800-ALABAMA

www.touralabama.org

www.state.al.us

 

# Entered Union   Year Settled

22nd      Dec. 14, 1819      1702

 

Nickname

Cotton State

 

Rank      Population

23rd       4,661,900

 

Rank      Square Miles

30th       52,419

 

State Bird

Yellowhammer aka Northern Flicker

Wild Turkey (state game bird)

 

State Flower

Camellia

Oak-leaf Hydrangea (state wildflower)

 

State Tree

Longleaf Pine

 

State Motto

Audemus jura nostra defendere                 We dare defend our rights

Known as the Heart of Dixie, Alabama became the 22nd state in 1819. The name Alabama is derived from an Indian word meaning "thicket clearers." Alabama has been at the center of many American battles--between white settlers and Native Americans, and between the North and South in the Civil War.

 

The state also is home to the first of three Space Camps in the United States. These camps let kids experience what it would be like to be in outer space. The capital is Montgomery.

 

Tuskegee

Congress has designated only one college campus in the country as a National Historic Site: Tuskegee.

 

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, an educator and former slave who became one of the most influential African American leaders in the United States. The institute later became Tuskegee University. In the beginning, the school was chartered by the state of Alabama to train African American men and women in teaching, agriculture, and industrial trades.

 

At the invitation of Booker T. Washington, famed botanist George Washington Carver came to Tuskegee in 1896 to head the agriculture department. It was there that Carver developed his method of crop rotation to conserve nutrients in the soil. He also discovered hundreds of new uses for the peanut and sweet potato. In the 1920s, the school expanded its mission and offered its students a liberal arts education.

 

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall believed that if the Supreme Court decided something, then the rest of the country would follow its decision. But in the 1950s, some people were willing to do almost anything to keep schools segregated (that is, keep black students in separate schools).

 

Marshall had helped win the 1954 landmark Supreme Court desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown decision said that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional (illegal).

 

The first test of Brown was in Alabama. In 1952, before Brown was the law of the land, a young black woman named Autherine Lucy was accepted to the University of Alabama. Once the university realized she was African-American, they told her state law did not allow her to attend. Marshall and other lawyers worked with Lucy to sue the university. After years of courtroom battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1955 that Lucy could go to the University of Alabama.

 

In February 1956, a mob of people assembled on campus. They all had one thing in common: they wanted to stop desegregation. They chanted racist slogans. They insulted Lucy, threw eggs at her, and threatened, "Let's kill her!"

 

Lucy had to be escorted off campus in a police car. At the end of the day, university officials voted to suspend Lucy. They said that the campus was not safe for her. The angry protestors would get their way.

 

Marshall helped Lucy file a lawsuit against the university. They demanded that Lucy be allowed to attend. Then they pushed their case too far. They accused the university of aiding the rioters by not providing protection for Lucy. Marshall soon realized that this accusation was a mistake. He withdrew the charge, but the damage was already done.

 

The court ordered the university to take back Lucy, but the university used her lawsuit as an excuse to expel her. University officials claimed that Lucy had slandered (said untrue things about) the university and they could not have her as a student. Marshall had thought the Brown decision would end segregation, but the University of Alabama had found a legal way to stay segregated.

 

After Lucy was expelled from the university, Marshall was so concerned about her safety that he brought her to New York to stay in his home with him and his wife, Cecilia. Lucy said later, "I just felt so secure with Mr. Marshall and his wife. . . . How grateful I have been over all these years for the protection and the kindness he gave to me."

 

Bus Boycott in Alabama

On Dec 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, an African-American, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, as local law required. She was arrested. A few days later the black community in Montgomery began a bus boycott.

 

Rosa Parks stood up for what she believed, or rather, sat down for what she believed. On the evening of December 1, 1955, Parks, an African American, was tired after a long day of work and decided to take a seat on the bus on her ride home. Because she sat down and refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, she was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black people to relinquish seats to white people when the bus was full. (Blacks also had to sit at the back of the bus.)

 

Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system. It also led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation. Who was Rosa Parks, the woman who helped spark the civil rights movement of the 1960s?

 

Rosa McCauley was born in 1913. At age 20, she married Raymond Parks, who encouraged her to earn her high school diploma. The couple was active in the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While working as a tailor's assistant, Mrs. Parks served as chapter secretary. Later, she advised the NAACP Youth Council. Denied the right to vote on at least two occasions because of her race, Rosa Parks also worked with the Voters League to prepare blacks to register to vote.

 

Parks's arrest was followed by a one-day bus boycott on her court date. The new pastor at the local Dexter Avenue Baptist Church became the leader of the boycott. His name was Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. King insisted on nonviolent action to achieve the goal of justice. "We must use the weapon of love," he said. In December 1956, the Supreme Court banned segregation on public transportation, and the boycott ended over a year after it had begun. Rosa Parks became known as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," honored with awards around the world. In her situation, would you have done what Rosa Parks did?

 

What's a boycott?

A boycott is when a large group of people refuse to take part in, or make use of, something as a way of showing their disapproval.

 

Because so many black people rode the bus, a boycott would cause the bus system to lose a lot of money.

 

The bus boycott was an immediate success. African-Americans walked, took taxis, and even rode horses, but they did not ride the bus. King agreed to head the organization leading the boycott, and became a hero.

 

It was the beginning of a new life for Parks and King. At the time, King was a new pastor. He had just finished school and had moved with his new wife to Montgomery to be a preacher.

 

The bus boycott lasted more than a year. Many people tried to get King to end the boycott by threatening him.

 

King and the boycotters finally won. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., agreed that Alabama's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. (Unconstitutional means that the laws did not follow the U.S. Constitution and had to be struck down.) Because the U.S. Supreme Court made the decision, all states had to follow the ruling. King celebrated by riding the bus seated next to a white man.