Alabama, cherishing its nickname as the Heart of Dixie, carries all that’s sweet about the South as well as all that’s a social burden in its storied history. The state is the inspiration for many well-known tunes, including Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and Billie Holiday’s “Stars Fell on Alabama,” which has been covered by more than 100 artists.

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The state’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.

Native Americans lived in Alabama for thousands of years, and from the late 17th century through the late 18th century, the French, English and Spanish all laid claims to the territory. In 1813, the young American government occupied the region with military troops, and the Spanish ceded the land to the U.S. as it was incorporated into the Mississippi Territory.

Clashes with Native American tribes in Alabama lasted until 1814, when the Treaty of Fort Jackson forced the original dwellers to cede about half of their land to the U.S. White settlers poured into the state, and Alabama was admitted to the Union as the 22nd state in 1819.

Slave labor dominated Alabama’s economy in the 1800s, with massive cotton-growing plantation owners becoming rich while subsistence farmers barely made a living. By 1860, one year before Alabama seceded from the Union, about 438,000 African-Americans lived in the state, fewer than 2,700 of whom were free.

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 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 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his famous letter from Birmingham Jail, where he was imprisoned for participating in nonviolent demonstrations.

It was also in 1963, at the inauguration of the newly elected Gov. George Wallace, that the Democrat issued a famously defiant declaration about his state’s stance on racial separation: "Let us send this message back to Washington,” Wallace said. "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever."

In 1965, King 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 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 4.9 million residents, with the most populous cities Birmingham, the capital of Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama. Like other Southern states, Alabama’s population growth has been slow in recent decades. Alabama shares its borders with Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Alabama is more diverse than the rest of the country – whites compose just under 70 percent of the population, and blacks make up about 27 percent, twice as high as in the U.S. overall. However, the Asian and Hispanic populations in the state – about 1 and 4 percent, respectively – are much lower than the national averages.

The state expects the nonwhite population to see continued growth through 2025 because of increased migration and the aging population. Just over 5 percent of Alabamians speak a language other than English at home, and fewer than 4 percent were born outside the U.S.

The 2015 median household income of $44,765 was only about 80 percent of the national average, and the poverty rate of about 19 percent was about a quarter above the rest of the nation’s.

Approximately 85 percent of Alabamians graduated from high school, and fewer than one-fourth hold at least a bachelor’s degree.

Alabama’s economy has suffered in recent years, with the mining and logging, construction and leisure and hospitality industries all experiencing declines in 2016. Agriculture and forestry remain driving forces in the state – about 70 percent of the state is covered in forests – and almost one in five jobs is dependent on the industries.

The state’s schools include football giants and rivals Auburn University and the University of Alabama, as well as Samford University, Tuskegee University and the University of Montevallo.

Alabama is tied with Mississippi for the most religious state, according to Pew Research, with 77 percent of adults identified as highly religious. Almost nine in 10 Alabama adults are Christian.

Though the state favored Southern Democrats after the Reconstruction era, Alabama essentially abandoned the party during the 1960s civil rights movement and has been a Republican stronghold ever since.