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Official Website
History
The county area was long territory of the historic Creek Indian peoples of the Southeast, particularly along the Chattahoochee River. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, European-American settlers began to encroach on this territory, pushing the Muscogee out during Indian Removal in the 1830s. The Muscogee were forced to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
This area was developed by white settlers and their black slaves for cotton plantations. Agriculture was critical to the economy into the 20th century. The Cohelee Creek Bridge in the county is the southernmost covered bridge still standing. One of the last wooden flagpoles from the American Civil War era is located at the historic courthouse in downtown Blakely.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in the period from 1877 to 1950, Early County had 24 documented lynchings of blacks. Most were committed around the turn of the 20th century, in the period of Jim Crow conditions and suppression of black voting. This was still a largely agricultural area, and some disputes arose from confrontations between black sharecroppers or tenant farmers and white landowners, particularly at times to settle accounts.
Among these cases were five black men lynched by whites in less than a month in the summer of 1899: three on July 23, one on July 25 (all reportedly for rape and robbery), and one on August 3 for attempted rape. Black men were frequently identified as suspects in such cases and lynched before any trial took place; further investigations have sometimes revealed consensual sex or other persons having committed the crime. A mass lynching took place in the county on December 30, 1915, when seven black men were lynched, allegedly as suspects in a murder.
Adjacent Counties
- Clay County
- Calhoun County
- Henry County, Alabama
- Baker County
- Miller County
- Seminole County
- Houston County, Alabama
Cities & Towns
- Arlington (part)
- Blakely (County Seat)
- Damascus
- Jakin
Other Communities: Bancroft, Cedar Springs, Cederville, Colomokee, Crossroads, Cuba, Douglass Crossroads, Douglasville, Ferrell Crossroads, Freeman, Hentown, Hilton, Howards Mill, Jones Crossroads, Killarney, Liberty, Lucile, Luke, McLendon, New Hope, Nicholasville, Pleasant Hill, Rock Hill, Rowena, Saffold, Sowhatchee, Springfield and Urquhart
Links
National Register of Historic Places
