Editing Jackson County, Florida (section)

==History==
Jackson County was created by the [[Florida Territorial Council]] in 1822 out of [[Escambia County, Florida|Escambia County]], at the same time that [[Duval County, Florida|Duval County]] was organized from land of [[St. Johns County, Florida|St. Johns County]], making them the third and fourth counties in the Territory. The county was named for [[Andrew Jackson]], a General of the War of 1812, who had served as Florida's first military governor for six months in 1821.<ref>{{cite book|title=Publications of the Florida Historical Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WZQ-AAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA32|year=1908|publisher=Florida Historical Society.|page=32}}</ref> Jackson County originally extended from the [[Choctawhatchee River]] on the west to the [[Suwannee River]] on the east. By 1840 the county had been reduced close to its present boundaries through the creation of new counties from its original territory, following an increase of population in these areas. Minor adjustments to the county boundaries continued through most of the 19th century, however.<ref>[http://jackson.county-florida.com/ Jackson County Information] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515144323/http://jackson.county-florida.com/ |date=May 15, 2011 }} - accessed February 10, 2008</ref><ref>[http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0219960-00 ''Encyclopedia Americana'' - Jackson, Andrew] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080210164843/http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0219960-00 |date=February 10, 2008 }} - accessed February 10, 2008</ref><ref>Fernald, Edward A. (1981) ''Atlas of Florida.'' The Florida State University Foundation, Inc. {{ISBN|0-9606708-0-7}}</ref>

There were no towns in Jackson County when it was formed. The first county court met at what was called "Robinson's Big Spring" (later called Blue Springs) in 1822 and then at the "Big Spring of the Choctawhatchee" in 1823. The following year the county court met at "Chipola Settlement", which is also known as Waddell's Mill Pond.{{Citation needed|date=February 2008}}

The free labor of [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved African Americans]] allowed European Americans to develop this area of Florida as part of the plantation belt in the antebellum years. Cotton was cultivated as a commodity crop by large workgangs<!---See [[wikt:workgang]]--->, and so Florida became a slave society.

Gradually towns were developed. In January 1821, Webbville had been established as the first town in Jackson County. It was the first designated as the county seat. Marianna was founded in September 1821 by Robert Beveridge, a native of Scotland. It developed about {{convert|9|mi|km|0}} southeast of Webbville. About 1828, Beveridge and other Marianna settlers went to Tallahassee to lobby the state legislature to move the county seat to Marianna.

They enticed the Florida Legislature with offers of free land, locally paying for construction of a county courthouse and development of a related public square, and donating an additional $500 to purchase a quarter section of land to be sold at [[public auction]] as a way to finance the new government, if the county seat was moved to Marianna.<ref>Robin Gaby Fisher, Michael O'McCarthy, Robert W. Straley, ''The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep South'' (2010), p. 53.</ref> Beveridge and his supporters succeeded in their civic bribe. Marianna became the ''de facto'' county seat of the county justice and civil authority, although it was never officially proclaimed as such. Marianna began to grow and prosper when the county government moved into the new courthouse in 1829. It became the market and court town for the rural county.

Webbville's prominent citizens moved to Marianna to follow the courts, as did numerous businesses. When the [[L&N Railroad]] decided to bypass putting a station at Webbville, the town declined further and became defunct. {{Citation needed|date=February 2008}}

===Jackson County war===
After the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], the county was convulsed by violence as [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] veterans and their allies attacked and intimidated [[freedmen]] and their sympathizers. The county faced the worst economic conditions in the state, as it had been most extensively developed for cotton plantations before the war, and was adversely affected by the international decline in the market.<ref name=People />{{rp|461–462}} White planters resisted dealing with freedmen as free workers. Insurgent Confederate veterans formed a [[Ku Klux Klan]] chapter and carried out masked violence to exert power, intimidate freedmen and white sympathizers, suppress their voting, and restore [[white supremacy]].

{{cquote|Throughout the [[Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction]], Jackson County was the main site [in Florida] of political and class struggle between planters and black laborers.... Jackson County [was] so thoroughly dominated by the Klan at every level as to render the county and state governments completely powerless to stop them.<ref name=People>{{cite book
|title=A People's History of Florida 1513–1876. How Africans, Seminoles, Women, and Lower Class Whites Shaped the Sunshine State
|first=Adam
|last=Wasserman
|edition=4th
|year=2010
|place=Sarasota, Florida
|isbn=9781442167094}}</ref>{{rp|548–550}}}}

Planters were defaulting on tax payments due to the poor economic conditions, and Republican county officials began to sell thousands of acres in tax sales.<ref name=People />{{rp|462}} In addition the two representatives of the [[Freedmen's Bureau]], [[Charles Memorial Hamilton]] and [[William J. Purman]], worked to break the cycle of black labor exploitation. Planters would throw [[sharecroppers]] off the land at the end of the season with no payment, claiming infractions that the Bureau deemed minor. The Bureau agents worked to enforce labor contracts.<ref name=People />{{rp|549}}

Tensions broke out into violence and in 1869 Jackson County became the center of a [[guerrilla war]] extending through 1871; it became known as the [[Jackson County War]]. The local Ku Klux Klan, [[insurgent]] [[Confederate Army]] veterans, directed their violence at eradicating the Republican Party in the county, assassinating more than 150 [[Florida Republican Party|Republican Party]] leaders and other prominent [[African American]]s as part of a successful campaign to retain white [[Florida Democratic Party|Democratic]] power in the county.<ref name="weitz">Weitz, Seth. "Defending the Old South: The Myth of the Lost Cause and Political Immorality in Florida, 1885–1968," In ''[[The Historian (journal)|The Historian]]'', Vol. 71, No. 1 (Spring 2009), pg. 83.</ref> Another source says that in Jackson County, 200 "leading Republicans" were assassinated in 1869 and 1870 alone; no one was arrested or brought to trial for these crimes.<ref name=People />{{rp|549}}

{{cquote|The sheriff...Thomas M. West complained that public sentiment was so strongly opposed to him as sheriff that he did not feel safe to go outside of town and serve any legal process whatsoever. His life was constantly threatened.... He was even openly assaulted in the streets of Marianna, severely beaten to the near-point of death."<ref name=People />{{rp|552}}}} In 1871 he resigned, saying given the "lawlessness", he could not carry out the duties of sheriff. The last Republican official in the county, clerk of the circuit court John Dickenson, was assassinated in 1871. (The previous clerk, Dr. John Finlayson, was killed in 1869.)<ref name=People />{{rp|552}}

In testimony to Congressional hearings about the KKK, state senator [[Charles H. Pearce]], minister of the [[African Methodist Episcopal Church]], said, "Satan has his seat; he reigns in Jackson County."<ref name=People />{{rp|549}}

===Post-Reconstruction era to present===
Violence by whites against blacks in the county continued after Reconstruction. Nine African Americans were lynched here after Reconstruction, most around the turn of the century. But notorious lynchings of individual men also took place later.

In 1934, [[Claude Neal]], an African-American suspect in the murder of a young white woman, was tortured, shot and hanged in a spectacle lynching that was announced beforehand on the radio and in a local paper.<ref name=JSTOR>{{cite journal|last=Youngblood|first=Joshua|title="Haven't Quite Shaken the Horror": Howard Kester, the Lynching of Claude Neal, and Social Activism in the South During the 1930s|journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly|date=Summer 2007|volume=86|issue=1|pages=1, 3–4|jstor=30150098}}</ref> It was covered by national newspapers, arousing condemnation. In addition, Neal's lynching was followed by a white riot in Marianna, in which whites attacked the black section of town and blacks on the street, injuring 200, including two police officers, and causing much property damage. [[Howard Kester]], a prominent Southern evangelical minister who tried to improve conditions, assessed the economic and class issues related to the racial violence.<ref name=JSTOR/> In 1943 the last lynching in the county was conducted. Cellos Harrison, an African-American man, had been twice convicted by an [[all-white jury]] and sentenced to death. He was taken from the county jail in Marianna by a white mob and hanged while his case was being appealed.<ref>Tameka Bradley Hobbs, ''Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home'', Oxford University Press, 2015</ref>