Hobson City, Alabama, marks a milestone as a community revered for its place in Black history
Hobson City was the first municipality in Alabama and the second in the nation incorporated and governed entirely by African Americans. (contributed)
A city whose creation was a milestone for Black history in Alabama is celebrating an important anniversary this year.
Founded in 1899, Hobson City was the first municipality in the state to be governed entirely by African Americans.
Located 65 miles east of Birmingham, the area that is now Hobson City was originally known as Mooree Quarter. It was a predominantly Black community adjacent to the city of Oxford.
RELATED: Hobson City has historic distinction as Alabama’s first official Black town
After the Civil War during Reconstruction, when Blacks briefly gained the right to vote before Alabama’s Jim Crow laws excluded them again, the citizens of Mooree Quarter began to flex their electoral power.
That didn’t sit well with whites in Oxford, who sought to remove them from influencing city and county elections. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, in 1899, after a local African American man was elected as a justice of the peace, Oxford’s mayor petitioned the state to redraw the corporate boundaries of the city to exclude Mooree Quarter.
On July 20, 1899, 125 African American citizens of the excluded section petitioned the county court to incorporate their community as Hobson City. The town was officially incorporated on Aug. 16.
Leadership of Hobson City, 1902. (Encyclopedia of Alabama)
It was only the second municipality in the United States governed entirely by African Americans. The first was Eatonville, Florida.
Hobson City soon became known as a place of refuge and respite for Blacks in Alabama who lived well beyond the town’s borders, Hobson City Mayor Alberta Cooley McCrory said.
“People would come to Hobson City on the weekends from Birmingham, Montgomery – everywhere – because it was a place of freedom where people could just relax and be themselves,” McCrory said.
This year, as Hobson City prepares to celebrate its 125th anniversary, it boasts a population of around 750 people with 80% identifying as African American, according to the 2020 census.
Learn more about Hobson City and its special place in Alabama history in this video:
