Alabama

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Before European contact, Alabama was home to several major Native American nations, including the Cherokee in the northeast, the Chickasaw in the northwest, the Choctaw in the southwest, and the Creek Confederacy across the central and eastern parts of the state. These groups had established settled agricultural villages, trade networks, and political structures long before the first Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century. Hernando de Soto’s expedition crossed Alabama in 1540, bringing disease and conflict that devastated Native populations. French colonists established the first permanent European settlement at Mobile in 1702, making it the oldest city in the state and a strategic port for the fur trade and later the slave-based plantation economy.

After the French and Indian War, Britain took control of the region in 1763, and after the American Revolution, the area became part of the Mississippi Territory. The real wave of American settlement began after the Creek War (1813–1814) and the forced removal of Native peoples via the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. White settlers, primarily of Scots-Irish and English descent, poured in from Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, drawn by the promise of cheap, fertile land for cotton cultivation. They established towns like Huntsville (1805), Tuscaloosa (1819), and Montgomery (1819), which became the state capital in 1846. The cotton boom also brought a massive forced migration of enslaved Black people from the Upper South; by 1860, nearly 45% of Alabama’s population was enslaved, concentrated on plantations in the Black Belt region stretching from Selma to Montgomery.

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the economy shifted from cotton to timber, coal, and iron. Birmingham was founded in 1871 at the intersection of two railroads and quickly became the industrial heart of the South, drawing white and Black workers from rural areas. The Great Migration (1910–1970) saw hundreds of thousands of Black Alabamians leave for Northern industrial cities like Chicago and Detroit, a demographic shift that reduced the state’s Black population share from 45% in 1900 to about 26% by 1970. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) brought electrification and industry to northern Alabama in the 1930s, and World War II spurred the growth of military bases like Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery and the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, which later became the anchor of the state’s aerospace and defense sector.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had a relatively muted effect on Alabama compared to coastal states, but it did open the door for new immigrant groups. The state’s foreign-born population remains low at 2.2%, but it has grown from negligible levels in 1970. The most significant post-1965 change has been the arrival of Hispanic immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Central America, who began coming in the 1990s to work in poultry processing, construction, and agriculture. The Hispanic population now stands at 5.4% of the state total, with concentrations in Albertville and Russellville in the north (poultry plants), and in Birmingham and Montgomery (construction and services). Smaller but notable communities of East/Southeast Asian immigrants (1.0% of the population) — including Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese families — have settled in Huntsville and Auburn, drawn by engineering and research jobs. The Indian-subcontinent population (0.4%) is even smaller, concentrated in the medical and tech sectors around Birmingham and Huntsville.

Domestic migration has been a far larger driver of demographic change than immigration. Since the 1970s, Alabama has attracted retirees, military families, and Sun Belt job-seekers from the Rust Belt and Northeast. The Gulf Coast, particularly Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, has seen steady growth from retirees and second-home buyers. Huntsville has been the state’s fastest-growing major city, adding tens of thousands of residents — many from California, Texas, and the Northeast — drawn by high-paying jobs at NASA, the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, and a growing private aerospace sector. Suburbanization has reshaped the Birmingham metro area, with white and Black middle-class families moving to suburbs like Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and Alabaster, while the city of Birmingham itself has become majority Black (about 68%).