Editing Perry County, Alabama (section)

==History==
In 1935, a [[Sharecropping|sharecropper]] called Joe Spinner Johnson was organizing sharecroppers into a union. His landlord called him away from his job, and gave him up to a gang of whites. They tied him up, beat him, and took him to [[Selma, Alabama|Selma]], where he was thrown in jail. Other prisoners heard him screaming and being beaten. A few days later, his mutilated body turned up near [[Greensboro, Alabama|Greensboro]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/ |title=Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror |accessdate=May 29, 2021 |year=2017 |publisher=[[Equal Justice Initiative]]}}</ref>

The Perry County town of [[Marion, Alabama|Marion]] was the site of a 1965 killing of an unarmed Black man, [[Jimmie Lee Jackson]], by a white state trooper, [[James Bonard Fowler]], which sparked the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]]. In 2008, the county voted to establish a [[Barack Obama]] Day, a legal holiday, every second Monday of November.<ref>{{cite news |last=Bello |first=Marisol |date=January 26, 2009 |title=Renamed schools, streets mark early tributes to Obama |work=[[USA Today]] |url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-25-renaming_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip}}</ref>