April 29, 1933

President Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Greensboro native Richmond Hobson the Medal of Honor. Hobson received the award for sinking the USS Merrimac in Cuba’s Santiago Harbor nearly 35 years earlier in an unsuccessful attempt to trap Spanish ships during the Spanish-American War. A war hero, Hobson resigned from the Navy in 1903 and became a champion of U.S. naval supremacy and Progressive Era ideals. In 1906, Hobson was elected a U.S. representative from Alabama’s Sixth District and served four terms as he advocated for improved education, women’s suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol and narcotics. Hobson was inducted into the Alabama Men’s Hall of Fame in 1995.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Magnolia Grove Plantation, Greensboro; childhood home of Richmond Hobson. (Photograph taken on April 4, 1934, as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Richmond Pearson Hobson, c. 1898. (Floride Green, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Richmond Hobson, 1914. (Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Naval Cadet Richmond P. Hobson, second from right, poses with fellow cadets and junior officers on the USS Chicago, flagship of the Squadron of Evolution, in 1889. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the U.S. Navy)

Photo shows U.S. Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson (1870-1937), who served as a congressman from Alabama (1907-1915), and his wife, Grizelda Hull Hobson (1878-1966), on ice skates. (Bain News Service, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

R.P. Hobson, 1916. (Bain News Service, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.