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Montgomery County, Mississippi
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==History== This area was occupied in historic times by the [[Choctaw people]]. Their ancestors had inhabited the area for thousands of years. Under the [[Indian Removal Act]] of 1830, the United States forced most of the Native Americans west of the Mississippi River in order to open their lands to settlement by European Americans. Much of the area of present-day Montgomery County was developed for cotton plantations before and after the Civil War, when it was still part of Choctaw County. Most of the labor was supplied by African Americans, enslaved before the war and freed afterward. The county was organized by the legislature in 1871, during the [[Reconstruction era]]. The eastern hilly areas became a center of timber industry. From 1877 to 1950, there were 10 known [[Lynchings in the United States|lynchings]] of blacks in the county, fewer than in many other counties of the state.<ref name="eji">[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-second-edition-supplement-by-county.pdf ''Lynching in America'', 2nd edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627005306/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-second-edition-supplement-by-county.pdf |date=June 27, 2018 }}, Supplement by County, p. 5, Eji.org</ref> It was a form of racial terrorism that was at its height at the turn of the 20th century.<ref name="eji"/> Some studies have shown that the rate of lynchings related to economic stresses among whites. Beginning in 1890, Mississippi and other southern states largely excluded blacks from the formal political system by [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchisement]], creating barriers to voter registration through constitutional amendments and other laws. On April 13, 1937, two African-American men, Roosevelt Townes and "Bootjack" McDaniels, were arraigned at the county courthouse in Winona, after being charged in the December 1936 murder of a white merchant in Duck Hill, after Townes purportedly confessed to police. They were abducted from the courthouse and [[Lynching in the United States|lynched]]. A white crowd estimated at 100 had gathered on April 13. A group of 12 white men took the two blacks by school bus to a site in Duck Hill, where they were tortured to confess before being shot and burned to death.<ref name="winona"/> A crowd estimated at 300 to 500 whites gathered to watch. By 1 pm, the wire services and other national media had learned of the event and were trying to gain more information.<ref name="winona">[http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/wp-content/uploads/Dual-Lynching-Condemned-by-Nation.pdf "Roosevelt Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels", Northeastern University's Center for Civil Rights and Restorative Justice; News Articles: "Dual Lynching Nationally Condemned" and "Mob Lynches Two Negroes Tuesday near Duck Hill"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140923010659/http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/wp-content/uploads/Dual-Lynching-Condemned-by-Nation.pdf |date=September 23, 2014 }}, ''Winona Times'', April 15, 1937; accessed March 18, 2017</ref> The lynchings were reported nationally in the United States and widely condemned. Representative [[Hatton W. Sumners]] (D-Texas), chairman of the [[House Judiciary Committee]], sent a telegram to Governor [[Hugh L. White]] decrying the lynching. He said, "It is the sort of thing which makes it hard for those of us who are here trying to protect the governmental sovereignty of the state..."<ref name="winona"/> At the time a federal anti-lynching bill was under consideration by Congress. It passed the House, but it was defeated in the Senate by the [[Solid South]], conservative white Democrats.<ref name="murder">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pjW7BQAAQBAJ&q=Rep.+Sumners+from+Texas%2C+1937&pg=PA26 |author=Vanessa A. Holloway|title=Getting Away with Murder: The Twentieth-Century Struggle for Civil Rights in the U.S. Senate|publisher=[[University Press of America]]|date=2014|pages=25β28|isbn=9780761864332}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Weiss | first = Nancy Joan | title = Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR | publisher = Princeton University | year = 1983 | isbn = 978-0-691-04703-4 | url = https://archive.org/details/farewelltopartyo00weis| url-access = registration }}</ref> As was typical of lynchings, no one was ever prosecuted for the murders.<ref name="2lynchings">{{cite web|url=http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/wp-content/uploads/Dual-Lynching-Condemned-by-Nation.pdf|title="Roosevelt Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels"|publisher=Northeastern University's Center for Civil Rights and Restorative Justice|access-date=March 18, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140923010659/http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/wp-content/uploads/Dual-Lynching-Condemned-by-Nation.pdf|archive-date=September 23, 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref> Nazi Germany reported the lynching, comparing it to the "humanism" of its anti-Semitic laws.<ref>{{cite web | title = Lynchings Top NAZI Papers | publisher = San Jose News | date = April 13, 1937 | url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yVoiAAAAIBAJ&dq=duck%20hill%20mississippi&pg=868%2C1452671}}</ref> As in much of rural Mississippi, population in this county declined markedly from 1910 to 1920, and from 1940 to 1970. The peak of population in the county was in 1910. In addition to labor changes because of mechanization of agriculture, blacks left in two waves of the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]] out of the rural and small town South seeking jobs, education, relief from [[Jim Crow]] and violence, and better opportunities in other regions. As a result, Mississippi changed from majority black (56%) in population in 1910 to majority white (63%) by 1970.<ref name=PopRace>Gibson, Campbell and Kay Jung (September 2002). [https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.html Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For The United States, Regions, Divisions, and States.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080725044857/http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.html |date=July 25, 2008 }} U.S. Bureau of the Census - Population Division.</ref>
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