Editing Liberty, Mississippi (section)

==History==
{{More citations needed section|date=November 2022}}
[[File:Confederate Monument, Liberty, Mississippi.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Erected in 1871, the [[Confederate Monument (Liberty, Mississippi)|Confederate Monument]] in Liberty was the first in Mississippi.<ref>{{cite web | last = Taylor | first = Dawn | title = Confederate Monument, Liberty, MS | publisher = The Battle of Liberty, MS. | date = August 31, 2014 | url = http://thebattleofliberty.org/blog/confederate-monument-liberty-ms/ | access-date = February 16, 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170217143600/http://thebattleofliberty.org/blog/confederate-monument-liberty-ms/ | archive-date = February 17, 2017 | url-status = dead }}</ref>]]
Liberty was incorporated on February 24, 1809. The Amite County Courthouse in Liberty is the oldest in Mississippi. Erected in 1839, the courthouse was enlarged and modernized in 1936.<ref>{{cite web | title = Amite Repairs Court House | publisher = [[Woodville Republican]] | date = May 2, 1936 | url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=afskAAAAIBAJ&sjid=chEGAAAAIBAJ&dq=liberty-mississippi&pg=4566%2C1422037}}</ref> It is listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places listings in Amite County, Mississippi|National Register of Historic Places]].

The Amite Female Seminary (also known as the 'Little Red Schoolhouse'), built in 1853, was a girls finishing school located in Liberty.  During the [[American Civil War]], in the spring of 1863, Federal troops under the command of [[Colonel Benjamin Grierson]], a former music teacher, burned the school, but spared the school's music building.  The Federal commander permitted musical instruments to be removed, and was prepared to give the order to torch the building, when he recognized the music school's director, Rev. Milton Shirk, as a former classmate from New York.  The two-story, two-room music building survives to this day on Mississippi Highway 569, and is listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places listings in Amite County, Mississippi|National Register of Historic Places]].<ref>{{cite web | title = National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form | publisher = U.S. Dept. of the Interior | year = 1980 | url = http://www.apps.mdah.ms.gov/nom/prop/2763.pdf}}</ref>

[[Gail Borden]], who developed a process in the early 1850s for condensing milk and founded the New York Condensed Milk Company (later known as [[Borden (company)|Borden Inc.]], lived in Liberty from 1822 to 1829.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}}

Between 1904 and 1921, a branch of the [[Liberty–White Railroad]], a narrow-gauge logging rail line serving the White Lumber Company, ran between [[McComb, Mississippi]] and Liberty.<ref>{{cite book | last = McElvaine | first = Robert S. | title = Mississippi: The WPA Guide to the Magnolia State | publisher = University Press of Mississippi | year = 1988 | isbn = 9781604732894 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=C4VQ8viRWvYC&pg=PP1}}</ref>

During the [[Civil Rights Movement]], in September 1961, [[Herbert Lee (activist)|Herbert Lee]], an African-American dairy farmer and member of NAACP, was murdered in Liberty at the Westbrook Cotton Gin by [[E.H. Hurst]], a white state legislator. Lee had attended voter registration classes and volunteered to try to register to vote, Witnesses to the killing were intimidated by armed white men in the courtroom to support Hurst's claim of self-defense, and he was released without charges. [[Murder of Louis Allen|Louis Allen]], a married African-American landowner with a logging business, reported the truth about the crime to federal officials while seeking protection for testimony. He did not get protection. He suffered economic blackmail, arrests and harassment, and was killed in January 1964.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}}

Liberty was the location of the fourth-wettest tropical cyclone in Mississippi in 2001; [[Tropical Storm Allison]] dropped {{convert|18.95|in|mm}} of precipitation.

[[Liberty, Texas]] is thought to have been named after this town, as numerous families from Amite County moved west in the 1820s to settle in the Atascosito district north-east of [[Houston]].<ref>{{cite web | last = Schaadt | first = Robert L. | title = Texas History ~ Founders of Liberty: Hugh Blair Johnston | work = The Vindicator | date = July 13, 2011 | url = http://www.thevindicator.com/history/article_04049cec-ad9d-11e0-81aa-001cc4c03286.html}}</ref>