Alabama was a Spanish territory in the sixteenth century until the French acquired it in the early eighteenth century. The British won the territory in 1763, and Spain held Mobile as part of Spanish West Florida until 1813.

Some scholars suggest the word may come from the Choctaw alba (meaning ‘plants’ or ‘weeds’) and amo (meaning ‘to cut’, ‘to trim’, or ‘to gather’), potentially meaning ‘clearers of the thicket’ or ‘herb gatherers’.

Alabama has four National Forests: Conecuh, Talladega, Tuskegee, and William B. Bankhead.

Alabama is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida to the south, and Mississippi to the west.

The capital of Alabama is Montgomery.

The Great Migration led tens of thousands of African Americans from rural Alabama to seek opportunities in northern and midwestern cities, significantly affecting Alabama’s population growth rate from 1910 to 1920.

Alabama’s oldest city is Mobile, which was founded by French colonists (Alabama Creoles) in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana.

The Yazoo lands referred to most of what is now the northern two-thirds of Alabama, claimed by the Province of Georgia from 1767 onwards. Following the Revolutionary War, it remained part of Georgia until added to the Mississippi Territory ...Read more

During Reconstruction, Alabama was represented in Congress by three African-American congressmen: Jeremiah Haralson, Benjamin S. Turner, and James T. Rapier.