Editing Georgetown, South Carolina (section)

===Reconstruction and post-reconstruction period===
{{main|History of South Carolina#Reconstruction 1865&ndash;1877}}
[[File:Arcadia Plantation 1893 Georgetown County.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Arcadia Plantation, circa 1893, Georgetown vicinity, [[Georgetown County, South Carolina|Georgetown County]]]]
Georgetown and Georgetown County suffered terribly during the [[Reconstruction Era]] because of its reliance on agriculture, for which the national market was low.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}} The rice crops of 1866 to 1888 were failures due to lack of capital, which prevented adequate preparation for new crops; inclement weather; and the planters' struggle to find laborers.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Several African Americans from Georgetown represented Georgetown County in the state legislature during the Reconstruction era including [[Joseph Haynes Rainey]], [[Bruce H. Williams]], [[Charles H. Sperry]], [[Charles Samuel Green]], and [[James A. Bowley]]. A fusion arrangement was reached in 1880 and Republican African Americans and white Democrats appointed officials.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F1Kqso8_sVgC&q=george+e.+herriott+georgetown&pg=PA63|title = South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900|isbn = 9781570034947|last1 = Tindall|first1 = George Brown|year = 2003| publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press }}</ref>

Some [[freedmen]] left the area in an effort to reunite families separated by the domestic slave trade. Many families withdrew women and children from working as field laborers. Many freedmen families wanted to work for themselves as [[subsistence farmers]], rather than work in gangs for major plantation owners. Rice continued to be grown commercially until about 1910, but the market had changed. It was never as important economically or as profitable a crop as before 1860.

By the time the Reconstruction period ended, the area's economy was shifting to harvesting and processing wood products. By 1900 several lumber mills were operating on the [[Sampit River]]. The largest was the [[Atlantic Coast Lumber Company]]; its mill in Georgetown was the largest lumber mill on the [[East Coast of the United States|East Coast]] at the time.

In 1900, a Georgetown constable's efforts to arrest barber [[John Brownfield]] for refusing to pay a poll tax resulted in a scuffle and his death in a shooting.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t1InDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22julius+l.+mitchell%22+south+carolina&pg=PA129 | title=All for Civil Rights: African American Lawyers in South Carolina, 1868–1968 | isbn=9780820350998 | last1=Lewis Burke | first1=W. | date=July 2017 | publisher=University of Georgia Press }}</ref> White supremacists called for lynching and a tense period followed including appeals of Brownfield's murder conviction by an all-white jury with ties to the deceased and his family.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.villagemuseum.com/products/trial-and-error-the-case-of-john-brownfield-and-race-relations-in-georgetown-south-carolina-tom-rubillo | title=Trial and Error: The Case of John Brownfield and Race Relations in Geo }}</ref>