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Please add profiles of people who were born, lived or died in Franklin County, Mississippi.
Overview
The county was formed on December 21, 1809 and named for Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. This was the fourth county organized in Mississippi. It was initially developed for agriculture, specifically cotton plantations. Cotton continued to be important to the economy through the 19th century and into the early 20th century.
This still rural county has had a decline in population by about half since 1910. It is the fourth least populous county in the state. Mechanization of agriculture and the blight of the boll weevil both reduced the need for farm workers; they left the area and often the state.
As in the rest of the state, the county had racially segregated facilities under Jim Crow from the late 19th century. Many white residents opposed the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. In May 1964, Ku Klux Klan members abducted and killed two young black men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore of Meadville, before Freedom Summer started. Their bodies were not discovered in the Mississippi River until July 1964, during the hunt for three disappeared civil rights workers.
No one was prosecuted at the time, but the case was reopened in 2007, after a documentary had been released on it by Canadian Broadcasting Company. Local man James Ford Seale was convicted of the kidnappings and deaths by an all-white jury in federal court. In 2008 the families of Dee and Moore filed a civil suit against the Franklin County government, charging complicity by its law enforcement in the deaths. On June 21, 2010 Franklin County agreed to an undisclosed settlement in the civil suit with the families of Charles Moore and Henry Dee.
Adjacent Counties
Towns & Communities
- Bude
- Eddiceton
- Hamburg
- Knoxville
- Little Springs
- Lucien
- McCall Creek
- Meadville (County Seat)
- Quentin
- Roxie
- Smithdale
- Veto
Links
Homochitto National Forest (part)
MS Genealogy & History Network
National Register of Historical Places
