Editing Kemper County, Mississippi (section)

==History==

In the wake of the county's founding, Abel Mastin Key served as the first circuit clerk.<ref name="Key-Family">{{cite book |last1=Lane |first1=Mrs. Julian C. |title=Key and Allied Families |date=June 2009 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S_8HvAfI0LoC |location=Statesboro, Georgia |publisher=Clearfield |page=276 |isbn=9780806349770 |access-date=May 2, 2020 }}</ref> Land in the area was developed in the 19th century by white planters for cotton cultivation using enslaved African Americans. Blacks have comprised the majority of the county population since before the [[American Civil War]]. The county continues to be largely rural.

After the American Civil War and [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]], racial violence increased as whites struggled to regain power over the majority population of [[freedmen]] and to suppress their voting. In the period from 1877 to 1950, Kemper County had 24 documented [[Lynching in the United States|lynchings of African Americans]], the third-highest of Mississippi counties. [[Carroll County, Mississippi|Hinds]] and [[Leflore County, Mississippi|Leflore]] counties had 29 and 48 lynchings, respectively, in this period.<ref name="eji">[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-supplement-by-county.pdf ''Lynching in America'', 3rd edition]{{Dead link|date=October 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, Supplement by County, p. 6</ref> This form of racial terrorism was at its height in the decades around the turn of the 20th century,<ref name="eji"/> which followed the state's [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchisement of most blacks]] in 1890 through creating barriers to voter registration.

In 1877 the [[Chisolm Massacre]] occurred, the murder by a mob of a judge, his children, and two of their friends while they were in protective custody in jail.

In 1890, blacks made up the majority of the county' population: 10,084 blacks to 7,845 whites.<ref>[http://www.msgw.org/kemper/resources/images/history1.jpg Robert Lowry and Andrew McCardle, Chapter XXXVIII: "Kemper County"], ''A History/ Mississippi'', R.H. Henry & Co. Mississippi, 1891, at Mississippi GenWeb</ref> They generally worked as [[sharecropping|sharecroppers]] or tenant farmers. Often illiterate, many of the sharecroppers were at a disadvantage in the annual accounting that was done by the landowners. Sometimes the planters had grocery stores on their property and required the sharecroppers to buy all their goods there, adding to their debt.

Beginning in late December 1906, there were several days of racial terror in the county. After violent incidents on the railroad between conductors and black passengers, whites attacked blacks at the rural towns of [[Wahalak, Mississippi|Wahalak]] and [[Scooba, Mississippi|Scooba]]; by December 27, whites had killed a total of 13 blacks in rioting.<ref name="riot">[https://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/122606race-ra.html "Whites in Race War Kill Blacks Blindly/ Innocent Negroes Shot in the Mississippi Trouble"], ''New York Times'', December 26, 1906; accessed March 20, 2017</ref><ref name="pens"/> The events started with a physical confrontation between a conductor and an African-American man on a [[Mobile & Ohio Railroad]] train. The conductor was cut, and he fatally shot two black men. George Simpson, another African American thought to be involved, escaped from the train. When captured in Wahalak by a posse, he killed a white [[constable]] and was quickly lynched by the other whites.<ref name="riot"/>

As reported by ''[[The New York Times]]'',

<blockquote>Not satisfied with the punishment of this man, the whites immediately set out to strike terror into the negroes, who had been getting defiant of late. They found two sons of Simpson and lynched them, filling their bodies with bullets. Two other negroes who had behaved defiantly were treated in similar fashion.<ref name="riot"/></blockquote>

Whites worried about blacks gathering to take revenge at Wahalak, where they had already been abused by lynchings. Local authorities called for state militia. Their commanding officer took his troops away from Wahalak, although there was still unrest, because he felt they were not being treated properly.<ref name="riot"/>

By the end of the day on December 26, white men in Scooba had killed another five black men. The county sheriff arrested several whites for these murders, and called for the state militia to go to Scooba. "All the men killed at Scooba today are said to be innocent of any crime, having been shot down merely as a matter of revenge by the rough whites."<ref name="riot"/> There had been a conflict on another train, in which a black man mortally shot a conductor, George Harrison. The yardmaster shot and killed the African American. The rioting by whites in Scooba started after Harrison died.<ref name="riot"/> Governor [[James K. Vardaman]] went to Scooba with militia to establish control. He left a force of 20 there commanded by Adjutant General Fridge and returned to the state capital on the evening of December 27. That day the body of another murdered African-American man was found in the woods, bringing the total killed in Scooba to six.<ref name="pens">[http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00075911/00546/1x "Situation in Scooba Is Now Under Full Control"], ''Pensacola Journal'' (front page), [[Associated Press]], The December 28, 1906; March 20, 2017</ref>

In 1934, three African-American suspects in Kemper County were repeatedly whipped in order to force them to confess to murder. In ''[[Brown v. Mississippi]]'' (1936), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled such forced confessions violated the [[Due Process Clause]] of the Fourteenth Amendment, and were inadmissible at trial.<ref>{{cite book |first=Neil R. |last=McMillen |title=Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow |page=200 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1990 |isbn=0-252-01568-1 }}</ref>

The peak of population in the rural county was in 1930. Mechanization of agriculture decreased the need for farm labor. From 1940 to 1970, the population declined markedly, as may be seen on the table below, as people moved to other areas for work. This was also the period of the second wave of the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]], when 5 million African Americans moved out of the South to the North and especially to the West Coast, where the defense industry had many jobs, beginning during World War II.<ref name="brookings.edu">[http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2004/5/demographics%20frey/20040524_frey William H. Frey, "The New Great Migration: Black Americans' Return to the South, 1965–2000", The Brookings Institution, May 2004, pp. 1–3] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130617212732/http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2004/5/demographics%20frey/20040524_frey |date=June 17, 2013 }}, accessed March 19, 2008.</ref>