Hobson City: Alabama's First Black Municipality

Wedged between Oxford and Anniston in Calhoun County, Hobson City has a remarkable origin story. The community began as Mooree Quarter, named for Silas Moore, a formerly enslaved man who became a landowner here after the Civil War. By the eighteen nineties, enough Black residents had settled the area that their votes could decide Oxford city elections.

When a Black man won the position of justice of the peace, Oxford's white mayor had the state redraw the city's boundaries to cut Mooree Quarter out. The excluded residents responded by petitioning the county court to incorporate on their own. On August sixteenth, eighteen ninety-nine, they succeeded, and Hobson City became the first municipality in Alabama governed entirely by African Americans.

The new town took its name from naval hero Richmond Pearson Hobson, celebrated that year for his bravery in the Spanish-American War.