July 17, 1948: The Dixiecrat Convention assembles in Birmingham, with over 6,000 delegates from across the South in attendance. They selected Strom Thurmond as the presidential candidate for their States' Rights Party. In the 1948 presidential election the Dixiecrats carried four states, including Alabama, where Democratic candidate Harry Truman's name did not even appear on the ballot.

July 19, 1941: The first black pilots in the American military begin their primary flight training at Tuskegee Institute's Moton Field. This first class of "Tuskegee Airmen" graduated the next March after transferring to Tuskegee Army Air Field to complete their training. The group saw its first action in World War II in 1943 as members of the segregated 99th Fighter Squadron of the Army Air Corps.

July 20, 1799: Daniel Pratt, who was to become a significant industrialist in nineteenth-century Alabama, is born in Temple, New Hampshire. After arriving in Alabama in 1832 he founded the town of Prattville and established what would later become the largest cotton gin manufacturing plant in the world.

July 21, 1962: The federal district court in Montgomery rejects the Alabama legislature's plan to reapportion itself, ordering it instead to implement the court's plan. Although Alabama's Constitution of 1901 mandated reapportionment every ten years, the state's legislative districts had not been redrawn since 1901, with the result that less-populated districts came to dominate the legislature in violation of the principle of "one man/one vote."

Source : Alabama Dept. of Archives and History