10: Gov. William Wyatt Bibb dies as a result of injuries received in a riding accident. His younger brother Thomas Bibb, president of the state senate, automatically becomes governor, as required by the state constitution |
| October 22: The steamboat Harriet reaches Montgomery after ten days of travel from Mobile. This was the first successful attempt to navigate so far north on the Alabama River, and it opened river trade between Montgomery and Mobile. |
| 1822 December: Legislature charters Athens Female Academy, which later becomes Athens State University. |
| 1825 French general and American Revolution hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, tours Alabama at Gov. Israel Pickens’ invitation. |
| 1826 Capital moved to Tuscaloosa. |
| 1830 1830 Federal Census: Alabama population=309,527 White population=190,406 African-American population=119,121 Slave population=117,549 Free black population=1,572 Urban population=3,194 Rural population=306,333. |
| January 19: LaGrange College chartered by legislature; eventually becomes the University of North Alabama. The college actually opened its doors to students on January 11, 1830. |
| 1830 .. 1838 President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Bill approved by Congress (1830); land cession treaties follow between the U.S. and each of the Indian peoples with a presence in Alabama, each of whom cede their remaining lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for western lands. |
| September 27, 1830: Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (Choctaw) |
| March 24, 1832: Treaty of Cusseta (Creek) |
| October 20, 1832: Treaty of Pontotoc (Chickasaw) |
| December 29, 1835: Treaty of New Echota (Cherokee) |
| May 1838: Alabama Indians moved to the western lands in the “Trail of Tears”. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1831 Nat Turner slave insurrection in Virginia. |
| April 18: University of Alabama formally opens its doors. |
| 1832 Bell Factory (Madison County), state’s first textile mill, chartered by legislature. |
| June 12: Alabama’s first railroad, the Tuscumbia Railway, opens, running the two miles from Tuscumbia Landing at the Tennessee River to Tuscumbia. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1833 November 12-13: A fantastic meteor shower causes this night to be known as “the night stars fell on Alabama.” 2007 Archives Week Art |
| Daniel Pratt establishes cotton gin factory north of Montgomery; his company town, Prattville (founded 1839), would become a manufacturing center in the antebellum South. |
| 1835 Alabama gold rush, concentrated in east-central hill country, begins; peaks the next year. |
| Dr. James Marion Sims, “the Father of Modern Gynecology,” establishes medical practice in Mt. Meigs, then in nearby Montgomery (1840). He moved on to New York in 1853 to found renowned Woman’s Hospital. |
| 1836 Texas War for Independence from Mexico. |
| 1836 .. 1837 Second Creek War (Seminole War); Battle of Hobdy’s Bridge last Indian battle in Alabama (1837). |
| 1839 January 7: Judson Female Institute, a Baptist college, opens in Marion; renamed Judson College in 1903. |
| January 26: State prison established by legislature; first convict incarcerated in 1842. |
| 1840 1840 Federal Census: State population=590,756 White population=335,185 African-American population=255,571 Slave population=253,532 Free black population=2,039 Urban population=12,672 Rural population=578,084. |
| 1844 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, established as Methodists split nationally over sectional issues. |
| 1845 .. 1848 U.S. annexes Texas; war with Mexico follows. Alabamians volunteered in large numbers to fight, but only the 1st Alabama regiment, a battalion, and several independent companies actually were received into federal service. |
| 1846 January 21: Legislature selects Montgomery as new capital; begins its first session there December 6, 1847. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1849 December 14: On the thirtieth anniversary of statehood the capitol in Montgomery is destroyed by fire. Construction of new capitol completed in 1851. 2007 Archives Week Art 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1850 1850 Federal Census: State population=771,623. White population=426,514 African-American population=345,109 Slave population=342,844 Free black population=2,265 Urban population=35,179 Rural population=736,444 Cotton production in bales=564,429 Corn production in bushels=28,754,048 Number of manufacturing establishments=1,026. |
| 1852 February 6: Alabama Insane Hospital established at Tuscaloosa; received first patient in 1861. Its first director, Dr. Peter Bryce, became renowned for his innovative and humane treatment of patients. |
| Running on ticket with Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Pierce, Alabama Senator William Rufus King is elected Vice President of United States. Inaugurated March 24, 1853, in Cuba, where he had gone to recover his failing health, King died April 18, 1853, at home in Selma, never formally serving as Vice President. |
| 1854 February 15: Alabama Public School Act creates first state-wide education system by providing funding for schools and establishing office of State Superintendent of Education. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1856 Alabama Coal Mining Company begins first systematic underground mining in the state near Montevallo. |
| East Alabama Male College established at Auburn by Methodists; evolved into Auburn University. |
| 1858 October 4: Alabama School for the Deaf founded in Talladega; evolved into the state-supported Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1860 1860 Federal Census: State population=964,201. White population=526,271 African-American population=437,770 Slave population=435,080 Free black population=2,690 Urban population=48,901 Rural population=915,300 Cotton production in bales=989,955 Corn production in bushels=33,226,282 Number of manufacturing establishments=1,459. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| November: Abraham Lincoln, Republican candidate (although not on Alabama ballot), elected President of the U.S. |
| 1861 April 12: The Civil War begins when Confederates fire at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, acting upon instructions telegraphed from Montgomery. |
| 1861 .. 1865 in Alabama (in brief) 194 military land events and 8 naval engagements occurred within the boundaries of Alabama during the Civil War including: 2007 Archives Week |
| Streight’s Raid in north Alabama (April-May 1863);Rousseau’s Raid through north and east-central Alabama (July 1864);
Wilson’s Raid through north and central Alabama (March-April 1865); Battle of Mobile Bay (August 1864) and the subsequent campaign which involved action at Spanish Fort (April 8, 1865) and Blakeley (April 9) before the fall of the city of Mobile (April 12). |
| General Richard Taylor surrenders last sizable Confederate force at Citronelle, Mobile County (May 4, 1865). |
| 1861 .. 1865 in Alabama (in depth) January 4, 1861: A full week before Alabama secedes from the Union, Gov. A. B. Moore orders the seizure of federal military installations within the state. By the end of the next day Alabama troops controlled Fort Gaines, Fort Morgan, and the U.S. Arsenal at Mount Vernon. |
| January 11, 1861: The Alabama Secession Convention passes an Ordinance of Secession, declaring Alabama a “Sovereign and Independent State.” By a vote of 61-39, Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union. |
| February 4, 1861: Delegates from six states that had recently seceded from the Union meet in Montgomery to establish the Confederate States of America. Four days later this provisional Confederate Congress, comprising representatives of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, organized the Confederacy with the adoption of a provisional constitution. |
| February 18, 1861: After being welcomed to Montgomery with great fanfare, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as president of the Confederate States of America on the portico of the Alabama capitol. Davis, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi, lived in Montgomery until April, when the Confederate government was moved from Montgomery to its new capital of Richmond, Virginia. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| February-May, 1861: Montgomery serves as C.S.A. capital until move to Richmond, Virginia. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| March 4, 1861: The first Confederate flag is raised over the Alabama capitol at 3:30 PM by Letita Tyler, granddaughter of former U.S. president John Tyler. The flag, which flew on a flagpole by the capitol clock, was not the Confederate battle flag, but the “First National Pattern,” also known as the stars and bars. |
| March 11, 1861: The Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, adopts a permanent constitution for the Confederate States of America to replace the provisional constitution adopted the previous month. The seceded states then ratified the essentially conservative document, which was based largely on the United States Constitution. |
| May 21, 1861: The Confederate Congress meets for the last time in Montgomery. Montgomery served as capital for just three months, from February to May 1861. After Virginia joined the Confederacy in April 1861, leaders urged the move to the larger city of Richmond, which was closer to the military action. |
| April 1, 1862: As the first year of the Civil War comes to a close, an order by Gov. John Gill Shorter prohibiting the distillation of hard liquors in Alabama goes into effect. Shorter was willing to make some exceptions, but was determined to prevent distillers from “converting food necessary to sustain our armies and people into poison to demoralize and destroy them.” |
| July 10, 1862: Forty men from the hill country of northwest Alabama sneak into Decatur to join the Union army, prompting Gen. Abel Streight to mount an expedition to the south to recruit more volunteers. With the help of an impassioned speech from fervent Unionist Christopher Sheats of Winston County, a center of anti-secessionist sentiment, Streight added another 150 Alabamians to his force. |
| March 17, 1863: John Pelham, a 24-year-old Confederate hero from Calhoun County, is mortally wounded on the battlefield at Kelley’s Ford, Virginia. He died the next day and his body lay in state in the capitol at Richmond before being taken to Alabama for burial. Pelham’s skill and daring as an artillery commander distinguished him from the outset of the Civil War and earned him the nickname “the gallant Pelham” from Robert E. Lee. |
| May 2, 1863: Sixteen-year-old Emma Sansom becomes a Confederate heroine when she helps Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest cross Black Creek near Gadsden as he pursues Union forces led by Col. A.D. Streight. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| February 17, 1864: The H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine built in Mobile, becomes the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship. After torpedoing the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor the Hunley never returned to port–until its recovery in August 2000. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| June 19, 1864: The CSS Alabama, captained by Mobile’s Raphael Semmes, is sunk at the end of a fierce naval engagement with the USS Kearsarge off the coast of Cherbourg, France. The Alabama had docked there for maintenance and repairs after 22 months of destroying northern commerce on the high seas during the Civil War. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| August 5, 1864: The Battle of Mobile Bay begins. U.S. Admiral David Farragut, with a force of fourteen wooden ships, four ironclads, 2,700 men, and 197 guns, assaulted greatly outnumbered Confederate defenses guarding the approach to Mobile Bay. Farragut’s victory removed Mobile as a center of blockade-running and freed Union troops for service in Virginia. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| June 21, 1865: President Andrew Johnson appoints Lewis Parsons provisional governor of Alabama. |
| 1865 April 9, 1865: Confederate commander Robert E. Lee surrenders forces to Union army at Appomattox, Virginia. |
| 1865 .. 1876 Era of Reconstruction in the South. |
| 1865 September 12 New Alabama Constitution adopted to comply with Presidential Reconstruction dictates to rejoin Union; rejected by U.S. Congress. |
| 1865 December 6 The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution is ratified, thus officially abolishing slavery. |
| 1866 Ku Klux Klan formed in Pulaski, Tennessee 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1866 Lincoln Normal School founded as private institution for African-Americans at Marion; relocated to Montgomery (1887) and evolved into Alabama State University. |
| 1868 Reconstruction Constitution ratified (February) gaining Alabama readmission to the Union, and allowing black suffrage for the first time. |
| 1870 State population=996,992.1870 Federal Census: White population=521,384 |
| 1871 Birmingham founded; evolves into center of Southern iron and steel industry. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1873 Huntsville Normal and Industrial School chartered; evolves into Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. |
| November: James Rapier of Lauderdale County elected to U.S. Congress, one of three African American congressmen elected from Alabama during Reconstruction. Benjamin Turner served from 1871- 1873 and Jeremiah Haralson served 1875-1877. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1874 State elections return conservative Democrat “Bourbon Redeemers” to political power. |
| 1875 November 16: Alabama’s Constitution of 1875 is ratified. The Bourbon Democrats, or “Redeemers,” having claimed to “redeem” the Alabama people from the Reconstruction rule of carpetbaggers and scalawags, wrote a new constitution to replace the one of 1868. It was a conservative document that gave the Democrats, and especially Black Belt planters, a firm grip on their recently reacquired control of state government. |
| 1880 State population= 1,262,505. |
| 1880 Federal Census: |
| White population= 662,185 African-American population= 600,103 Urban population= 68,518 Rural population= 1,193,987 Cotton production on bales= 699,654 Corn production in bushels= 25,451,278 Number of manufacturing establishments= 2,070. |
| 1880 National Baptist Convention (African-American Baptists) organized at Montgomery. |
| June 27: Helen Keller is born in Tuscumbia. Having lost both sight and hearing by illness as a small child, Keller’s life story and activism inspired new attitudes toward those with handicaps. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1881 February 10: The Alabama Legislature establishes Tuskegee Institute as a “normal school for the education of colored teachers.” The law stipulated that no tuition would be charged and graduates must agree to teach for two years in Alabama schools. Booker T. Washington was chosen as the first superintendent and arrived in Alabama in June 1881. Washington’s leadership would make Tuskegee one of the most famous and celebrated historic black colleges in the U.S. |
| 1887 .. 1896 Farmers’ Alliance grew out of earlier Grange (1870s) and Agricultural Wheel (early 1880s) organizations; evolved into the Populist movement which challenged conservative Democrats for control of state politics. |
| 1890 State population= 1,513,401. |
| 1890 Federal Census: |
| White population= 833,718 African-American population= 678,489 Urban population= 152,235 Rural population= 1,361,166 Cotton production in bales= 915,210 Corn production in bushels= 30,072,161 Number of manufacturing establishments= 2,977. |
| 1893 February 22: The first Auburn/Alabama football game is played in Birmingham’s Lakeview Park before a crowd of 5,000 spectators. Auburn won this first match-up 32-22. The rivalry continued until 1907 when the games were stopped, with the renewal of the series not coming until 1948. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| September 30: Julia Tutwiler persuades the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama to try a qualified form of co-education. A faculty committee agreed to “admit young women of not less than 18 years of age, of good character and antecedents, who are able to stand the necessary examinations: for entrance to the sophomore class or higher.” A required proviso was that “suitable homes and protection” be provided. In the fall of 1893, two women students entered the university. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1895 Booker T. Washington speech to Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition urges racial accommodation, suggesting blacks seek economic independence rather than political/social equality. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1895 February 16: Alabama formally adopts a state flag for the first time. The legislature dictated “a crimson cross of St. Andrew upon a field of white,” which was the design submitted by John W. A. Sanford, Jr., who also sponsored the bill. This flag remains Alabama’s flag today. |
| 1896 October 8: George Washington Carver arrives in Macon County to direct Tuskegee Institute’s agricultural school. Born a slave in Missouri during the Civil War, Carver was studying in Iowa when school president Booker T. Washington invited him to Alabama. He remained at Tuskegee until his death in 1943, and although he dedicated much of his work to helping black farmers in the South, Carver’s international fame came from his innovative uses of peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other southern products. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| October 12: The Alabama Girls’ Industrial School opens its doors as the first state-supported industrial and technical school devoted to training girls to make a living. The school later became known as Alabama College, and is now the University of Montevallo. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision by U.S. Supreme Court establishes “separate but equal” doctrine in racial policy. |
| 1898 Spanish-American War. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1900 State population= 1,828,697. |
| 1900 Federal Census: |
| White population= 1,001,152 African-American population= 827,307 Urban population= 216,714 Rural population= 1,611,983 Cotton production in bales= 1,106,840 Corn production in bushels= 35,053,047 Number of manufacturing establishments= 5,602. |
| 1901 January 31: Tallulah Bankhead, star of stage, screen, and radio in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, is born in Huntsville. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| March 2: Trustees of the Alabama Department of Archives and History meet in Gov. William J. Samford’s office to organize the nation’s first state archival agency. |
| New state Constitution ratified, disfranchising substantial numbers of black and white voters (November). 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1902 November 29: The New York Medical Record publishes an account of Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performing the first open heart surgery in the western hemisphere when he sutured a knife wound in a young boy’s heart. Dr. Hill was the father of Alabama politician and U.S. senator Lister Hill. |
| 1904 Colonel William Crawford Gorgas of Alabama begins elimination of scourges of yellow fever and malaria in Panama Canal Zone. |
| Sculptor Guiseppe Moretti created an iron statue of Vulcan to represent Alabama Industry and Birmingham at the St. Louis World’s Fair. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1907 Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in Birmingham purchased by U.S. Steel. |
| 1909 Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, establish “flying school” on land outside Montgomery (present site of Maxwell Air Force Base) six years after their first flights. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| Boll Weevil, insect destroyer of cotton, enters state from Mississippi border. |
| 1910 State population= 2,138,093. |
| 1910 Federal Census: |
| White population= 1,228,832 African-American population= 908,282 Urban population= 370,431 Rural population= 1,767,662 Cotton production in bales= 1,129,527 Corn production in bushels= 30,695,737 Number of manufacturing establishments= 3,398. |
| 1917..1919 United States enters World War I. Alabama’s 167th Regiment, a part of the 42nd “Rainbow Division,” serves at the front longer than any U.S. regiment. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1919 Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. |
| 1919 December 11: The boll weevil monument is dedicated in Enterprise. The monument honors the insect that killed cotton plants and forced local farmers to diversify by planting more profitable crops such as peanuts. Even though the monument was in appreciation of the boll weevil, the weevil statue was not added to the monument until 30 years later. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1920 1920 Federal Census: State population= 2,348,174. White population= 1,447,031 African-American population= 900,652 Urban population= 509,317 Rural population= 1,838,857 Cotton production in bales= 718,163 Corn production in bushels= 43,699,100 Number of manufacturing establishments= 3,654. |
| 1920 Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants women the right to vote. Archives Week Art |
| 1926 University of Alabama football team, the first southern team to be honored with an invitation to the Rose Bowl, defeats the University of Washington (January 1). |
| 1928 Convict lease system ended in Alabama. |
| 1929 ..1940 Great Depression and New Deal. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1930 State population= 2,646,248. |
| 1930 Federal Census: |
| White population= 1,700,844 African-American population= 944,834 Urban population= 744,273 Rural population= 1,901,975 Cotton production in bales= 1,312,963 Corn production in bushels= 35,683,874 Number of manufacturing establishments= 2,848. |
| 1931 March 25: Nine black youths, soon to be known as the Scottsboro Boys, are arrested in Paint Rock and jailed in Scottsboro, the Jackson County seat. Charged with raping two white women on a freight train from Chattanooga, the sheriff had to protect them from mob violence that night. Within a month, eight of the nine were sentenced to death. Based on questionable evidence, the convictions by an all-white jury generated international outrage. |
| 1933 Tennessee Valley Authority created to develop resources of poor Appalachian South, including large parts of north Alabama. |
| 1934 Bankhead Cotton Control Act, sponsored by Alabama Senator John Bankhead, Jr., passed to boost the price of cotton by limiting the amount a farmer could market. |
| 1936 August 3: Lawrence County native Jesse Owens wins his first gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Owens went on to win four gold medals in Berlin, but German leader Adolf Hitler snubbed the star athlete because he was black. Today visitors can learn more about Owens at the Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum in Oakville, Alabama. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| William B. Bankhead elected Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives. |
| 1937 State sales tax instituted to help fund education. |
| Alabama Senator Hugo Black appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| 1937 Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenancy Act, co-sponsored by Alabama Senator John Bankhead, Jr., passed to provide federal loans to farm tenants to purchase land. |
| 1940 State population= 2,832,961. |
| 1940 Federal Census: |
| White population= 1,849,097 African-American population= 983,290 Urban population= 855,941 Rural population= 1,977,020 Cotton production in bales= 772,711 Corn production in bushels= 31,028,109 Number of manufacturing establishments= 2,052. |
| 1941 .. 1945 United States in World War II. Alabama has new or expanded military bases in Montgomery, Mobile, Selma, and Anniston; munitions plants in Huntsville and Childersburg. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1941 Training of African-American military pilots, the “Tuskegee Airmen,” underway. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1944 First Oil Well In Alabama–On January 2, 1944, the State of Alabama granted Hunt Oil Company a permit to drill the A.R. Jackson Well No. 1 near Gilbertown, Choctaw County. |
| 1945 University of Alabama Medical School moved from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham. |
| 1947 Georgiana’s Hank Williams signs recording contract with MGM and becomes regular on The Louisiana Hayride radio program. |
| 1948 July 17: The Dixiecrat Convention assembles in Birmingham, with over 6,000 delegates from across the South in attendance. They selected Strom Thurmond as their candidate for President for their States’ Rights Party. In the 1948 presidential election the Dixiecrats carried four states, including Alabama, where Democratic candidate Harry Truman’s name did not even appear on the ballot. |
| 1950 State population= 3,061,743. |
| 1950 Federal Census: |
| White population= 2,079,591 African-American population= 979,617 Urban population= 1,228,209 Rural population= 1,833,534 Cotton production in bales= 824,290 Corn production in bushels= 40,972,309 Number of manufacturing establishments (1954)= 3,893. |
| 1950 .. 1953 Korean War. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decides in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka that “separate” schools cannot be “equal.” 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1954 June 14: Democratic nominee for state Attorney General, Albert Patterson, murdered in Phenix City, prompting clean-up of the “wickedest city in America.” |
| October 31: Martin Luther King Jr, of Atlanta is installed as minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. A little more than a year later, on the first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott he was named president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, a role which made him a national civil rights figure. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1955 December 1: Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, is arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a boarding white passenger as required by Montgomery city ordinance. Her action prompted the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott and earned her a place in history as “the mother of the modern day civil rights movement.” Ms. Parks was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in August 2000. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1956 January 30: With the Montgomery Bus Boycott about to enter its third month, segregationists bomb the home of boycott spokesman Martin Luther King Jr. The home sustained moderate damage, but no one was injured. The young minister addressed the large crowd that gathered after the blast, declaring, “I want it to be known the length and breadth of this land that if I am stopped this movement will not stop.” 2007 Archives Week Art |
| Army Ballistic Missile Agency established at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal. |
| Autherine Lucy unsuccessfully attempts to desegregate the University of Alabama. |
| December 21: The Supreme Court ruling banning segregated seating on Montgomery’s public transit vehicles goes into effect. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were among the first people to ride a fully integrated bus, ending the historic year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1957 Soviet satellite “SPUTNIK” launched to begin “Space Race.” |
| 1958 Huntsville-built “Jupiter” rocket places American satellite in orbit around Earth. |
| 1960 September 8: The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gov. John Patterson and Werner von Braun, director of the space flight center, were in attendance as was Mrs. Marshall who unveiled a bust in honor of her husband. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| State population= 3,266,740. |
| 1960 Federal Census: |
| White population= 2,283,609 African-American population= 980,271 Urban population= 1,689,417 Rural population= 1,577,323 Cotton production in bales= 683,491 Corn production in bushels= 62,580,000 Number of manufacturing establishments (1963)= 4,079. |
| 1961 March 2: President John F. Kennedy appoints Alabama native Dr. Luther Leonidas Terry U. S. Surgeon General. Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States, released on January 11, 1964, concluded that lung cancer and chronic bronchitis are causally related to cigarette smoking. |
| May 1: Harper Lee of Monroeville wins the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill A Mockingbird, her first, and only, novel. The gripping tale set in 1930s Alabama became an international bestseller and was made into a major Hollywood motion picture starring Gregory Peck. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| May 20: The Freedom Riders arrive at the Greyhound bus terminal in Montgomery where they are attacked by an angry mob. The Freedom Ride, an integrated bus trip from Washington D.C., through the Deep South, was formed to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation in bus and train terminal facilities. Before reaching Montgomery, they had already suffered violent reprisals in Anniston and Birmingham. The Freedom Ride eventually resulted in a campaign that caused the Interstate Commerce Commission to rule against segregated facilities in interstate travel. |
| 1961 “Freedom Rides” through the Deep South challenge racial segregation on public carriers and spark into violence in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery. |
| 1961 .. 1973 America involved in Vietnam War. |
| 1962 November 30: Football and baseball star, Vincent Edward “Bo” Jackson was born in Bessemer. Jackson won the Heisman Trophy in 1985 and was the first professional athlete to be named an all star in two major sports. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1963 Governor George C. Wallace inaugurated for first of four terms in office. |
| Birmingham bombings of Civil Rights-related targets, including the offices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the home of A.D. King (brother of Martin Luther King, Jr.), and the 16th Street Baptist Church (in which 4 children were killed), focus national attention on racial violence in the state. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| Governor Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama protests federally forced racial integration; Vivian Malone and James Hood register for classes as first African-American students. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| University of South Alabama founded in Mobile. |
| May 19: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is issued to the public in a press release. Begun April 16 from the Birmingham City Jail, where King was under arrest for participation in civil rights demonstrations, the letter was addressed to eight local clergymen who had recently urged civil rights leaders to use the courts and local negotiations instead of mass demonstrations to promote their cause in Birmingham. King’s letter, which soon became a classic text of the civil rights movement, rejected the clergymen’s plea. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| June 11: Dr. James Hardy, a native of Shelby County, Alabama, and chief of surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, performs the world’s first human lung transplant. The patient lived for three weeks before dying of chronic kidney disease. The next year Hardy transplanted a chimpanzee’s heart into another patient, marking the first transplant of a heart into a human. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1965 February 15: “The man with the velvet voice,” Nat King Cole dies in Santa Monica, California. Born the son of a Baptist minister in Montgomery in 1919, Cole sold over 50 million records and became the first African-American male with a weekly network television series. |
| March 7: Six-hundred demonstrators make the first of three attempts to march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery to demand removal of voting restrictions on black Americans. Attacked by state and local law enforcement officers as they crossed Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers fled back into the city. The dramatic scene was captured on camera and broadcast across the nation later that Sunday, causing a surge of support for the protestors. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| March 21: Rev. Martin Luther King leads 3,200 marchers from Selma toward Montgomery in support of civil rights for black Americans, after two earlier marches had ended at the Edmund Pettus Bridge–the first in violence and the second in prayer. Four days later, outside the Alabama state capitol, King told 25,000 demonstrators that “we are on the move now . . . and no wave of racism can stop us.” On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. |
| 1967 Lurleen Wallace inaugurated as state’s first woman governor (died 1968). 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1969 University of Alabama at Huntsville established. University of Alabama at Birmingham established, joining University’s medical and dental schools there since the 1940s. |
| 1969 Winton Blount was appointed U.S. Postmaster General by President Richard Nixon. Blount was a building contractor and philanthropist and active in Alabama Republican Party politics. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| September 14: Talladega Speedway opens with its first running of the Talladega 500 which is won by Richard Brickhouse. Over 30 top drivers boycotted the first run saying the track was unsafe at high speeds. The facility cost $4 million dollars to build and attracted a crowd of 65,000 to the first major race. In April 2000, a crowd of 180,000 watched Jeff Gordon win the Diehard 500. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1970 State population= 3,444,165. |
| 1970 Federal Census: |
| White population= 2,533,831 African-American population= 903,467 Urban population= 2,011,941 Rural population= 1,432,224 Cotton production in bales= 507,000 Corn production in bushels= 12,535,000. |
| 1970 March 17: The Alabama Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville is dedicated, with Werner von Braun calling it “a graphic display of man’s entering into the cosmic age.” Now known as the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, visitors tour the museum, which includes rockets and spacecraft, and participate in activities like Space Camp. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1972 May 15: Gov. George C. Wallace is shot in Maryland while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president. The assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer left the Governor paralyzed from the waist down and effectively ended his chances at the nomination. He campaigned again for president in 1976, marking his fourth consecutive run for that office. |
| December: The Alabama Shakespeare Festival began as a summer stock program in Anniston. In 1985 it moved to Montgomery into a new performing arts complex endowed by Mr. and Mrs. Winton Blount. By 2007 it was the sixth largest Shakespeare festival in the world. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1974 April 8: Mobile native Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run to break Babe Ruth’s longstanding record. Aaron finished his career with 755 home runs. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1980 State population=3,894,000. |
| 1980 Federal Census: |
| White population=2,783,000 African-American population=996,000 Urban population=2,338,000 Rural population=1,556,000 Cotton production in bales=275,000 Corn production in bushels=15,000,000. |
| 1981 Country music group Alabama selected “Vocal Group of the Year” by Academy of Country Music; went on to garner fifth consecutive “Entertainer of the Year” award from the Country Music Association (1986). |
| 1982 November: Oscar Adams was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, becoming the first African American elected to statewide constitutional office in Alabama. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1983 January 26: Alabamians are shocked and saddened when retired University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant dies suddenly from a heart attack. Bryant began coaching at Alabama in 1958 and went on to win six national championships with the team. In 1981 he became football’s “winningest” coach with 315 victories. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1985 Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway opens. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1989 November 22: Kathryn Thornton, a native of Montgomery and graduate of Auburn University, becomes the first woman to fly on a military space mission on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Thornton became the second woman to walk in space in 1992. Dr. Thornton retired from NASA in 1996 to join the faculty of the University of Virginia. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1990 State population=4,040,587. |
| 1990 Federal Census: |
| White population=2,975,837 African-American population=1,020,677 Urban population=2,439,549 Rural population=1,601,038 Cotton production in bales=375,000 Corn production in bushels=13,920,000. |
| 1993 Governor Guy Hunt, in second term as first Republican governor of the state since Reconstruction, convicted of misuse of public funds and removed from office. |
| 1993 In September Mercedes-Benz announces it will build its first automobile assembly plant in North America in Vance, Tuscaloosa County, creating more than 1500 jobs. Construction on the $300 million plant was completed in July 1996, and the first of the M-Class SUV’s went on sale in September 1997. |
| 1995 Alabama’s Heather Whitestone serves as first Miss America with a disability. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 1998 Anniston native Dr. David Satcher is appointed Surgeon General of the United States. |
| 2000 State population=4,447,100. |
| 2000 Federal Census: |
| White population=3,188,102 African-American population=1,138,726 Hispanic population=45,349 |
| 2000 Etowah County Circuit Judge Roy Moore is elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Moore rose to national attention earlier when he was sued by the ACLU for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. |
| 2001 Birmingham native Condoleezza Rice is appointed National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. She is the first woman to occupy that postion. |
| 2001 (November) Winfield native and C.I.A. operative Michael Spann dies in prison uprising in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, becoming the first U.S. casualty in the war in Afghanistan. |
| November, Honda Manufacturing of Alabama in Lincoln, Alabama, begins production. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 2002 In April of 2002, Hyundai broke ground in Montgomery, Alabama for its first U.S. automobile assembly plant, a $1 billion investment that is scheduled to open in 2005 and employ nearly 2,000 people. The facility, to be built on 1,600 acres, is expected to assemble 300,000 vehicles per year. The first two vehicles scheduled to be produced in the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama (HMMA) assembly plant are the revised Sonata and Santa Fe models. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 2002 Birmingham native Vonetta Flowers and teammate Jill Bakken win a gold medal in bobsledding at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Flowers is the first African American to win a gold medal in a winter olympics. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 2002 May 22 — Bobby Frank Cherry is convicted of murder for his part in the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth St. Baptist Church. Cherry is the last living suspect to be prosecuted for the Sept. 15, 1963, blast that killed 11-year-old Denise McNair, and 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins. |
| 2003 November 13 — Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy S. Moore is removed from office when the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission determines that he violated his oath of office when he refused to obey a Federal court order to remove a granite display of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building. |
| 2004 November 16 — President George W. Bush nominates National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to serve as Secretary of State. The Birmingham native is the first African American woman to serve in that office. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 26, 2005. 2007 Archives Week Art |
| 2005 January 13 — Concert and operatic star Nell Rankin dies in New York at age 81. The Montgomery native made her stage debut in Wagner’s Lohengrin in Zurich, Switzerland in 1949. |
| 2005 August 29 — Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 hurricane, makes landfall on the Louisiana coast, and becomes one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history. Katrina leaves a wake of destruction stretching across the northern Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida. |
| 2007 May 11 — German steel manufacturer ThyssenKrupp AG announces it will invest nearly $4 billion in plant construction in Mobile County. The Montgomery Advertiser reports that as many as 29,000 jobs could be generated during the construction phase. |
| 2007 November 5 — President George W. Bush awards To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, to recognize contributions in science, the arts, literature and the cause of peace and freedom. |
| 2009 July 13 — President Barack Obama nominates Dr. Regina M. Benjamin to be Surgeon General of the United States. A graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Benjamin specialized in Family Medicine at the Medical Center of Central Georgia. Founder and CEO of the BayouClinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, Benjamin since 1990 has been providing health care to the low income community. |
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STUDENTS WILL BE TESTED AND MUST KNOW AT LEAST ONE FACT FOR EACH YEAR |
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(NO NEED TO KNOW CENSUS DATA) |
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DATES OF TESTS: |
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1817 – 1910: FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2009 |
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1910 – 2009: FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2009 |
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