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Alabama

state of the United States of America

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. The largest city by population is Birmingham, which has long been the most industrialized city, and largest city by total land area is Huntsville. The oldest city is Mobile, founded by French colonists in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana.

The region was controlled by the French Colonial Empire until the British Empire annexed it during the Seven Years’ War, and the United States won it in the American Revolution. It was admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1819. It joined the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, and hosted its first national capital in Montgomery.

Its state government is currently controlled by the Republican Party, and its current governor is Kay Ivey.

Flag of Alabama
Seal of Alabama
Alabama State Capitol, Montgomery, West view 20160713 1
Oh! Susanna! Don't you cry for me; I come from a Alabama with a banjo on my knee. ~ Stephen Foster

Quotes

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  • On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine/And the choirs kept singing of freedom/On Birmingham Sunday a noise shook the ground/And people all over the earth turned around/For no one recalled a more cowardly sound/And the choirs kept singing of freedom
  • America was swelling rapidly in numbers as well as in area. Between 1790 and 1820 the population increased from four to nine and a half millions. Thereafter it almost doubled every I twenty years. Nothing like such a rate of growth had before been noted in the world, though it was closely paralleled in contemporary England. The settlement of great bodies of men in the West was eased by the removal of the Indian tribes from the regions east of the Mississippi. They had been defeated when they fought as allies of Britain in the war of 1812. Now it became Federal policy to eject them. The lands thus thrown open were made available in smaller units and at lower prices than in earlier years to the incoming colonists — for we might as well use this honourable word about them, unpopular though it may now be. Colonisation, in the true sense, was the task that engaged the Western pioneers. Farmers from stony New England were tilling the fertile empty territories to the south of the Great Lakes, while in the South the Black Belt of Alabama and Mississippi proved fruitful soil for the recent art of large-scale cotton cultivation.
    • Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Volume IV: The Great Democracies (1958), pp. 103-104
  • If now you young people, instead of running away from the battle here in Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, instead of seeking freedom and opportunity in Chicago and New York—which do spell opportunity—nevertheless grit your teeth and make up your minds to fight it out right here if it takes every day of your lives and the lives of your children’s children; if you do this, you must in meetings like this ask yourselves what does the fight mean? How can it be carried on? What are the best tools, arms, and methods? And where does it lead? I should be the last to insist that the uplift of mankind never calls for force and death. There are times, as both you and I know, when "Tho’ love repine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, ‘Tis man’s perdition to be safe, When for truth he ought to die."
  • Oh! Susanna! Don't you cry for me; I come from a Alabama with a banjo on my knee.
  • Alabama's gotten me so upset/Tennessee made me lose my rest/And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
  • I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
  • Big wheels keep on turning
    Carry me home to see my kin.
    Singing songs about the Southland
    I miss Alabamy once again.
    And I think its a sin.
  • Sweet Home Alabama,
    Where the skies are so blue.
    Sweet Home Alabama,
    Lord, I'm coming home to you.
    • Sweet Home Alabama.
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  •   Encyclopedic article on Alabama on Wikipedia
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