Editing Eutaw, Alabama (section)

== History ==
[[File:Confederate statue - Eutaw, Alabama.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Confederate statue in Eutaw's Mesopotamia Cemetery]]
Eutaw was laid out in December 1838 at the time that Greene County voters chose to relocate the county seat from [[Erie, Alabama|Erie]], which was located on the [[Black Warrior River]]. It was incorporated by an act of the state legislature on January 2, 1841.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lat34north.com/historicmarkersal/MarkerDetail.cfm?KeyID=32-09&MarkerTitle=Welcome%20To%20Eutaw%2C%20Alabama%3A%20A%20City%20of%20Progress |title=Welcome To Eutaw, Alabama: A City of Progress Marker - Historic Markers Across Alabama |website=www.lat34north.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160202231406/http://www.lat34north.com/historicmarkersal/MarkerDetail.cfm?KeyID=32-09&MarkerTitle=Welcome%20To%20Eutaw%2C%20Alabama%3A%20A%20City%20of%20Progress |archive-date=February 2, 2016}}</ref>

As the county seat, Eutaw also developed as the trading center for the county, which developed an economy based on cultivation and processing of cotton, the chief commodity crop in the antebellum years. The crop was lucrative for major planters, who depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans and built fine homes in the city. Many have been preserved. Eutaw has twenty-seven [[Antebellum architecture|antebellum]] structures on the [[National Register of Historic Places]]. Twenty-three of these are included in the [[Antebellum Homes in Eutaw Thematic Resource|Antebellum Homes in Eutaw]] [[Multiple Property Submission|multiple property submission]]. The [[Coleman-Banks House]], [[Old Greene County Courthouse]], [[First Presbyterian Church (Eutaw, Alabama)|First Presbyterian Church]], and [[Kirkwood (Eutaw, Alabama)|Kirkwood]] are listed individually. Additionally, the [[Greene County Courthouse Square District]] is a listed [[Historic district (United States)|historic district]] in the heart of downtown. A nearby property, [[Everhope Plantation]], is also listed in the register.<ref name="NRIS">{{NRISref|2008a}}</ref>

During the [[Reconstruction Era]], Eutaw was the site of a number of [[Ku Klux Klan|Klan]] murders and acts by insurgents. The county courthouse was burned in 1868; the prevailing theory for the burning of the courthouse is that it was intended to destroy the records of some 1,800 suits by [[freedmen]] against planters, which were about to be prosecuted.<ref name="rogers">{{Cite journal|last=Rogers|first=William Warren|date=January 2, 2013|title=The Boyd Incident: Black Belt Violence During Reconstruction|journal=Civil War History|volume=21|issue=4|pages=309–329|doi=10.1353/cwh.1975.0009|s2cid=144484750 |issn=1533-6271}}</ref> On March 31, 1870, the Republican county solicitor, [[Alexander Boyd (county solicitor)|Alexander Boyd]], was shot and killed at his hotel when resisting being taken by a masked group of armed Klan members.<ref name="rogers"/> (An early-20th century historian of the Klan claimed the group was from Mississippi.<ref>{{cite book|last=Davis|first=Susan Lawrence|title=Authentic History, Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1877|date=1924|pages=37|publisher=American library service|url=https://archive.org/stream/authentichistor00davi/authentichistor00davi_djvu.txt}}</ref>) That same night, James Martin, a black Republican leader, was killed near his home in [[Union, Alabama]], also in Greene County.<ref name="newton">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hqgtyeQQLn8C&q=%22alexander+boyd%22+eutaw&pg=PA187|title=The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes|last=Newton|first=Michael|date=January 1, 2004|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=9780816069880}}</ref>

In the fall of 1870, in the run-up to the [[1870 Alabama gubernatorial election|gubernatorial election]], two more black Republican politicians were killed in Greene County. On October 25, 1870, whites attacked a Republican rally in the courthouse square that had attracted 2,000 black Republicans. The [[Eutaw massacre]] resulted in four black deaths and some 54 wounded outside the county courthouse. Most blacks did not vote in the fall's election, which helped the Democratic candidate for governor.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hennessey|first=Melinda M.|title=Political Terrorism in the Black Belt: The Eutaw Riot|journal=Alabama Review|volume=33|year=1980|pages=35–48}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Waldrep|first=Christopher|title=Jury Discrimination: The Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and a Grassroots Fight for Racial Equality in Mississippi|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hs8tBNQMIF8C&pg=PA143|year=2011|publisher=U of Georgia P|isbn=9780820341941|page=137}}</ref>

The use of violence and intimidation of blacks continued across Alabama in the [[Post-Reconstruction]] era. [[Lynching]]s took place in the state, but none were documented in Greene County during this period, according to a 2015 report by the [[Equal Justice Initiative]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |title=''Supplement: Lynchings by County'' (3rd edition), ''Lynching in America'' (2015, 3rd edition), p. Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative |access-date=April 18, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |archive-date=October 23, 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref> This may be attributable to local officials enforcing the rule of law. On May 16, 1892, Sheriff Cullen and Deputy Sheriff E. C. Meredith of Greene County, with aid of a posse, distinguished themselves by going into [[Pickens County, Alabama|Pickens County]] after a lynch mob of about 50 men. The mob had taken African-American suspect Jim Jones from the Greene County jail, saying they were going to hang him in Carrollton for an alleged crime there. Cullen and his posse confronted the mob at gunpoint, and took Jones back to Greene County.

===20th century to present===
Agriculture continues to dominate the county's economy. Now conducted on an industrial scale, it has reduced the need for farm workers. Unemployment is high in the rural county.

[[James Bevel]], the main strategist and architect of the [[Civil Rights Movement]], was buried in [[Ancestors Village Cemetery]] in Eutaw on December 29, 2008. In addition to his early work in the [[Nashville Student Movement]] and Mississippi movement, Bevel initiated, planned, and directed the strategies for the 1963 [[Birmingham Children's Crusade]], the 1965 [[Selma to Montgomery march]], and the 1966 [[Chicago Open Housing Movement]].

Eutaw is home to the [[Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] Convent of Our Lady of Consolata, the Consolata Sisters, a small monastery for nuns in West Alabama.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://consolatasisters.org/consolata-guild/|title=Consolata Guild}}</ref> They are known throughout Greene County for their humanitarian efforts.