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.

The Rosenwald Fund helped fund the construction of schools for African American children in Alabama. Between 1913 and 1937, 387 schools, seven teachers’ houses, and several vocational buildings were built with partial funding from the Rosenwald Fund.

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 remained chiefly agricultural, with an economy tied to cotton. The state constitution of 1868 created Alabama’s first public school system and expanded women’s rights. Legislators funded public road and railroad projects, despite allegations of fraud and misappropriation.

The 1901 Constitution of Alabama included provisions for voter registration that effectively disenfranchised large portions of the population, including nearly all African Americans, Native Americans, and tens of thousands of poor European Americans. It also required racial segregation of ...Read more

Organized insurgent groups in Alabama included The Ku Klux Klan, the Pale Faces, Knights of the White Camellia, Red Shirts, and the White League.

Reconstruction in Alabama ended in 1874 when Democrats regained control of the legislature and governor’s office through an election dominated by fraud and violence. They wrote another constitution in 1875, passed the Blaine Amendment prohibiting public money from financing ...Read more

By 1903, only 2,980 African Americans were registered to vote in Alabama, despite at least 74,000 being literate. This was a sharp decline from the more than 181,000 eligible to vote in 1900.

After seceding, Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, and the Confederacy’s capital was initially at Montgomery. Alabama contributed about 120,000 soldiers to the war effort, though few battles were fought in the state.

A company of cavalry soldiers from Huntsville, Alabama, joined Nathan Bedford Forrest’s battalion in Kentucky. Their uniforms had yellow trim, leading to them being nicknamed “Yellowhammer,” a name later applied to all Alabama troops in the Confederate Army.