Editing Lowndes County, Alabama (section)

==History==
Lowndes County was formed from [[Montgomery County, Alabama|Montgomery]], [[Dallas County, Alabama|Dallas]] and [[Butler County, Alabama|Butler]] counties, by an act of the Alabama General Assembly on January 20, 1830. The county is named for South Carolina statesman [[William Lowndes (congressman)|William Lowndes.]]<ref name="Lowndes County">[http://www.archives.state.al.us/counties/lowndes.html "Lowndes County"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161104044312/http://www.archives.state.al.us/counties/lowndes.html |date=November 4, 2016 }}, Alabama Department of History and Archives</ref> It is part of the [[Black Belt (region of Alabama)|Black Belt]], where cotton plantations were developed in the antebellum years and agriculture continued as a dominant part of the economy into the 20th century.

During the [[Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction era]], blacks were elected to local and state offices. [[Southern Democrats|White Democrats]] regained power and control of the state legislature in 1874 and drove the remaining office holders out. They adopted the 1875 [[Constitution of Alabama]] and another in 1901 that [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchised]] most blacks and many poor whites. Requirements were added for payment of a cumulative [[Poll tax (United States)|poll tax]] before registering to vote, difficult for poor people to manage who often had no cash on hand; and [[literacy test]]s (with a provision for a [[grandfather clause]] to exempt illiterate white voters from being excluded.) The number of black voters on the rolls fell dramatically in the next few years, as did the number of poor white voters.<ref>{{cite book |first=Glenn |last=Feldman |title=The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama |location=Athens |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2004 |pages=135–136 |isbn=0-8203-2615-1 }}</ref>

From the end of the 19th through the early decades of the 20th centuries, organized white violence increased against blacks, with 16 [[lynchings]] recorded in the county, the fourth-highest total in the state, which historically is among those in the South with the highest per capita rate of lynchings. Most victims were black men, subjected to white extra-legal efforts to maintain white supremacy by racial terrorism.<ref name="supp">[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf "Supplement: Lynchings by County/ Alabama: Lowndes", 3nd edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |date=October 23, 2017 }}, from ''Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror'', 2015 (3rd edition), Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative</ref> Seven of these murders were committed in [[Letohatchee, Alabama|Letohatchee]], an unincorporated community south of Montgomery; five in 1900 and two in 1917. In 1900 mobs killed a black man accused of killing a white man. When local black resident Jim Cross objected, he was killed, too, at his house, followed by his wife, son and daughter.<ref>{{cite news |title=Race Problem Menace |newspaper=The Moulton Advertiser |location=Moulton, Alabama |date=March 8, 1900 |page=1 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19338670/jim_cross/ }}</ref> In 1917 two black brothers were killed by a white mob for alleged "insolence" to a white farmer on the road.<ref name="leto">[http://www.eji.org/eji-dedicates-marker-lynching-victims-lowndes-county-alabama "EJI Dedicates Marker to Commemorate Lynchings in Letohatchee, Alabama"], Equal Justice Initiative, 1 August 2016</ref> On July 31, 2016, a historical marker was erected at Letohatchee by the [[Equal Justice Initiative]] in coordination with the city to commemorate the people who had suffered these extrajudicial executions.<ref name="leto"/>

Because of the shift in agriculture and the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]] of blacks to leave oppressive conditions, population in the rural county has declined by two thirds since the 1900 high of more than 35,000. The effects of farm mechanization and the [[boll weevil]] infestation, which decimated the cotton crops and reduced the need for farm labor in the 1920s and 1930s, caused widespread loss of jobs.

===Civil Rights Era===
By 1960 (as shown on census tables below), the population had declined to about 15,000 residents and was about 80 percent-majority black. The rural county was referred to as "Bloody Lowndes",<ref>{{cite web|url=http://nyupress.org/books/Bloody_Lowndes-products_id-11034.html|title=Books - NYU Press|website=NYUPress.org|access-date=December 4, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100710014324/http://www.nyupress.org/books/Bloody_Lowndes-products_id-11034.html|archive-date=July 10, 2010|url-status=dead}}</ref> the rusty buckle of [[Black Belt (region of Alabama)|Alabama's Black Belt]], because of the high rate of white violence against blacks to maintain segregation. In 1965, a century after the [[American Civil War]] and decades after whites had disenfranchised blacks via the 1901 state constitution, they maintained [[white supremacy]] by intimidation and violence, suppressing black voting.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://apnews.com/article/f3a83a7d43053bfbfc1616390809940d |title=Voting Rights Act Was a 'Revolution' in Lowndes County |last=Douthat |first=Strat |date=November 3, 1985 |website=[[Associated Press]] |access-date=June 5, 2021}}</ref>

County population had fallen by more than half from its 1900 high, as both blacks and whites moved to urban areas. Blacks still outnumbered whites by a 4-to-1 ratio.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/us/thomas-coleman-86-dies-killed-rights-worker-in-65.html | work=The New York Times | title=Thomas Coleman, 86, Dies; Killed Rights Worker in '65 | date=June 22, 1997}}</ref> Eighty-six white families owned 90 percent of the land in the county and controlled the government, as whites had since 1901. With an economy based on agriculture, black residents worked mostly in low-level rural jobs. In the [[civil rights]] era, not one black resident was registered to vote before March 1, 1965.<ref name="alabamatv.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.alabamatv.org/alex/studyguides/lowndes.htm|title=Squarespace - Claim This Domain|website=www.AlabamaTV.org|access-date=December 4, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150111004523/http://www.alabamatv.org/alex/studyguides/lowndes.htm|archive-date=January 11, 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> 

When in 1956 [[NAACP]] was outlawed in Alabama, local activist [[John Hulett]] joined [[Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights]], a new organization founded by [[Fred Shuttlesworth]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=John Hulett |url=https://snccdigital.org/people/john-hulett/ |access-date=2025-04-19 |website=SNCC Digital Gateway |language=en}}</ref> Following passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]], he joined the voter-registration drive of the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC), becoming with John C. Larson, a preacher, the first African-Americans on the county's electoral rolls in more than six decades.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Greenshaw |first=Wayne |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bI1rzKFsBl4C |title=Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama |publisher=Chicago Review Press |year=2011 |isbn=9781569768259 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?d=bI1rzKFsBl4C&pg=PA214 214]}}</ref> 

With the registration drive "swarmed" by young people, SNCC chairman [[Stokely Carmichael]] took the initiative to help form the [[Lowndes County Freedom Organization]] (LCFO), with Hulett, its first chair. The first independent black political party in the county since Reconstruction, the LCFO took as its symbol a rampant [[black panther]], representing black "strength and dignity", which contrasted with the white rooster of the [[Racial segregation|segregationist]] [[Alabama Democratic Party]].<ref name="blackpast.org">{{cite web |date=March 29, 2007 |title=Lowndes County Freedom Organization - The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed |url=http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/lowndes-county-freedom-organization |access-date=December 4, 2017 |website=www.BlackPast.org}}</ref> (A year later, the example was followed by [[Bobby Seale]] and [[Huey P. Newton|Huey Newton]] in framing the nation-wide the [[Black Panther Party]] for Self Defense). The goal was to get enough black people to vote, and to stand as candidates for county office, so that they might be fully represented in local government and redirect services to black residents, 80 percent of whom lived below the poverty line.<ref>{{cite book |last=Jeffries |first=Hasan Kwame |title=Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt |publisher=New York University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8147-4305-8}}</ref> 

The police continued to arrest protesters in the summer of 1965. A group of protesters were released from jail in the county seat of [[Hayneville, Alabama|Hayneville]] on August 20, 1965. As four of them approached a small store, Thomas Coleman, an unpaid special deputy, ordered them away. When he aimed his shotgun at one of the young black women ([[Ruby Sales]]) [[Jonathan Myrick Daniels]] pushed her down, taking the blast, which immediately killed the Episcopal seminarian. Coleman also shot Father Richard Morrisroe, a Catholic priest, in the back, then stopped. He was indicted for the murder of Daniels; and an all-white jury quickly acquitted him after his claim of self-defense, although both men were unarmed. Coleman had been appointed as special deputy by the county sheriff.<ref name="nyt"/> In response to the violence,some of LCFO organizers began to openly carry arms.<ref name="LowndesCounty - Encyclopedia">[http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1781 "Lowndes County Freedom Organization"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130813072422/http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1781|date=2013-08-13}}, Encyclopedia of Alabama.</ref>

On May 3, 1966, over 900 registered black voters cast their ballots at the county seat in [[Hayneville, Alabama|Hayneville]] as independent participants in the primary, with some driving over 25 miles to do so.<ref name=":0">Ture, Kwame, and Hamilton, Charles V. ''Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America''. New York: Random House, 1967. Print.</ref> One notable strategy the LCFO encouraged among black voters was to help other black voters if they needed assistance as a precaution against the fact that "the Lowndes County Freedom Organization knew that once a local white person got behind the curtain with a black person, that vote would be lost" (p.&nbsp;111).<ref name=":0" /> Another was to encourage black voters to simply pull the lever to vote strictly for LCFO candidates; in other words, to "pull the lever for the Black Panther and go on home," as stated on a sign on [[U.S. Route 80|Highway U.S. 80]] between [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]] and [[Selma, Alabama|Selma]].<ref name=":0" />

Whites in Lowndes County reacted strongly against the LCFO. In retaliation for black sharecroppers engaging in civil rights work, white landowners evicted many of them from their rental houses and land plots. They used economic blackmail to make them both homeless and unemployed in a struggling economy. The SNCC and Lowndes County leaders worked to help these families stay together and remain in the county. They bought tents, cots, heaters, food, and water and helped several families build a temporary "tent city". Despite harassment, including shots regularly fired into the encampment, these black residents persevered for nearly two years as organizers helped them find new jobs and look for permanent housing.<ref name="crmvets">[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/lcfo-pe.htm Dr. Gwendolyn Patton, "Lowndes County Freedom Organization: Political Education Primer"], Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, accessed March 30, 2014</ref>

Whites refused to serve known LCFO members in stores and restaurants. Several small riots broke out over the issue. The LCFO pushed forward and continued to organize and register voters.<ref name="blackpast.org"/>  However, none of their candidates won in the November 1966 general election. In a December 1966 edition of ''The Liberator'', a Black Power magazine, activist Gwendolyn Patton alleged the election had been subverted by widespread ballot fraud.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crmvet.org/comm/lowndes.htm|title=Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement &ndash; Lowndes County Election Fraud|website=www.CRMVet.org|access-date=December 4, 2017}}</ref> But historians believe that black sharecroppers refrained from voting, submitting to the severe pressure put on them by the local white plantation owners, who employed most of them.<ref name="cropfraud">[http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1781], ''Encyclopedia of Alabama''</ref> After the LCFO folded into the statewide Democratic Party in 1970, African Americans have supported candidates who have won election to local offices.<ref name=cropfraud /> In a continuing divide, since the late 20th century, most white conservative voters in Alabama have shifted to the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]].

In ''[[White v. Crook]]'' (1966), Federal District Judge [[Frank M. Johnson]] ruled in a class action suit brought on behalf of black residents of Lowndes County, who demonstrated they had been excluded from juries. Women of all races were excluded from juries by state statute. Johnson ordered that the state of Alabama must take action to recruit both male and female blacks to serve on juries, as well as other women, according to their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The suit was joined by other class members from other counties who dealt with similar conditions of exclusion from juries. It was "one of the first civil actions brought to remedy systematic exclusion of Negroes from jury service generally."<ref>[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=132165105409600263&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr ''White v. Crook,'' 251 F. Supp. 401] - Dist. Court, MD Alabama 1966</ref>

The LCFO continued to fight for wider political participation. Their goal of democratic, community control of politics spread into the wider civil rights movement. After merging with the state [[Georgia Democratic Party|Democratic Party]] in 1970, LCFO candidates began winning public offices, Hulett becoming the first black sheriff in the county to be elected since Reconstruction.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Lowndes County Freedom Organization |url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1781 |access-date=August 3, 2020 |website=Encyclopedia of Alabama |language=en}}</ref>

Today an Interpretive Center in the county, maintained by the [[National Park Service]], memorializes the Tent City and LCFO efforts in political organizing.<ref name="crmvets"/>

==== The "DEI" sewage controversy ====
In April 2025, the [[United States Department of Justice|U.S. Justice Department]] terminated a landmark civil rights settlement with the State of Alabama to address serious health risks posed by the county's inadequate sanitation systems. The department claimed that the [[Presidency of Joe Biden|Biden-era]] agreement violated President [[Donald Trump]]’s proscription of [[Diversity, equity, and inclusion|DEI]] (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives.<ref name=":2">{{Cite news |last=Dennis |first=Brady |date=2025-04-11 |title=Justice Dept. scraps landmark civil rights deal over Alabama county’s sewage woes |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/11/environmental-justice-lowndes-county-alabama-sewage/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |work=The Washington Post |language=en-US |issn=0190-8286}}</ref><ref name="nbc-1may2025">{{cite news |last1=Bunn |first1=Curtis |title=Trump shut down program to end human waste backing into Alabama homes, calling it 'illegal DEI' |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/trump-canceled-dei-program-raw-sewage-alabaman-homes-rcna201164 |access-date=May 1, 2025 |work=[[NBC News]] |date=May 1, 2025}}</ref>

The Alabama Department of Public Health said that it would continue working on remedial actions envisaged by the 2023 settlement "until appropriated funding expires”.<ref name=":2" />