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Jacqueline Anderson Matte
Books by Jacqueline Anderson Matte The History of Washington County, Alabama (1982) Seeing Historic Alabama (1996) They Say the Wind is Red: The Alabama Choctaw—Lost in Their Own Land (2002)
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Jacqueline Anderson Matte was born in Chatom, Alabama, in 1935. She received her B.S. from Samford University, and attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she earned two master’s degrees, one in history and the other in secondary education. Matte received the Teacher-Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Besides her work on the MOWA Choctaw Indians, Matte compiled records relating to Spanish Fort San Esteban; Old St. Stephens, the territorial capital of Alabama; and the Choctaw Trading House. She is a member of the Alabama Humanities Foundation Speakers Bureau and Alabama Historical Association, serving as president of the latter from 2005–2006. Using her compiled research material, Matte also appeared before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Indian Affairs and testified in favor of granting federal recognition to Alabama's Choctaw Indians (otherwise known as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians). Prior to 2007, the MOWA band failed in its efforts to be validated as a federally recognized Indian tribe. However, after gaining acknowledgment by the state of Alabama, the MOWA Indians, on July 17, 2007, filed a new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Mobile, once again seeking federal recognition.