March 29, 2024

Alabama History: December 2014/January 2015

Posted on November 30, 2014 by in Discover Your Past

(Information courtesy Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://archives.state.al.us/).

Dec. 6, 1847 — The Alabama legislature begins its first session in the new capital of Montgomery. The capitol building cost CapitolVertSepia72$75,000 to build and was paid for by the citizens of Montgomery. It was destroyed by fire two years later.

Dec. 11, 1919 — The boll weevil monument is dedicated in Enterprise, but without the weevil statue. That was added 30 years later.

Dec. 14, 1819 — Alabama becomes a state.

Dec. 14, 1849 — On the thirtieth anniversary of Alabama statehood the capitol in Montgomery is destroyed by fire.

Dec. 16, 1898 — U.S. President William McKinley visits Tuskegee Institute at the invitation of Booker T. Washington, the school’s president.

Dec. 19, 1871 — The city of Birmingham is incorporated by the legislature, with the governor appointing the first mayor and eight aldermen.

Dec. 21, 1956 — The Supreme Court ruling banning segregated seating on Montgomery’s public transit vehicles goes into effect.

Dec. 23, 1813 — In the midst of the Creek War, American forces defeat Creek warriors in the Battle of Holy Ground, a sacred town on the banks of the Alabama River.

Dec. 25, 1956 — The home of Birmingham minister and civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth is bombed.

Dec. 29, 1835 — The Cherokee Indian Treaty Party signs the Treaty of New Echota, ceding their lands east of the Mississippi River to the U.S. government. CreekWarMap72

Jan. 1, 1900 — The New Year begins with cold temperatures and snow in Birmingham and Montgomery.

Jan. 1, 1926 — The University of Alabama football team wins the Rose Bowl, the first of six Rose Bowl appearances, and the first time a southern team was invited to a national bowl game.

Jan. 1, 1953 — Legendary singer-songwriter Hank Williams dies at the age of twenty-nine. Over 20,000 people attend his funeral in Montgomery.

Jan. 3, 1978 — Louphenia Thomas is the first black woman elected to Alabama Legislature.

Jan. 4, 1861 — A week before Alabama secedes from the Union, Gov. A. B. Moore orders the seizure of federal military installations Fort Gaines, Fort Morgan, and the U.S. Arsenal at Mount Vernon.

Jan. 9, 1965 — The battleship USS Alabama is dedicated in Mobile as a World War II memorial. Commissioned in August 1942, the Alabama served primarily in the Pacific, earning nine battle stars.

Jan. 10, 1957 — Six pre-dawn bombings in Montgomery damage four black churches and two ministers’ homes, including that of Montgomery Bus Boycott leader Ralph Abernathy.

Jan. 11, 1861 — The Alabama Secession Convention passes an Ordinance of Secession by a vote of 61-39, becoming the fourth state to secede from the Union.

Jan. 12, 1951 — Annie Lola Price of Cullman becomes the first woman to serve on the Alabama Court of Appeals when she is appointed to the court by Gov. Jim Folsom.

Jan. 16, 1967 — Lurleen Wallace is inaugurated as Alabama’s first female governor and only the third nationwide. She died in office of cancer on May 7, 1968.

Jan. 19, 1818 — The first legislature of the Alabama Territory convenes at the Douglass Hotel in the territorial capital of St. Stephens.

Jan. 20, 1702 — French colonists, led by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, establish Fort Louis de la Mobile on a bluff twenty-seven miles up the Mobile River from Mobile Bay.

Jan 26 1983 — Retired University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant dies suddenly from a heart attack.

Jan. 28, 1846 — Montgomery is selected as capital of Alabama by the state legislature on the 16th ballot.

Jan. 30, 1956 — During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, segregationists bomb the home of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Jan. 30, 1966 — Alabama experiences its coldest ever recorded temperature of -27°F at New Market in Madison County.

Jan. 31, 1902* — Tallulah Bankhead, star of stage, screen, and radio in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, is born in Huntsville. Daughter of U.S.Congressman William B. Bankhead, she was most famous for her flamboyant lifestyle, throaty voice, stage role in The Little Foxes (1939) and her part in the film Lifeboat (1943). *[Generally accepted birthdate.]

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