Tuscaloosa County, Alabama
| Tuscaloosa County, Alabama | |
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County Courthouse in Tuscaloosa
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 Location in the U.S. state of Alabama |
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 Alabama's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | February 6, 1818 |
| Named for | Tuskaloosa |
| Seat | Tuscaloosa |
| Largest city | Tuscaloosa |
| Area | |
| • Total | 1,351 sq mi (3,499 km2) |
| • Land | 1,322 sq mi (3,424 km2) |
| • Water | 30 sq mi (78 km2), 2.2% |
| Population (est.) | |
| • (2015) | 203,976 |
| • Density | 153/sq mi (59/km²) |
| Congressional districts | 4th, 7th |
| Time zone | Central: UTC-6/-5 |
| Website | www |
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Footnotes:
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Footnotes:
Tuscaloosa County is a county in the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, its population was 194,656. Its county seat and largest city is Tuscaloosa, the former state capital from 1826 to 1845. The county is named in honor of Tuskaloosa, a paramount chief of the Mississippian culture, considered ancestors of the Choctaw in the region.
Tuscaloosa County is included in the Tuscaloosa, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is the home of the University of Alabama and Stillman College.
Tuscaloosa County was established on February 6, 1818. During the antebellum years, the principal crop was cotton, cultivated and processed by African-American slaves. By 1860, shortly before the state seceded from the Union, the county had a total of 12,971 whites, 84 "free" African Americans and 10,145 slaves; the latter comprised 43.7 percent of the total population. The war brought significant changes, including migration out of the county by African Americans. "By the 1870 census, the white population of Tuscaloosa County had decreased about 9% to 11,787, while the African American population decreased about 19% to 8,294." Some freedmen moved to nearby counties and larger cities for more opportunities and to join with other freedmen in communities less subject to white supervision.
Following passage by Alabama of the 1901 constitution that disenfrachised most African Americans, followed by the state legislature passing laws to impose Jim Crow, and problems of continued violence by lynchings, many African Americans left Alabama in two waves of the Great Migration. They went to Northern and Midwestern industrial cities. Their mass departure is reflected in lower rates of county population growth from 1910 to 1930, and from 1950 to 1970. (see Census Table below.)
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