Editing Madison County, Florida (section)

==History==
Located in what is known as the [[Florida Panhandle]], Madison County was created in 1827.<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> It was named for [[James Madison]], fourth [[President of the United States of America]], who served from 1809 to 1817.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gannett|first=Henry|title=The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ|year=1905|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ/page/n195 196]}}</ref> It was developed as part of the plantation belt, with cotton cultivated and processed by enslaved African Americans.<ref name="davis"/>
The county's economic and population growth was stagnant from the 1880s and for several decades into the early 20th century.<ref name="davis">[https://www.jstor.org/stable/30146708?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Jack E. Davis, " 'Whitewash' in Florida: The Lynching of Jesse James Payne and Its Aftermath"], ''The Florida Historical Quarterly'' Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jan. 1990), pp. 277-298; accessed March 19, 2018</ref>

In the period after Reconstruction, racial violence rose in the state, reaching a peak at the end of the 19th century and extending into the difficult economic years of the 1920s and 1930s. According to the [[Bryan Stevenson|Equal Justice Institute]]'s 2015 report, ''Lynching in America: Confronting Racial Terror'', from 1877 to 1950, Madison County had 16 lynchings in this period, the 6th highest of any county in the state.<ref name="eji">{{Cite web |url=https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-second-edition-supplement-by-county.pdf |title=''Lynching in America: Supplement: Lynchings by County'', Equal Justice Institute, 2015; accessed 19 March 2018, p. 3 |access-date=March 19, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627005306/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-second-edition-supplement-by-county.pdf |archive-date=June 27, 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref> 

In 1945, the county's population of 15,537 was divided evenly between black and white.<ref name="davis"/> 

The last known lynching in the county was that in October 1945 of Jesse James Payne, a young married sharecropper with a child. After an economic dispute with the white landowner where he was sharecropping, where Payne escaped murder following "a demand for an unjust debt repayment", he was charged with sexually assaulting the landowner's daughter, but was innocent. The sheriff and other law enforcement officials appeared implicated in Payne's murder, as he was left in the county jail unguarded after mob action had been threatened. Payne's was the only recorded lynching nationwide that year, when World War II ended. The case received national attention and the governor was strongly criticized for failure to mount a true investigation or to take action against the sheriff.<ref name="davis"/>

In 1949, Ernest Thomas, a WWII veteran, was tracked to a swamp in Madison County after he had fled from a wrongful accusation of rape in Groveland, Florida. He was found sleeping under a tree and was shot an estimated 400 times by a lynch mob led by Lake County Sheriff Willis V. McCall.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/07/31/norma-padgett-groveland-four-dies/|title=Norma Padgett, accuser of exonerated ‘Groveland Four,’ dies at 92|publisher=Washington Post|date=July 31, 2024|accessdate=August 1, 2024}}</ref>

As of August 2012, Madison became a [[wet county]], meaning that voters had approved the legal sale, possession, or distribution of [[alcoholic beverages]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.madisonyes.com/ |title=Home |website=madisonyes.com}}</ref>