 Attalla was prosperous until the railroads that it depended on went into bankruptcy.Attalla is the site of the first hydroelectric dam to provide electricity for a city, constructed in 1887.William Lewis Moore, a U.S. postman and white civil rights activist, was murdered here on April 23, 1963 as he tried to walk from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi to deliver his letter in support of civil rights to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett.