Alabama’s role at the center of the civil rights movement, coupled with its ongoing traditional college football culture, lends it a more colorful – and sometimes painful – history than most.

The Confederacy was born in Montgomery, its first capital during the Civil War. About 120,000 white Alabama men served in the Confederate forces. After the war, segregation prevailed in the South, and in Alabama in particular. In 1901, state legislation limited voting rights for thousands of blacks and poor whites through poll taxes, literacy tests and other restrictive requirements.

In the mid-20th century, the state was at the forefront of the civil rights movement and peaceful activism against racial segregation. It was in Montgomery that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus in 1955, leading to the city’s 381-day bus boycott.

In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of activists in a roughly 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery after weeks of being blocked by local police, sometimes violently. The historic march helped raise awareness of the plight of African-Americans, and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act later that year.

In 1972, state redistricting and federal voter and election regulations allowed hundreds of thousands of Alabamians, both white and black, to vote for the first time.

Today, the state has about 5 million residents, with the most populous cities being Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama.