all 4-year terms. Governor—4-year term. Elections— Primary elections to select candidates, first Tuesday in May; general and state elections, Tuesday after first Monday in November

The state is divided into 67 counties. Each county is governed by a board of commissioners, known as the county commission.

FAMOUS PEOPLE

Alabama claims many persons who did important work in government, education, the law, military affairs, business, and the arts. The following are some of the honored names:

William Wyatt Bibb (1781-1820) was Alabama's only territorial governor and the first governor of the state. He was born in Georgia.

Josiah Gorgas (1818-83), born in Pennsylvania, was a teacher and an army officer. He became an Alabamian after his marriage to Amelia Gayle, daughter of John Gayle, governor of Alabama from 1831 to 1835. During the Civil War, Josiah Gorgas was chief of military supplies, and eventually a brigadier general, in the Confederate Army. Later he served for a year as president of the University of Alabama. His son, William C. Gorgas (1854-1920), who was born near Mobile, is world famous as the U.S. Army surgeon and sanitation expert who stamped out yellow fever in the Canal Zone and made possible the building of the Panama Canal.

Julia Strudwick Tufwiler (1841-1916) was born in Greene County. She established several girls' vocational schools and secured admission of women to the University of Alabama. She was also active in prison reform. She wrote the words of "Alabama," the state song.

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) is known throughout the world as the founder of Tuskegec Institute and as an educator, author, and lecturer. He was born in Virginia and was educated at Hampton Institute. His biography is included in Volume W.

George Washington Carver (1864-1943), botanist and agricultural scientist, gained international fame for his work in agricultural research at Tuskegee Institute. He taught improvement of the soil and developed hundreds of products from the peanut, sweet potato, and soybean. A biography of George Washington Carver, who was born in Missouri and educated in Iowa, is included in Volume C.

William Brockman Bankhead (1874-1940) was born in Moscow (now Sulligent), Alabama. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1917 to 1940. He was speaker of the House from 1936 to 1940. His daughter, Tallulah Brockman Bankhead, became one of America's best-known actresses. His father, John H. Bank-head, and his brother, John H. Bankhead, Jr., were both U.S. senators.

Helen Adams Keller, who was born in Tus-cumbia in 1880, lost both sight and hearing before she was 2 years old. Because she could not hear, she also lost the ability to speak. In spite of her disabilities, she gained an education, learned to speak, and then spent her life lecturing and writing to raise money for the training of other disabled persons. Her biography is included in Volume K.

George Corley Wallace (1919- ) was born in Clio, Alabama. He was a judge and state legislator before his election in 1962 as governor of Alabama. He was re-elected to that office in 1970, 1974, and 1982. He was also a presidential candidate in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976. A bullet from an assassination attempt during the 1972 campaign left him disabled.

Three Alabamians have become justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices John McKinley and John A. Campbell, who served during the I 800's, were born in other states. Hugo L. Black, who became a justice in 1937, was born in Clay County, Alabama.

Writers, musicians, and entertainers who were born in Alabama include novelists Nelle Harper Lee (Monroeville) and Bordcn Deal(Tuscaloosa), composer William C. Handy (Florence), and singer Nat "King" Cole (Montgomery).

Famous names in sports include heavyweight champion Joe Louis (born Joe Louis Barrow, Lafayette); baseball players Henry "Hank" Aaron (Mobile), Frank Lary (North-port), and Willie Mays (Fairfield); and sports announcer Mel Alien (born Melvin Alien Israel, Birmingham).

HISTORY

At the time of Columbus, Alabama was inhabited by four main groups of Indians. They were the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. Sometimes there were skirmishes resulting from border disputes. But usually the Indians lived in peace, hunting, fishing, and raising corn and vegetables on small plots of land.

Exploration and Settlement

During the early 1500's Spanish explorers sailed along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. But Europeans were not seen in the interior of Alabama until 1540, when Hernando de Soto passed through with a band of well-armed soldiers. De Soto forced the peaceful Indians to provide him with food and servants, and his harsh methods stirred up resentment. When he reached the land governed by the gigantic Choctaw chieftain, Tuskaloosa, he ran into trouble. De Soto captured the chief and took him to the tribe's strongly fortified village. Here the Indians rose up to free their chief. For many hours the bloody battle raged. The Spanish soldiers slaughtered Indian men, women, and children alike. When the battle was over, the village was in ruins and its population was destroyed. De Soto's troops also suffered heavy losses. Later, in 1559, Spanish colonists started a settlement on Mobile Bay, but storms and other troubles caused the settlers to leave.

English traders from the Carolinas and Georgia traded with the Indians during the late 1600's, but the English made no permanent settlements in Alabama at that time. In 1702 the French established Fort Louis on Mobile Bay. This settlement was moved, in 1711, to the present site of Mobile. It became the first permanent white settlement in what is now Alabama.

During the 1700's the French and the British fought over the territory of which Alabama was a part. After the French and Indian War, the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, gave the territory to England. Spain, Georgia, and the Carolinas still argued over who owned the land. It was not until 1813 that all of what is now Alabama passed into undisputed possession of the United States and became part of the Mississippi Territory.

After 1800 more and more settlers came into Alabama from the states on the Atlantic Coast. The invention of the cotton gin and the growth of the cotton textile industry in Eng­land made cotton a valuable crop. The settlers grew cotton on most of the land that they cleared. But settling the territory was not without its perils. Much of the good farm­land was already being used by the Indians, whose ways of living easily adapted to the settlers' ways. The Indians resisted the theft of their lands. The Creeks, who held more than half the land in the