This Month In Alabama History: Selma March, Space Center Opens

BIRMINGHAM, AL - The month of March is full of significant dates in Alabama history, and many of those events also hold a great deal of significance in U.S. and world history as well. A look at events from March throughout the history of the state finds civil rights milestones, famous birthdays and the opening of one of the state's most famous scientific centers.

Throughout the year in 2019, as Alabama celebrates its bicentennial, Patch will look at important dates in each month of Alabama history. Patch looked at significant dates from March and found several on the calendar of major significance:

March 27, 1814: In the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Andrew Jackson leads a force of Americans, Creeks, and Cherokees against Red Stick Creeks. Attacking the Red Stick stronghold of Tohopeka on the banks of the Tallapoosa River, Jackson’s men killed more than 900 people. The victory soon led to the end of the Creek War and the cession of 23 million acres of Creek territory to the United States.

March 25, 1931: Nine black youths, soon to be known as the Scottsboro Boys, are arrested in Paint Rock and jailed in Scottsboro, the Jackson County seat. Charged with raping two white women on a freight train from Chattanooga, the sheriff had to protect them from mob violence that night. Within a month, eight of the nine were sentenced to death. Based on questionable evidence, the convictions by an all-white jury generated international outrage.

March 24, 1853: William Rufus King of Selma is inaugurated as Vice President of the United States. Elected the previous fall on the Democratic ticket with Franklin Pierce, it became apparent that he would be unable to travel to Washington for the inauguration, so Congress passed a special act to allow him to take the oath of office in Cuba. When his health did not improve, King returned to Alabama, where he died April 18, 1853, never formally serving as Vice President.

March 21, 1965: Rev. Martin Luther King leads 3,200 marchers from Selma toward Montgomery in support of civil rights for black Americans, after two earlier marches had ended at the Edmund Pettus Bridge–the first in violence and the second in prayer.

March 21, 1932: An estimated 250 Alabamians die in tornadoes that sweep the state. More than 1,500 others were injured and damage was estimated at $5 million. The western and north-central parts of the state - especially the towns of Northport, Cullman, and Columbiana - were hardest hit.

March 17, 1970: The Alabama Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville is dedicated, with Wernher von Braun calling it “a graphic display of man’s entering into the cosmic age.” Now known as the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, thousands of visitors each year visitors tour the museum.

March 10, 1948: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald of Montgomery, best known as a writer, artist, and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, dies in a hospital fire in Asheville, North Carolina.

March 9, 1964: In the Alabama case New York Times v. Sullivan the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a landmark free speech decision. A Montgomery city commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, had sued the Times for running a factually inaccurate ad that criticized the city’s handling of civil rights demonstrators. Citing the First Amendment, the court ruled against Sullivan, strengthening the right to freely criticize government.

March 3, 1817: The Alabama Territory is created when Congress passes the enabling act allowing the division of the Mississippi Territory and the admission of Mississippi into the union as a state. Alabama would remain a territory for over two years before becoming the 22nd state in December 1819.