Montgomery

Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, on the Alabama River in the central part of the state. In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in the city, and the bus boycott that followed, led by Martin Luther King Jr., began the modern civil rights movement.

Two river towns merged in the 1810s to form Montgomery, which became the state capital in the 1840s. Cotton from the farms of the Black Belt was shipped from its river wharves. The city opened one of the first electric streetcar systems of the United States in 1886, called the Lightning Route. In the 1960s the march from Selma for voting rights ended on the steps of the state capitol in Montgomery. The Wright brothers opened a flying school on a field west of the city in the early 20th century.

Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama builds sport utility vehicles at its plant in the south of the city. Cotton, timber and cattle from the farms of central Alabama are traded through the city.

The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor during the boycott, stands a short walk from the capitol. The Rosa Parks Museum, on the corner where she boarded the bus, tells the story of the boycott. The Hank Williams Museum shows the stage clothes and records of the country singer, who grew up in the area. The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum is kept in the house where the writer and his wife lived in the early 1930s, and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival stages plays in a large park.