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Posts Tagged ‘montgomery’

Alabama 200

Friday, December 13th, 2019

December 13, 2019

Tomorrow, on December 14, the southern state of Alabama celebrates its 200th birthday. Alabama entered the Union as the 22nd state in 1819, and celebrations and events have commemorated the bicentenary throughout the year.

Alabama’s Gulf Coast is the site of numerous resorts and vacation homes. This long, sandy peninsula extends into the Gulf of Mexico between Mobile and Perdido bays. Credit: © Jeff Greenberg, Alamy Images

Alabama’s Gulf Coast is the site of numerous resorts and vacation homes. This long, sandy peninsula extends into the Gulf of Mexico between Mobile and Perdido bays. Credit: © Jeff Greenberg, Alamy Images

The cities of Birmingham, Huntsville (site of the 1819 Alabama Constitutional Convention), and Montgomery (the capital) hosted special art and history exhibitions, concerts, and dances. A traveling exhibit, “The Cases and Faces that Changed a Nation,” detailed landmark civil rights court cases that originated in Alabama and profiled the three United States Supreme Court justices from the state.

Click to view larger image Alabama. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Click to view larger image
Alabama. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

The Alabama region was the home of Native Americans for thousands of years before Spanish explorers arrived in the first half of the 1500’s. Spain, France, and Great Britain alternately controlled the area before it became part of the United States in 1795.

Helen Keller Alabama state quarter. The Alabama quarter features an image of Helen Keller, an untiring supporter of people with disabilities. Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in 1880. A childhood illness left her blind and deaf. But she learned to write and speak, and she won international fame for her work to help blind and deaf people. The banner “Spirit of Courage” lies beneath her portrait. The coin includes Keller's name in the Braille alphabet, a writing system that can be read by touch. The coin also contains borders of magnolias and branches of the longleaf pine, the state tree. Alabama became the nation’s 22nd state on Dec 14, 1819. The Alabama quarter was minted in 2003. Credit: U.S. Mint

The Alabama state quarter features an image of Helen Keller, an untiring supporter of people with disabilities. The banner “Spirit of Courage” lies beneath her portrait. The coin includes Keller’s name in the Braille alphabet, a writing system that can be read by touch. The coin also contains borders of magnolias and branches of the longleaf pine, the state tree. Alabama became the nation’s 22nd state 200 years ago on Dec. 14, 1819. Credit: U.S. Mint

Alabama, a state that allowed slavery, seceded from the Union in 1861 and fought with the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Alabama reentered the Union in 1870, but racial strife in the state continued for another 100 years. Many important events of the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s took place in Alabama.

The State Capitol of Alabama is in Montgomery, which has been the capital of the state since 1846. Earlier capitals were St. Stephens (1817-1819), Huntsville (1819-1820), Cahaba (1820-1826), and Tuscaloosa (1826-1846). Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration

The State Capitol of Alabama is in Montgomery, which has been the capital of the state since 1846. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration

Tags: alabama, bicentenary, birmingham, civil rights movement, civil war, huntsville, montgomery, statehood
Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Current Events, Government & Politics, History, Holidays/Celebrations, People | Comments Off

Sitting Down to Take a Stand

Tuesday, December 1st, 2015

December 1, 2015

Sixty years ago today, Rosa Parks decided she’d had enough. The African American seamstress, tired after a long day’s work, decided to break the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. A city law at the time required blacks to leave their seats in the next rows when all seats in the front rows were taken and other whites still wanted seats. Parks was arrested, triggering a boycott of the Montgomery bus system that lasted over a year. Her action helped bring about the civil rights movement in the United States.

Rosa Parks sits toward the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, soon after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. Credit: © Underwood Archives/Getty Images

Rosa Parks sits toward the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, soon after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. Credit: © Underwood Archives/Getty Images

“At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in,” Parks later reflected. Even before Parks’s arrest, Montgomery’s black leaders had been discussing a protest against racial segregation on the city’s buses. Parks allowed the leaders to use her arrest to spark a boycott of the bus system. The leaders formed an organization to run the boycott. Martin Luther King, Jr.—then a Baptist minister in Montgomery—was chosen as president. From Dec. 5, 1955, to Dec. 20, 1956, thousands of blacks refused to ride Montgomery’s buses. Their boycott ended when the Supreme Court of the United States declared segregated seating on the city’s buses unconstitutional. The boycott’s success encouraged other mass protests demanding civil rights for blacks.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She attended Alabama State Teachers College. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber. She held a variety of jobs and, in 1943, became one of the first women to join the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She served as the organization’s secretary from 1943 to 1956.

Parks lost her job as a seamstress as a result of the Montgomery boycott. She moved to Detroit in 1957. From 1967 to 1988, she worked on the Detroit staff of John Conyers, Jr., a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1979, she won the Spingarn Medal for her work in civil rights. In 1996, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1999, she was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. Parks died on Oct. 24, 2005. A statue of Parks was dedicated at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in 2013.

Additional World Book articles:

  • Colvin, Claudette
  • Desmond, Viola
  • Emmett Till case
  • Million Man March
  • Detroit (1994) - A Back in Time article

Tags: african american history, african americans, alabama, boycott, civil rights movement, martin luther king jr, montgomery, montgomery bus boycott, racial segregation, rosa parks, segregation
Posted in Current Events, Government & Politics, History, People, Race Relations | Comments Off

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