Despite progress, Alabama continues to face challenges related to racial discrimination, economic disparities, and underrepresentation of urban areas. The Black Belt region, home to many African Americans, remains economically disadvantaged.

Alabama’s oldest city is Mobile, which was 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.

Alabama ranks fifth in the nation for the diversity of its flora, with nearly 4,000 pteridophyte and spermatophyte plant species.

Baldwin and Mobile counties became part of Spanish West Florida in 1783, part of the independent Republic of West Florida in 1810, and finally part of the Mississippi Territory in 1812.

The economy of Alabama’s Black Belt region was built around large cotton plantations whose owners’ wealth grew mainly from slave labor. Southeastern planters and traders from the Upper South brought slaves with them as the cotton plantations in Alabama ...Read more

The Alabama Territory was created by the United States Congress on March 3, 1817.

The new voter registration laws, particularly the cumulative poll tax, also disenfranchised poor white voters. By 1941, whites constituted a slight majority of those disenfranchised by these laws, with 600,000 whites and 520,000 African Americans losing the ability to vote.

Indigenous peoples of varying cultures lived in Alabama for thousands of years before European colonization. These included tribes involved in trade with northeastern tribes by the Ohio River during the Burial Mound Period (1000 BCE – 700 CE) and ...Read more

While part of the same large language family, the Muskogean-speaking tribes in Alabama developed distinct cultures and languages.