A small city of about 11,000 people located in the heart of the Tuskegee National Forest in East Central Alabama, Tuskegee is a small city with a huge history dating from its foundation in 1833 by General Thomas Simpson Woodward, who fought under Andrew Jackson during the Indian Wars of the early 19th Century around Alabama and Tennessee. The name Tuskegee comes from the Muskhogean Creek Native American word meaning "warrior." Before the white people settled Tuskegee, the Taskigis, Chehaws, Tallahassee, and Channuanugee Native American tribes lived in and around Tuskegee. General Woodward built and lived in the first house built in Tuskegee, which burned to the ground but was rebuilt by the Campbell family.
Tuskegee was the home of the first law school in Alabama along with other institutes of higher education for both men and women including The Tuskegee Female College (1856 and later Huntingdon College), the Tuskegee Military Institute, and the world reknown Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), which was founded by Lewis Adams as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers in 1881. From the late 19th Century to the present, Tuskegee, Alabama has been the center for many African-American achievements in science, education, and history. George Washington Carver (1864-1943), an African-American scientist and teacher at Tuskegee Institute came up with many improvements for Southern farming and crops including crop rotation and teaching freed slaves how to farm and become self-sufficient. Booker T. Washington, another African-American pioneer taught at Tuskegee University and is buried next to George Washington Carver.
Tuskegee is also the birthplace of Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who refused to sit in the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama that triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1963. Rosa Parks Plaza on the road to Tuskegee University is named in Rosa Parks Honor.
During World War II, Tuskegee was the home to the Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American Air Force unit that consisted of many students from Tuskegee Univeristy. It was these landmark times in history that put Tuskegee, Alabama on the map and today and in the future will keep making history in the fields education, history, and science.