Alabama: A Historical Timeline

PRIOR TO 1700 PRE-EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
pre- 1500s	Groups of Native Americans belonging to the historic tribes of Alabama include the Muskogee and Mississippian. These tribes combine to become the Creek Confederacy, and other tribes come together to create the Choctaw and Chickasaw (in western Alabama) and Cherokee tribes (in the east).
1519	Spanish explorer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda passes through the area of Mobile Bay.
1539–41	Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto explores the Southeast along the Coosa, Alabama, and Tombigbee Rivers.
1540	The largest Native American battle in North American history occurs at the village of Mabila between Hernando de Soto's Spaniards and Chief Tuscaloosa's warriors. The Native American village and most of its 2,000-plus inhabitants are destroyed.
1700–1799 EUROPEAN EXPLORATION AND EARLY SETTLEMENT
1702	The French establish Alabama's first permanent European settlement at Fort Louis; for nine years, this is the French seat of government of New France. In 1711, Fort Louis is abandoned due to flooding. Settlers rebuild a fort on higher ground known as Fort Conde, the start of present-day Mobile.
1717	The French build Fort Toulouse on the Coosa River to trade with the Native Americans and offset British influence; it is the most eastern French settlement.
1721	The Africane sails into Mobile harbor transporting over 100 slaves.
1724	The French "Black Code" extends to the North American colonies, institutionalizing slavery in the Mobile area. The Black Code prohibits persons of color from voting, holding public office, or marrying a white person.
1763	Ending the Seven Years' War, the Treaty of Paris gives control of the Alabama area to the British.
1780	The Spanish capture Mobile during the American Revolution and retain West and East Floridas as part of the war-ending treaty.
1799	U.S. Army lieutenant John McClary takes possession of Fort St. Stephens from the Spanish; the United States flag is raised for the first time on land that will eventually become Alabama. Andrew Ellicott surveys the boundary between the United States and Spanish West Florida and places a stone north of Mobile to mark the 31st latitude.
1800–1849 STATE OF ALABAMA
1805–06	The Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee are forced to cede their land to white settlements.
1807	(February 19) After fatally shooting Alexander Hamilton in a duel, former vice president Aaron Burr is arrested in Alabama while fleeing to Spanish Florida. He is subsequently tried for treason and acquitted.
1813–14	(August 30) The Creek Native Americans massacre more than 500 white settlers at Fort Mims during the Creek Indian War. (November 3) American troops destroy the Native American village at Talledega.
1814	(March 27) General Andrew Jackson leads U.S. troops in the defeat of the Creek Native Americans, killing 700 Creek in northern Alabama. Following the Creek Indian War, the Native Americans cede nearly half the land of present-day Alabama to the United States.
1817	The Alabama Territory is created when Congress passes the Enabling Act, dividing the Mississippi Territory and admitting Mississippi into the Union as a state.
1818	Cedar Creek Furnace, the state's first blast furnace and commercial pig-iron producer, is established in present-day Franklin County. The blast furnace is a type of furnace used to produce metals, usually iron. With ample supplies of iron ore, coal, and limestone in the north, Alabama is well positioned to be a center for iron and steel manufacturing, and the industry begins to flourish in the late 1800s.
1819	(December 14) Alabama becomes the 22nd state admitted to the Union.
1832	Alabama's first railroad, the Tuscumbia Railway, opens, running the two miles from Tuscumbia Landing at the Tennessee River to Tuscumbia. The railroad is built for river traffic to avoid the dangerous and often unnavigable Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee River.
1833	(November 12-13) A fantastic meteor shower, known as the Leonids, occurs, eventually becoming part of Alabama folklore and used to date events. Approximately 100,000 to 200,000 meteors an hour fall over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. The shower is later commemorated in the 1934 jazz standard "The Stars Fell on Alabama."
1850–1900 THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION ERAS
1856	The Alabama Coal Mining Company begins the first systematic underground mining in the state near Montevallo. Today Alabama's coal industry produces more than 20.5 million tons a year.
1860	Due largely to booming cotton production, the slave population of Alabama reaches 435,000, or 45 percent of the state population.
1861	(January 11) Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union. The Confederate Congress meets in Montgomery, adopting a permanent constitution for the Confederate States of America. The Confederate flag is designed and first flown in Alabama. During the Civil War, 194 military land events and eight naval engagements occur within the boundaries of Alabama. Alabama contributes about 120,000 men to Confederate service, nearly all the white population capable of bearing arms. About 10,000 slaves escape and join the Union army.
1864	(August 2-23) Battle of Mobile Bay. A Federal fleet attacks a Confederate fleet and three forts guarding the entrance to Mobile Bay resulting in Union forces winning control of lower Mobile Bay. Mobile is the last important port on the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River remaining in Confederate possession, so its loss is the final step in Union blockading of the region. The Union victory also provides a significant boost for Abraham Lincoln's bid for re-election. (September 4) Bread riots erupt in Mobile, staged by women to protest food shortages and high food prices during the blockade. (November 21) Confederate General John Bell Hood launches the Franklin-Nashville Campaign into Tennessee from northern Alabama. The campaign features a series of battles fought in the fall in Alabama, Tennessee, and northwestern Georgia. The Confederates drive north, but the Union forces defeat Hood's forces decisively at Nashville, Tennessee.
1865	(December 6) The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, officially abolishing slavery in the U.S.
1868	(February) The Reconstruction Constitution is ratified. Alabama is readmitted to the Union, allowing African-American suffrage for the first time.
1871	Birmingham is founded. The city will later evolve into the center of the Southern iron and steel industry.
1881	(February 10) The Alabama Legislature establishes the Tuskegee Institute as a "normal school for the education of colored teachers." The law stipulates that no tuition will be charged but graduates must teach for two years in Alabama schools. Booker T. Washington is the first superintendent and his leadership makes Tuskegee one of the most famous and celebrated historic African-American colleges in the U.S.
1884	A series of tornadoes leaves an estimated 800 people dead in seven states, including Alabama.
1887	Anne Sullivan arrives at the Alabama home of Captain and Mrs. Arthur Keller to teach their blind and deaf six-year-old daughter, Helen Keller. Sullivan teaches Helen how to communicate, and Helen Keller goes on to become the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, as well as a renowned author, activist, and lecturer.
1900–1929 EARLY 20TH CENTURY
1932	The U.S. Public Health Service launches a 40-year series of experiments on African Americans in Tuskegee. Instead of being medically treated, roughly 400 poor black sharecroppers suffering from syphilis are monitored to study the effects of the disease's natural progression. The ethical breaches perpetrated by the study eventually lead to the establishment of the federal Office for Human Research Protections and regulation of the scientific study of human subjects.
1934	Cotton-mill workers in the South strike. The strike is ineffective since the Depression has resulted in warehouses full of unsold goods.
1941	Under pressure from the U.S. Congress, the War Department forms an all-black flying unit that trains in Tuskegee and eventually achieves fame as the Tuskegee Airmen. The unit establishes an outstanding record: it doesn't lose a single bomber escorted to enemy fighters. Several members go on to distinguished postwar careers in the U.S. Air Force.
1944	Oil is discovered near Gilbertown in commercial quantities, leading to the creation of the State Oil and Gas Board. Alabama becomes a world leader in the development of coal bed methane gas as an energy resource in the 1980s.
1950–PRESENT MODERN ALABAMA
1953	(September 8) Alabama becomes the 42nd state to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote, after initially rejecting the amendment in 1919.
1955	(December 1) Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white male passenger, as required by Montgomery city ordinance. Her action prompts the historic yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott by the city's African Americans, which effectively launches the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. In December of the following year, the Supreme Court bans segregated seating. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks are among the first people to ride a fully integrated bus in Montgomery.
1961	Freedom Riders arrive at the Greyhound bus terminal in Montgomery where they are attacked by an angry mob, prompting the federal government to send in U.S marshals to restore order. The Freedom Ride, an integrated bus trip from Washington D.C. through the Deep South, was formed to help enforce the 1960 Supreme Court ruling that prohibits segregation in bus and train terminal facilities.
1963	(January 13) George C. Wallace is sworn in as governor of Alabama after running under a pledge of "segregation forever." He is to become the most controversial figure in Alabama politics, as well as the state's longest-serving governor, serving four terms over three decades. He also runs for president four times. The Birmingham bombings of civil rights-related targets focus the nation's attention on racial violence in the state. The bombings include the offices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the home of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s brother, and the 16th Street Baptist Church.
1965	(March 7) Six hundred demonstrators make the first of three attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery to demand removal of voting restrictions on African Americans. State and local law enforcement officers attack the marchers as they cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, forcing them to flee back into the city. (March 21) Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 marchers from Selma to Montgomery in the third march against voting restrictions. (March 25) King leads a group of 25,000 to the state capital to demand voting rights. (August 6) President Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, outlawing discriminatory voting practices.
1967	Lurleen Wallace is inaugurated as governor, becoming Alabama's first female to serve in the position. Since Alabama governors are not allowed to serve consecutive terms, popular governor George Wallace devises a plan to have his wife Lurleen run in his stead so he can still exercise control. She remains the only female to have served in the office to this day, as well as the only woman to die in office when she succumbs to cancer in May the following year
1972	After resuming the office of governor in 1971, George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Maryland for the Democratic presidential primary. Wallace is left paralyzed.
1985	The Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling striking down an Alabama law providing for a daily "moment of silence" in public schools.
1993	Dedicated to research on civil rights issues around the world with a focus on the Deep South, the $13 million Civil Rights Institute opens in Birmingham.
2005	Hurricane Katrina lashes the Alabama coast. Ninety-two percent of crude oil production and 83 percent of natural gas production are shut down as Gulf of Mexico rigs are evacuated. Flood levels reach 11 feet in Mobile.
2007	The Alabama Legislature passes a resolution to express profound regret for the state's role in slavery.