What is the history of alabama?

Question:

What is the history of alabama?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Among the Native American people once living in the area of present day Alabama were Alabama (Alibamu), Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Koasati, and Mobile.[9] Trade with the Northeast via the Ohio River began during the Burial Mound Period (1000 BC-A.D. 700) and continued until European contact.[10] Meso-American influence is evident in the agrarian Mississippian culture that followed.

The French founded the first European settlement in the state with the establishment of Mobile in 1702.[11] Southern Alabama was French from 1702 to 1763, part of British West Florida from 1763 to 1780, and part of Spanish West Florida from 1780 to 1814. Northern and central Alabama was part of British Georgia from 1763 to 1783 and part of the American Mississippi territory thereafter. Its statehood was delayed by the lack of a coastline; rectified when Andrew Jackson captured Spanish Mobile in 1814.[12] Alabama was the twenty-second state admitted to the Union, in 1819.

Map of Alabama - PDFThe economy of the central "Black Belt (region of Alabama)" featured large rich slave plantations that grew cotton.[13] Elsewhere poor whites were subsistence farmers. Alabama seceded and joined the Confederate States of America, 1861–65. While not many battles were fought in the state, Alabama contributed about 120,000 soldiers to the Civil War. All the slaves were freed by 1865.[14] After a period of Reconstruction it emerged as a poor rural state, still tied to cotton, with high racial tensions between the ruling whites and the recently emancipated blacks, who had second-class legal, social and economic status.[13] The blacks lost the right to vote in 1901, and, after 1917, many migrated to northern cities. Politically, the state was one-party Democratic, and produced a number of national leaders. World War II brought prosperity.[13] Cotton faded in importance as the state developed a manufacturing and service base. In the 1960s, under Governor George Wallace, the state opposed federal integration efforts. After the passage of the Civil Rights Laws of 1964 and 1965, African Americans regained the right to vote and de jure segregation and Jim Crow disappeared.[15] After 1972, the state became a Republican stronghold in presidential elections, and leaned Republican in state elections.[16]

[edit] Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Alabama
Historical populations
Census Pop. %Ⱡ
1800 1,250 –
1810 9,046 623.7%
1820 127,901 1313.9%
1830 309,527 142.0%
1840 590,756 90.9%
1850 771,623 30.6%
1860 964,201 25.0%
1870 996,992 3.4%
1880 1,262,505 26.6%
1890 1,513,401 19.9%
1900 1,828,697 20.8%
1910 2,138,093 16.9%
1920 2,348,174 9.8%
1930 2,646,248 12.7%
1940 2,832,961 7.1%
1950 3,061,743 8.1%
1960 3,266,740 6.7%
1970 3,444,165 5.4%
1980 3,893,888 13.1%
1990 4,040,587 3.8%
2000 4,447,100 10.1%
As of 2005, Alabama has an estimated population of 4,557,808,[17] which is an increase of 32,433, or 0.7%, from the prior year and an increase of 110,457, or 2.5%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 77,418 people (that is 319,544 births minus 242,126 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 36,457 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 25,936 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 10,521 people.

The state had 108,000 foreign-born (2.4% of the state population), of which an estimated 22.2% were illegal aliens (24,000).

The center of population of Alabama is located in Chilton County, outside of the town of Jemison, an area known as Jemison Division