Alabama Summary

Alabama, named after a Native American tribe, is known as \”The Heart of Dixie\” because it was here that the Confederate States of America were established and the Constitution of the Confederacy drawn up in 1861. Die-hard Southern sentiments were still evident 100 years later in the state’s violent resistance to desegregation. Race relations have improved since then, though levels of literacy and infant mortality are issues that still need addressing.

Ironically, it is the past that attracts tourists to the museums and sites associated with the Indian Wars, the plantation system, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Other points of interest include Alabama\357\277\275s many archeological sites, its musical heritage, and its profusion of historic buildings, homes, and gardens. The state’s diverse natural resources are yet another drawing card, particularly the state parks and national forests, the Tennessee River, and the sandy beaches of Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

Alabama was once occupied by the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw tribes. The Spanish explored the area in the sixteenth century, but the first permanent European settlement was established by the French in 1702. The land they came to occupy, around Mobile Bay, was passed to the British in 1763 and the Spanish in 1783, then seized by the US government in 1813. When the Creek tribe was defeated by US forces in 1814, nearly half of the present state passed to the US government. Alabama became the nation’s 22nd state in 1819. By this time it was economically dependent on cotton production and slavery. After the Civil War, and the decline in cotton production, Alabama became one of the first Southern states to begin industrializing. However, its fortunes waxed and waned during the twentieth century.