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Alabama State Motto

"Audemus Jura Nostra Defendere"

(We Dare Defend Our Rights)
or
(We Dare Maintain Our Rights)

Adopted in 1939.

Language: Latin

Focus: Rights

See Alabama Coat of Arms

"Audemus jura nostra defendere" has been translated as: "We Dare Maintain Our Rights" or "We Dare Defend Our Rights." This Latin phrase is on the state coat of arms completed in 1923. It was adopted in 1939.

According to a Birmingham News-Age Herald article by Marie Bankhead Owen (the director of the state Archives) dated April 23, 1939, she came upon the idea while searching for "a phrase that would interpret the spirit of our peoples in a terse and energetic sentence." A part of a poem entitled "What Constitutes a State?" by the 18th-century author Sir William Jones found in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations includes the stanza "Men who their duties know. But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain." The motto was translated into Latin by Professor W. B. Saffold, of the University of Alabama.

There are three states with mottos that focus on rights:

1. Alabama: "Audemus jura nostra defendere" (We Dare Maintain Our Rights)
2. Nebraska: "Equality Before the Law"
3. Wyoming: "Equal Rights"

Coat-Of-Arms

Adopted on March 14, 1939.

The bill to legalize a state coat-of-arms was introduced in the Alabama Legislature of 1939 by James Simpson, Jefferson County, and was passed without a dissenting vote by both houses. The coat-of-arms consists of a shield on which appears the emblems of the five governments that have held sovereignty over Alabama. The flags of Spain, France, Great Britian, the Confederacy are bound by the flag and shield of the United States. This shield is supported on either side by bald eagles, symbolic of courage. The crest is a model of the ship, the Baldine, that Iberville and Bienville sailed from France to settle a colony near present day Mobile (1699). The motto beneath the shield is "Audemus jura nostra defendere," We Dare Defend Our Rights. Beneath the motto is the state name.

The original design of the Alabama coat-of-arms was made in 1923 by B.J. Tieman, New York, an authority on heraldry, at the request of Marie Bankhead Owen, Director of the Department of Archives and History. A few years later Naomi Rabb Winston, Washington, DC, painted the completed design in oil. Mrs. Owen selected the motto which was put into Latin by Professor W.B. Saffold, of the University of Alabama. It was through the influence of Juliet Perry Dixon, wife of Governor Dixon, that official action was taken by the legislature.

The act to adopt an official Coat-of-Arms for the State of Alabama was approved March 14, 1939, Act no. 140.

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