Reviewed by: Caleb Turrentine
President’s Day 2025: Alabama’s landmark visits
Reading time: 3 minutes
For more than a century Alabama has long been the site of important Presidential visits.
On this President’s Day 2025, here are some of the most memorable.
President Franklin Roosevelt promotes TVA and New Deal in the Shoals
Before he took the oath of office, President-elect Franklin Roosevelt spoke to an immense crowd in Sheffield, Alabama from a railroad car in the center of town on January 21, 1932. He promised to put “Muscle Shoals back on the map.”
A little more than two years later he returned to speak at the same whistlestop after inspecting TVA projects including the construction of Wheeler Dam.
President George Bush Point of Light
One of Birmingham’s fondest moments of President George H.W. Bush was on his visit to the Magic City promoting recycling and conservation 35 years ago.
He awarded the community a “Point of Light” Award on Earth Day 1990.
President Donald Trump attends Alabama football games
Before President Trump’s visit to the much-anticipated 2024 Alabama-Georgia Game as a candidate, he had made a Presidential visit at Bryant-Denny Stadium in 2019 to watch LSU vs. the Tide. That game, which was won by LSU was led byquarterback Joe Burrow. The game determined the SEC champion.
Fun fact: President Trump also attended the Alabama- Georgia National Championship game in Atlanta 10 months earlier. Think he is a fan of the Tide?
Other Presidential visits
Here is an additional list of visits:
- On the morning of April 16th, 1891, after making a stop in Anniston, President Benjamin Harrison rode in by train to Birmingham. He met with Alabama governor Thomas C. Jones and Birmingham mayor A. O. Lane at the Caldwell Hotel, on the corner of 1st Ave N and 22nd St.
- President Theodore Roosevelt spent October 24, 1905 in Alabama. He spent most of the day in Montgomery, before arriving in Birmingham later in the day when he rode a horse-drawn carriage and paraded up 20th Street with Birmingham Mayor George Ward
- President Warren G. Harding celebrated Birmingham’s 50th year on October 26th, 1921. He arrived at the Terminal Station that morning.
- Nixon attended the 1971 Southern Press Association Meeting at the Parliament Hotel in Birmingham.
- President Jimmy Carter spoke at Spring Park in Tuscumbia.
- President Richard Nixon attended the 1971 Southern Press Association Meeting at the Parliament Hotel in Birmingham
- President Ronald Reagan visited the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center in 1985 and 1986. He attended a rally at the University of Alabama in the fall of 1984.
- President Bill Clinton viewed April 8-9 tornado damage in Birmingham on April 15.
- President George W. Bush visited Oak Mountain State Park.
- President Barack Obama spoke at Lawson State Community College on March 26th, 2015.
- President Donald Trump toured tornado damage in Lee County in March 2019.
- President Joe Biden spoke at the 58th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma.
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