The Flag of Alabama
Alabama ( AL -ə-BAM -ə ) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States . It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th largest by area and the 24th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states .
Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State , after the state bird . Alabama is also known as the "Heart of Dixie " and the "Cotton State". The state has diverse geography, with the north dominated by the mountainous Tennessee Valley and the south by Mobile Bay , a historically significant port. Alabama's capital is Montgomery , and its largest city by population and area is Huntsville . Its oldest city is Mobile , founded by French colonists (Alabama Creoles ) in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana . Greater Birmingham is Alabama's largest metropolitan area and its economic center. Politically, as part of the Deep South , Alabama is predominantly a conservative state, and is known for its Southern culture . Within Alabama, American football , particularly at the college level, plays a major part of the state's culture.
Originally home to many native tribes, present-day Alabama was a Spanish territory beginning in the sixteenth century until the French acquired it in the early eighteenth century. The British won the territory in 1763 until losing it in the American Revolutionary War . Spain held Mobile as part of Spanish West Florida until 1813. In December 1819, Alabama was recognized as a state. During the antebellum period, Alabama was a major producer of cotton , and widely used African American slave labor. In 1861, the state seceded from the United States to become part of the Confederate States of America , with Montgomery acting as its first capital, and rejoined the Union in 1868. Following the American Civil War , Alabama would suffer decades of economic hardship, in part due to agriculture and a few cash crops being the main driver of the state's economy. Similar to other former slave states, Alabamian legislators employed Jim Crow laws from the late 19th century up until the 1960s. High-profile events such as the Selma to Montgomery march made the state a major focal point of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. (Full article... )
Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
Mariel Margaret "Mia" Hamm (born March 17, 1972) is an American former professional soccer player, two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion. Hailed as a soccer icon, she played as a forward for the United States national team from 1987 to 2004. Hamm was the face of the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), the first professional women's soccer league in the United States, where she played for the Washington Freedom from 2001 to 2003. She played college soccer for the North Carolina Tar Heels and helped the team win four NCAA Division I Women's Soccer Championship titles.
Hamm competed in four
FIFA Women's World Cups : the inaugural
1991 tournament in China,
1995 in Sweden,
1999 and
2003 in the United States. She led the team at three Olympic Games —
1996 in Atlanta (the first time women's soccer was played),
2000 in Sydney , and
2004 in Athens . At these seven international tournaments she played in 42 matches and scored 14 goals. (
Full article... )
List of recognized articles
Alabama Highway Patrol troopers attack civil rights demonstrators outside Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches , held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama , to the state capital of Montgomery . The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote , in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South . By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act , a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement .
Since the late 19th century, Southern state legislatures had passed and maintained a series of
Jim Crow laws that had
disenfranchised the millions of African Americans across the South and enforced
racial segregation . The initial voter registration drive, started in 1963 by the African-American
Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) failed as local White officials arrested the organizers and otherwise harassed Blacks wishing to register to vote. The passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally ended segregation but the situation in Selma changed little. The DCVL then invited Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. and the activists of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to amplify the efforts, and these figures drew more prominent people to Alabama. Local and regional protests began in January 1965, with 3,000 people arrested by the end of February. On February 26, activist and deacon
Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot several days earlier by state trooper
James Bonard Fowler during a peaceful march in nearby
Marion . To defuse and refocus the Black community's outrage,
James Bevel , who was directing SCLC's Selma voting rights movement, called for a march of dramatic length, from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, calling for an unhindered exercise of the right to vote.
[page needed ] (
Full article... )
List of selected articles
History of Alabama Huntsville, Alabama Birmingham, Alabama Montgomery, Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama George Wallace Dauphin Island, Alabama Talladega, Alabama Talladega Superspeedway University of Alabama COVID-19 pandemic in Alabama Chattahoochee River Alabama people Alabama Department of Corrections Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama LGBT rights in Alabama Jefferson County, Alabama Cannabis in Alabama Russell Cave National Monument Cahaba, Alabama Cahaba River Vulcan statue Confederate States of America Muscle Shoals, Alabama Chickasaw J. Lister Hill Alabama beach mouse Mary Anderson (inventor) Rosa Parks Montgomery bus boycott Nat King Cole Booker T. Washington Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Conecuh Ridge Whiskey Hank Williams The Machine (social group) Helen Keller First White House of the Confederacy Harper Lee Marshall Space Flight Center Dothan, Alabama University of Montevallo Capital City Street Railway Condoleezza Rice Enterprise, Alabama Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard Decatur, Alabama Barber Motorsports Park Hank Aaron Carl Lewis Bo Jackson Lionel Richie Emmylou Harris Jim Nabors Jordan Fisher Terrell Owens Courteney Cox Rickwood Field Octavia Spencer Willie Mays History of Montgomery, Alabama WDIG (AM)
The following are images from various Alabama-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1 Union Army troops occupying Courthouse Square in Huntsville, following its capture and occupation by federal forces in 1864 (from
Alabama )
Image 2 Von Braun Center in Huntsville (from
Alabama )
Image 3 Ethnic origins in Alabama (from
Alabama )
Image 4 William J. Samford Hall at
Auburn University (from
Alabama )
Image 5 The
Space Shuttle Enterprise being tested at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1978 (from
Alabama )
Image 6 Terminal at the
Montgomery Regional Airport in Montgomery (from
Alabama )
Image 7 Vestavia Hills High School in the suburbs of Birmingham (from
Alabama )
Image 8 The inauguration of
Jefferson Davis in
Montgomery on February 18, 1861. (from
History of Alabama )
Image 9 Highlands United Methodist Church in Birmingham, part of the Five Points South Historic District (from
Alabama )
Image 10 The main house, built in 1833, at
Thornhill in Greene County. It is a former
Black Belt plantation. (from
Alabama )
Image 13 The Natural Bridge Rock in
Winston County is the longest natural bridge east of the Rockies. (from
Alabama )
Image 14 Artists conception of
Moundville , a
Mississippian culture site on the Black Warrior River in Hale County (from
History of Alabama )
Image 15 Aerial view of the port of Mobile (from
Alabama )
Image 16 Dauphin Street in Mobile (from
Alabama )
Image 17 Temple B'Nai Sholom in Huntsville, established in 1876. It is the oldest synagogue building in continuous use in the state. (from
Alabama )
Image 18 Tornado damage in
Phil Campbell following the statewide
April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak (from
Alabama )
Image 19 Map of Alabama from the
National Atlas of the United States (2007) (from
Alabama )
Image 20 The former
Mount Sinai School in rural Autauga County, completed in 1919. It was one of the 387
Rosenwald Schools built in the state. (from
Alabama )
Image 21 Monte Sano State Park in Huntsville (from
Alabama )
Image 22 Artist's conception of the
Taskigi Site , a fortified mound and village near Wetumpka, Alabama (from
History of Alabama )
Image 23 Map of counties in Alabama by racial plurality, per the 2020 census
Non-Hispanic White 40–50%
50–60%
60–70%
70–80%
80–90%
90%+
Black or African American 40–50%
50–60%
70–80%
80–90%
(from
Alabama )
Image 24 Shelby Hall, School of Computing, at the
University of South Alabama in Mobile (from
Alabama )
Image 25 Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama in Montgomery in 2010 (from
Alabama )
Image 26 Airbus Mobile Engineering Center at the Brookley Aeroplex in Mobile (from
Alabama )
Image 27 Cliffs at the rim of the
Wetumpka meteorite crater (from
Alabama )
Image 28 The
Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, one of the largest shopping centers in the southeast (from
Alabama )
Image 29 The
Moundville Archaeological Site in Hale County. It was occupied by Native Americans of the
Mississippian culture from 1000 to 1450 CE. (from
Alabama )
Image 30 Mobile is the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the U.S. (from
Alabama )
Image 31 Ono Island in Baldwin County (from
Alabama )
Image 32 Harrison Plaza at the
University of North Alabama in Florence. The school was chartered as LaGrange College by the
Alabama Legislature in 1830. (from
Alabama )
Image 33 Blast furnaces such as the
Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company 's Ensley Works made
Birmingham an important center for iron production in the early 20th century. (from
History of Alabama )
Image 34 Interstate 59 (co-signed with
Interstate 20 ) approaching
Interstate 65 in downtown Birmingham (from
Alabama )
Image 35 Mercedes-Benz U.S. International in Tuscaloosa County was the first automotive facility to locate within the state. (from
Alabama )
Image 36 The developing skyline of Birmingham in 1915 (from
Alabama )
Image 37 Alabama's population density, 2010 (from
Alabama )
Image 38 1725 map of
Mobile , Alabama's first permanent European settlement (from
History of Alabama )
Image 39 Lighthouse on
Guntersville Lake (from
Alabama )
Image 40 A stand of
Cahaba lilies (
Hymenocallis coronaria ) in the
Cahaba River , within the
Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge (from
Alabama )
Image 41 The
State Capitol Building in Montgomery, completed in 1851 (from
Alabama )
Image 42 Regions-Harbert Plaza ,
Regions Center , and
Wells Fargo Tower in Birmingham's financial district (from
Alabama )
Image 45 The Islamic Center of Tuscaloosa (from
Alabama )
Image 46 Alabama's beaches are one of the state's major tourist destinations. (from
Alabama )
Image 48 1823 Map of Alabama (from
History of Alabama )
Image 49 Members of the Alabama state legislature on the steps of the Capitol in Montgomery during Reconstruction (1872) (from
History of Alabama )
Image 50 Regions Field in Birmingham (from
Alabama )
Image 52 Senator
Doug Jones won a
special election in 2017. (from
Alabama )
Image 54 The
Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail has a large economic impact on the state. (from
Alabama )
... that in 2021, Alabama state representative Steve McMillan sponsored a bill that later became law allowing restaurants to have outdoor dining areas for dogs?
... that Oakwood Cemetery contains the graves of Confederate soldiers and officers, English, Canadian, and French World War II pilots, and Hank Williams ?
... that the 2022 USFL playoffs and championship game could not be played in Birmingham, Alabama , as the rest of the season was, due to the 2022 World Games ?
... that Freetown, Alabama , was founded by free and formerly enslaved African Americans in Alabama, whose church, built in 1929, burned down in 2022?
... that an Alabama radio station was described by its program director as a "no-format mess"?
... that Bryan Brinyark finished second in an election to the Alabama House of Representatives just 15 votes behind his opponent, but later won a runoff election?
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories