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Spanish explorers are believed to have arrived at
Mobile Bay in 1519, and the territory was visited in 1540 by the
explorer Hernando de Soto. The first permanent European
settlement in Alabama was founded by the French at Fort Louis de
la Mobile in 1702. The British gained control of the area in
1763 by the Treaty of Paris but had to cede almost all the
Alabama region to the U.S. and Spain after the American
Revolution. The Confederacy was founded at Montgomery in Feb.
1861, and, for a time, the city was the Confederate capital.
During the later 19th century, the economy of the state slowly
improved with industrialization. At Tuskegee Institute, founded
in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, Dr. George Washington Carver
carried out his famous agricultural research.
In the 1950s and '60s, Alabama was the site of such landmark
civil-rights actions as the bus boycott in Montgomery (1955–56)
and the “Freedom March” from Selma to Montgomery (1965).
Today paper, chemicals, rubber and plastics, apparel and
textiles, primary metals, and automobile manufacturing
constitute the leading industries of Alabama. Continuing as a
major manufacturer of coal, iron, and steel, Birmingham is also
noted for its world-renowned medical center. The state ranks
high in the production of poultry, soybeans, milk, vegetables,
livestock, wheat, cattle, cotton, peanuts, fruits, hogs, and
corn.
Points of interest include the Helen Keller birthplace at
Tuscumbia, the Space and Rocket Center at Huntsville, the White
House of the Confederacy, the restored state Capitol, the Civil
Rights Memorial, the Rosa Parks Museum & Library, and the
Shakespeare Festival Theater Complex in Montgomery; the Civil
Rights Institute and the McWane Center in Birmingham; the
Russell Cave near Bridgeport; the Bellingrath Gardens at
Theodore; the USS Alabama at Mobile; Mound State Monument near
Tuscaloosa; and the Gulf Coast area. |
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