I
Montgomery is situated on a bend on the Alabama River. It was inhabited
by Native Americans until French settlers built Fort Toulouse on the
site in 1715. The city, named after Richard Montgomery, a general
in the Revolutionary War, was established in 1819. Montgomery became
the state capital in 1847.
In 1860 the Republican Party candidate,
Abraham Lincoln was elected president
of the USA. Between election day in November and the inauguration
the following March, seven states seceded from the Union: South Carolina,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Representatives
from these seven states quickly established a new political organization,
the Confederate States of America.
On 8th February the Confederate States of America adopted a constitution
and within ten days had elected Jefferson
Davis as its president and Alexander
Stephens, as vice-president. Montgomery became its capital but
was later moved to Richmond. Montgomery
was finally captured by the Union Army
in April, 1865.
After the American Civil War Montgomery
became an important centre and market for cotton, livestock, yellow
pine and hardwood. Fertilizer and furniture was also manufactured
in the city.
In the 1950s and 1960s Montgomery became one of the main centres of
the struggle for African American Civil
Rights. In Montgomery, like most towns in the Deep South, buses
were segregated. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa
Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant, who was tired after a
hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.
After the arrest of Rosa Parks, a local
pastor, Martin Luther King, and his friends,
Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar
Nixon, and Bayard Rustin helped organize
protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people
in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were
completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed.
Others involved in the Montgomery Bus
Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the
protest continued.
For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to
work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population
of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the
Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus
Company to accept integration. and the boycott came to an end on 20th
December, 1956.
In March 1965, Martin Luther King organized
a protest march from Selma to Montgomery.
King was not with the marchers when they were attacked by state troopers
with nightsticks and tear gas. He did lead the second march but upset
some of his younger followers when he turned back at the Pettus Bridge
when faced by a barricade of state troopers. After the attacks on
King's supporters, Lyndon Baines Johnson
attempted to persuade Congress to pass his Voting
Rights Act.
In 1989 Montgomery was chosen as the site for the Civil Rights Memorial.
Designed by Maya Lin, the memorial honours the forty people who gave
their lives between 1954 and 1968 in the fight for racial equality.
Names on the memorial include Emmett Till,
Herbert Lee, Medger
Evers, Addie Mae Collins, Denise
McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia
Wesley, James Chaney, Andrew
Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie
Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola
Liuzzo, Jonathan Daniels, Samuel
Younge and Martin Luther King.
Montgomery covers a land area of 348.6 square km (134.6 square miles).
In 1998 the population was 197,014 with 56.5 per cent being white
and 42.3 per cent African American.
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