Boykin, also known as Gee's Bend, is an African American majority community and census-designated place in a large bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County, Alabama. As of the 2010 census, its population was 275. The Boykin Post Office was established in the community in 1949 and remains active, servicing the 36723 ZIP code.
Gee's Bend was named for Joseph Gee, an early large land owner from Halifax County, North Carolina who settled here in 1816. Gee brought 18 African American slaves with him and established a cotton plantation within the bend.
Boykin is a block of land enclosed on three sides by the Alabama River, within a horseshoe shaped turn of the river named Gee's Bend. It is within the Black Belt of Alabama. The plantation started by Joseph Gee passed to his nephews Sterling and Charles Gee upon his death, along with 47 slaves. The brothers then sold it to their relative Mark H. Pettway in 1845 to settle a $29,000 debt. About a year later, the Pettway family moved from North Carolina to Gee's Bend, bringing about one hundred slaves with them. When slavery was abolished many of them continued working for the Pettways as sharecroppers. Many of the black tenants Arthur Rothstein photographed were named Pettway. The white Pettway family owned the property until 1895, when it was sold to Adrian Sebastian Van de Graaff. Van de Graaff, a lawyer from Tuscaloosa, then operated it as an absentee landlord.
Alabama is a southern state in the United States.
Alabama may also refer to:
Alabama was a Canadian band of the early 1970s. They had two songs that reached the top 100 in the RPM Magazine chart. "Song of Love" reached #26 in June 1973, and "Highway Driving" reached #42 in August. Band members were Buster Fykes, Hector McLean, Rick Knight, and Len Sembaluk.
Alabama is a Gloucester fishing schooner that was built in 1926 and served as the pilot boat for Mobile, Alabama. The Alabama's home port is Vineyard Haven Harbor, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The Alabama is owned by The Black Dog Tall Ships, along with the Shenandoah, and offers cruises of Nantucket Sound.
The schooner Alabama was one of the last vessels built from the design of one of the most notable designers of Gloucester Fishing Schooners, Thomas F. McManus. Commissioned by the Mobile Bar Pilot Association of Mobile, Alabama, the vessel was built in Pensacola, Florida, launched in 1926, and originally called Alabamian until her predecessor the Bar Pilot Association's original Alabama was retired. Though the hull bore strong resemblance of McMannus' famous Gloucester fishing schooner designs, it served as a pilot boat stationed on the Mobile Bar until 1966.
In 1967 the schooner was bought by Captain Robert S. Douglas, master and designer of the Shenandoah, and moved to Vineyard Haven. There she sat on a mooring with minimal necessary upkeep until 1994. In the early nineties with a dwindling market for windjammer cruises which leave out most modern amenities kids became the new direction for the Coastwise Packet Company - the original name for what is now also The Black Dog Tall Ships. Because of the success of these "Kids Cruises" on board the Shenandoah, Alabama was to be rebuilt by the Five Corners Shipbuilding Company headed by Gary Maynard a former First Mate that sailed on the Shenandoah. Most of the work was done in Vineyard Haven with the vessel afloat on her mooring using Captain Douglas' own power tools and shop space. Any other work was done in Fairhaven, Massachusetts at D.N. Kelly's Shipyard.