Alabama

The state

Get to know Alabama

Alabama is in the southern United States, between Georgia and Mississippi, and slopes down from the northern hills to a short stretch of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a land of cotton, wide rivers and cities that shaped the country’s 20th‑century history.

Montgomery, the capital, was the starting point of the 1955 bus boycott connected to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., and houses the Rosa Parks Museum and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King was pastor. About 80 km away, Selma has the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the 1965 voting‑rights march began. In Birmingham, the Civil Rights Institute tells that story in its exhibitions. The three sites are part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.

In the north, Huntsville is the city of rockets: the U.S. Space & Rocket Center displays a Saturn V, the rocket of the Apollo missions, and hosts Space Camp. In the northwest, Muscle Shoals has the studios where soul and rock artists recorded in the 1960s and 1970s.

On the coast, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have white‑sand beaches on the Gulf. Mobile, founded by the French in 1702, has celebrated Mardi Gras since 1703, when it was the capital of French Louisiana. On the table, smoked barbecue with the state’s typical white mayonnaise‑and‑pepper sauce, fried chicken and pecan pie. Travelers through the South usually reach Alabama from Atlanta in neighboring Georgia.