Ed Bridges is retiring after 30 years as director of the state archives.MONTGOMERY — The days when men first walked on the moon and people first set foot in what is now Alabama are two of the 15 key dates in Alabama history listed recently by state archives Director Ed Bridges.
World War II, the Civil War and the civil rights movement also are represented by dates Bridges provided after he was asked to propose a top-10 list for Alabama history. He didn’t stop at 10.
”Obviously, there are a lot of things I wanted to include here, and I couldn’t get it down to 10, but somehow this 15 seemed to give a reasonably balanced overview,” he said.
Bridges, 66, has been director of the state Department of Archives and History since May 1982. He plans to retire after Sept. 30.
”Thirty years is a long time for one person in an agency,” he said. ”Institutions need some new blood, some new vitality.”
Historian Leah Rawls Atkins of Hoover, a member of the department’s board of trustees, said, ”Ed took the archives and made it professional in every way, took it to a new level.”
Historian Wayne Flynt of Auburn also praised Bridges, saying, ”He’s been so dedicated in promoting the history of this state in a balanced and fair way.”
Bridges said he looks forward to hearing what people have to say about his list of 15 key dates in Alabama history. Here is his list, in chronological order:
A day about 14,000 years ago, give or take 1,000 or 2,000 years: The first human sets foot in what is now Alabama.
“We tend to think about Alabama history as being only a couple hundred years old. I think it’s important to remember that people have been living here 16,000 years or longer,” Bridges said.
A day in 1540: An expedition led by Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernando de Soto enters Alabama. Smallpox, measles and other diseases brought by these and other Europeans killed large numbers of Native Americans.
De Soto and members of his expedition were the first Europeans to explore the interior of Alabama.
“It marks the beginning of this clash of cultures between the Europeans and the Indians,” Bridges said. ”The immediate effects were terribly destructive of Indian life, even then.”
Jan. 20, 1702: French settlement of Mobile begins.
“It’s the first European settlement in what is now Alabama,” Bridges said. “It marks the arrival of a new people who over time would come to displace the Indians.”
March 27, 1814: Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
An army led by Andrew Jackson inflicted a “decisive, crushing defeat” on Creek warriors. “It marks the end of Indian domination of this land,” Bridges said.
“After this battle, Alabama starts opening up for massive settlement” by whites and blacks, he said.
Dec. 14, 1819: Alabama becomes the 22nd state.
“It really marks the time when we come together as a people within these boundaries, and we are Alabamians,” Bridges said.
Jan. 11, 1861: Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union. The Civil War starts a few months later.
“To me, it marks the effort by white Alabamians to protect their old way of life, and the beginning of the war that ended the old way of life,” which included slavery, Bridges said.
“The majority of white Alabamians clearly felt … loyalty to the state after secession and wanted to defend their state,” he said.
Jan. 1, 1863: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in Confederate states such as Alabama to be free.
“I just think it’s really important to think about the Civil War as both the effort by white Southerners to protect their way of life and the ending of the system of slavery on which that life was largely built,” Bridges said.
“The economic and social system of slavery was so important to antebellum Alabama, and the Civil War ends that system and leads to the permanent abolition of slavery in America,” he said.
November 1874: Democrats sweep back into power, effectively ending Reconstruction.
Alabama Republicans, including blacks, held many offices statewide and in Congress after the Civil War. Democrats calling for government austerity and white supremacy seized firm control of the Legislature and took back the governor’s office after the election of Nov. 3, 1874.
“They were able to set up a new system of control that instituted segregation and prevented blacks from having any effective role in government,” Bridges said.
Aug. 18, 1920: The 19th amendment to the U.S. constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote.
“It’s an important part of what I believe is really a huge expansion in Alabama of the role of women” in politics, in the workplace and in the home, Bridges said.
March 4, 1933: Inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, author of the New Deal.
”It’s hard to overstate the impact of federal programs in Alabama that started with the New Deal and then continued, everything from Social Security to the Tennessee Valley Authority to wage-and-hour laws to price subsidies for agriculture to health and human services programs provided by the federal government,” Bridges said.
Dec. 7, 1941: The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, triggering America’s entry into World War II.
“It’s hard to imagine anything that had more of an effect on Alabama society in the last 100 years than World War II,” Bridges said.
Among other things, he said factories and military bases brought “an enormous infusion of money” into a state that had struggled economically in the 1920s and 1930s.
“Soldiers went into the service and got training and came out and got the (Veterans Administration) home loans and VA student loans,” he added.
Also, Bridges said, “Blacks who participated in a war for democracy and freedom felt even more keenly their lack of freedom at home, helping lead to the civil rights movement.”
View full sizeRosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., in this Feb. 22, 1956 file photo, two months after refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955. She was arrested with several others who violated segregation laws. Parks’ refusal to give up her seat led to a boycott of buses by blacks in December 1955, a tactic organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (AP File Photo)
Dec. 1, 1955: Arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white passenger.
Her conviction sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, which a young pastor, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., helped organize.
“As much as anything you can think of, it symbolizes the beginning of the modern civil rights movement and also the emergence of Martin Luther King as a leader, and of his philosophy of non-violence,” Bridges said.
March 1965: Marches for voting rights.
A planned march to Montgomery ended abruptly March 7, with state and local officers beating marchers in Selma. A completed Selma-to-Montgomery march started March 21 and ended March 25 at the state Capitol.
The marches galvanized support for the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which provided for federal officials to oversee voter registration in many counties. The number of black voters in Alabama skyrocketed.
“This is the nail in the coffin of segregation, once African-Americans can fully participate in voting and regain their full rights as citizens to run for office and to vote,” Bridges said.
Bridges said the marches were a bookend, along with the Montgomery bus boycott, to “10 incredible years” when “Alabama was the dynamic center of the civil rights movement.”
July 20, 1969: Men land on the moon.
Bridges noted that the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville played huge roles in planning the moon mission, training astronauts and developing the mission’s Saturn V rocket.
”When people look back on the history of the world 500 years from now, won’t one of the landmarks in human history be landing a man on the moon?” Bridges asked. He said Alabama’s substantial involvement in the effort made the moon landing “an important landmark in Alabama history.”
View full sizeVehicles built at the Mercedes-Benz auto assembly plant in Vance are shown here in the facility’s marshaling yard, where they are in line to be shipped to markets around the world. ( The Birmingham News / Joe Songer )
Sept. 30, 1993: Mercedes-Benz officially announces that its first vehicle-production plant in the United States will be built in Vance.
“It seems to me to mark a turning point in Alabama’s economic life,” Bridges said, adding that the decision came as many textile jobs in Alabama were being moved to lower-wage nations.
Bridges said the decision by Mercedes-Benz to locate in Alabama opened the door for Honda, Hyundai and Toyota to build assembly or engine plants here, for ThyssenKrupp to build its steel plant near Mobile and for Airbus to announce plans to build its first airliner-assembly plant in the United States in Mobile. “It validated Alabama for these other companies,” Bridges said.
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