The largest battle fought in Alabama during the Civil War

The largest battle fought in Alabama during the Civil War was in 1864, when Admiral David G. Farragut attacked Mobile Bay . A year later, federal troops devastated Tuscaloosa, Selma, and Montgomery. After the war, Alabama rejoined the Union on June 25, 1868. The Reconstruction period after the war lasted eight years, during which Alabama politics remained controlled by former Confederates. However, the end of the war meant the decline of the southern cities (Mobile, Montgomery, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa) and the rise of new northern towns, thanks to the mining riches of Jones Valley and the construction of the railroad . Already at the end of the  19th century , Birmingham, which emerged after the war, became the most important city in the state and in 1920 the third most industrialized city in the southern United States. After World War II , in 1946 Jim Folsom was elected governor , who tried to carry out a progressive populist policy with the alliance of the most disadvantaged sectors, both white and black. Years later, in 1960 during George C. Wallace 's gubernatorial campaign , he promised that the popular segregation would continue, despite the strong pressure that was being exerted by other movements. Given this position, Martin Luther King led the boycott protest of the Montgomery public transportation system in 1963 , which maintained a separate seating system for whites and blacks. The imprisonment of Martin Luther King and the images that television broadcast of the suppression of the Birmingham riots, carried out by Police Chief "Bull" Connor, accelerated in 1965 the discussion of the " Civil Rights Act ", which It would end the legality of segregation in the United States, imposing forced integration and ending the freedom of association of individuals.