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 first European settlement in Alabama was founded by the French at Old Mobile in 1702. The city was moved to the current site of Mobile in 1711.

Alabama’s economy shifted away from traditional industries like lumber, steel, and textiles due to increased foreign competition. New industries, such as technology and automobile manufacturing, emerged, with Huntsville benefiting from the opening of the George C. Marshall Space Flight ...Read more

Among the historical tribes living in present-day Alabama at the time of European contact were the Cherokee, an Iroquoian language people; and the Muskogean-speaking Alabama (Alibamu), Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Koasati.

Alabama enjoys a lengthy growing season of up to 300 days in the southern part of the state.

Alabama’s land consists of 22 million acres (89,000 km²) of forest, which is 67% of the state’s total land area.

High-profile events such as the Selma to Montgomery marches made Alabama a major focal point of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Of the 383 mollusk species, 113 have never been collected outside of Alabama.

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.