Huntsville, Alabama, was home to WWII rocket research and remains a center of NASA activity.  Here, Alabamans built Apollo 11 and host the annual "US Space Camp" for promising students in the sciences.

Montgomery Alabama is the state capital and was also briefly the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War era before it was moved north to Richmond Virginia.  Here, nearly a century after the war between the states civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks heroically refused to give up her seat on a public bus.  

This key event framed some of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he and many others brought US Civil Rights to the forefront of the national conscience.

Alabama now provides visitors with many Civil War and Civil Rights monuments. The First White House of the Confederacy is located in Montgomery, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, in Birmingham Alabama.

Alabama's "Black Belt", a region of fertile dark soil, sustained the state's fortunes during the 19th century, when Cotton was King. Towards the close of the 19th century, industrialization took off in steel manufacturing centers like Birmingham, a city founded in 1870 and named in honor of the British steel center. Industrialization accelerated with the manufacturing boom triggered by World War II, and the trend has continued; contemporary Alabama is a center of high tech manufacturing.

Huntsville - Birmingham - Decatur - Montgomery
Dothan - Mobile - Gulf Shores - Selma