Editing Polk County, Florida (section)

===Post-Reconstruction era to World War II===
In the post-Reconstruction period, black railway workers were among the first African Americans to settle in Polk County, in 1883 south of Lake Wire. The following year, they founded St. John's Baptist Church, which also served as the first school for [[freedmen]]'s children. Other workers arrived for jobs in the phosphate industry. This area became the center of a predominately African-American community later known as Moorehead, after Rev. H.K. Moorehead, called to St. John's in 1906. The community developed its own businesses, professional class, and cultural institutions. Its students had to go to other cities for high school until 1928, when the first upper school to serve blacks was established here.<ref name="monument"/>

White violence rose against blacks in the late 19th century in a regionwide effort to establish and maintain [[white supremacy]] as Southern states [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchised most blacks]] and imposed [[Jim Crow]]. Whites [[Lynchings in the United States|lynched]] 20 African Americans in Polk County from 1895 to 1921;<ref name="polk">[http://www.theledger.com/news/20180505/lynchings-klan-activity-part-of-polks-history Kimberly C. Moore, "Lynchings, Klan activity part of Polk’s history"], ''The Ledger'', May 7, 2018.</ref> Three black men, whose names were not recorded, were murdered in a mass lynching on May 25, 1895, accused of rape. While others were killed for alleged crimes (never proven), one black man was lynched for supposedly insulting a white woman. The man, Henry Scott, was a porter on a train from Lakeland to Bartow. While he was preparing a berth for one woman on May 20, 1920, another white woman became angry that he made her wait. She sent a telegram to the next station where he was met by a sheriff, arrested, and then turned over to a mob that shot him 40-50 times.<ref name="Henry Scott NYNW">{{cite news|title=Woman's Impatience Revealed as Cause of Porter's Death|publisher=New York Negro World|date=May 29, 1920|quote="The woman sent a telegram to the next station stating that Scott had insulted her. When the train stopped, Scott was removed by a deputy sheriff. From there the story followed the usual lynching pattern. A mob “over-powered” the sheriff and killed the Negro. The coroner’s jury returned the usual verdict, “Death at the hands of parties unknown.”"}}</ref> [[Columbia County, Florida|Columbia County]] also had 20 such lynching murders; these two counties had the second-highest total of lynchings of African Americans of any county in the state.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

In the first few decades of the 1900s, thousands of acres of land around Bartow were purchased by the [[phosphate]] industry. The county seat became the hub of the largest phosphate industry in the United States, attracting both immigrants and African-American and white workers from rural areas.<ref name="Polk's Profile"/>

Polk County was the leading citrus county in the United States for much of the 20th century, and even the county seat Bartow has had several large groves. In 1941, the city built an airport northeast of town in the county.<ref name="Airport History">{{cite web
 |url=http://www.bartow-airport.com/airhistory.htm
 |title=Airport History
 |access-date=September 12, 2010
|publisher=Bartow Municipal Airport
 |url-status=dead
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101204060330/http://www.bartow-airport.com/airhistory.htm
 |archive-date=December 4, 2010
}}</ref> The airport was taken over by the federal government during [[World War II]] and was the training location for many [[United States Army Air Corps|Army Air Corps]] pilots during the war. The airport was returned to the city in 1967 and renamed as Bartow Municipal Airport.<ref name="Airport History"/>