Recent Videos and Activities for 20th Century

A.G. Gaston

Birmingham entrepreneur and businessman A. G. Gaston was one of the most successful African American business owners in Alabama. Gaston overcame humble beginnings and racial discrimination to build a $40 [more]

May 25, 2018

Fred Shuttlesworth

Fred Shuttlesworth was one of the pioneering figures of the civil rights era and the central leader of the movement in Birmingham. As pastor of Bethel Baptist Church and founder [more]

April 13, 2018

Hattie Hooker Wilkins

Selma native Hattie Hooker Wilkins was the first woman elected to the Alabama State Legislature. She joined the 1923 Alabama House of Representatives as a Democrat, expressing the belief that [more]

April 13, 2018

USS Alabama

The USS Alabama is a World War II-era battleship that first served in the Atlantic theater but was better known for helping to take Japanese-held islands in the Pacific between [more]

April 3, 2018

Amelia Boynton Robinson

Amelia Boynton Robinson was a leading civil rights activist who played a key role in the efforts that led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and was the [more]

February 20, 2018

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is one of the most enduring symbols of the American civil rights era of the mid-twentieth century. She was active in the Montgomery chapter of the National Association [more]

February 9, 2018

First 911 Call

At 2 pm on February 16, 1968, the very first 9-1-1 call was made in Haleyville, Alabama. The call was made by state Representative Rankin Fite from Haleyville mayor James [more]

February 9, 2018

Montgomery State Capitol

In January 1846, the Alabama legislature moved the state capitol from Tuscaloosa to the more centrally located city of Montgomery. The capitol building, completed in 1851, still serves as the [more]

January 18, 2018

Lurleen Wallace

Lurleen Wallace became the first female governor of Alabama in 1967. Laws at the time prevented her husband Governor George Wallace from seeking a second term, so Mrs. Wallace ran [more]

January 18, 2018

Wright Brothers Flying School

In the spring of 1910, just seven years after their successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright opened the nation’s first civilian flying school [more]

October 10, 2017