The public is invited to a ribbon cutting ceremony at 1:00 p.m. to celebrate the opening day of We the People: Alabama’s Defining Documents, a Bicentennial Exhibition of Alabama’s Six Constitutions.

At 2:00 p.m., Julian Butler, Chairman Huntsville-Madison County Bicentennial Committee, will present The 1901 Alabama Constitution: Questions of Race, Gender, and Economic Status. He will be followed by Kathryn Boodle, Associated Conservator, Northeast Document Conservation Center, who will discuss the painstaking process of conserving Alabama’s constitutions.

Celebrate Alabama’s bicentennial with the documents that defined our state and shaped its history. All six of Alabama’s constitutions will be on view together in a special exhibition presented by the Archives.

We the People: Alabama’s Defining Documents will explore Alabama’s two-hundred-year conversation about citizenship. Whose voice matters? What do we value? These documents, written on fragile parchment, define what it meant, and what it should mean, to be an Alabamian.

The exhibition will also highlight intensive conservation work recently completed on the constitutions and the 1861 ordinance of secession, which declared Alabama’s separation from the Union on the eve of the Civil War. The ordinance will also be included in the exhibition.

We the People: Alabama’s Defining Documents will feature all six of Alabama’s constitutions, along with the 1861 ordinance of secession, which declared Alabama’s separation from the Union on the eve of the Civil War. This exhibition will explore how these documents, some of the most important in state history, reflect their framers’ values, hopes, and fears.

“We the People provides a rare opportunity for Alabamians to examine the documents that set the course of state history and heavily influenced events at the national level. They are the foundation stones of Alabama history and politics, and vital for understanding issues that remain at the heart of public policy debates today,” said Steve Murray, ADAH director.

During the exhibition, the Museum of Alabama will offer extended hours on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from November 5 through December 12, excluding Thanksgiving week. ADAH staff will offer gallery talks on these evenings beginning at 6:00 pm. The ADAH’s Museum Store will also be open.

For a complete schedule of gallery talks and more information about the exhibition, visit www.wethepeoplealabama.org or call 334-353-3312.