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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Leflore County, Mississippi.
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The county was formed in 1871 and was named for Choctaw leader Greenwood LeFlore, who signed a treaty to cede his people's land to the United States in exchange for land in Indian Territory.
Following the American Civil War, during Reconstruction the majority-black population of freedmen in the county gained emancipation and suffrage, participating for the first time in formal politics. They supported the Republican Party, as President Abraham Lincoln had gained their freedom. In the mid-1870s, the Red Shirts, a white paramilitary organization working on behalf of the Democratic Party, developed chapters in Mississippi. They worked to disrupt Republican meetings, suppress the black vote, and turn Republicans out of office so that white Democrats could regain control of the state legislature.
In the period from 1877 to 1950, Leflore County had 48 documented lynchings of African Americans, by far the highest number in the state.
Leflore County was a major site of activism and white violence during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, the events leading up to the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till unfolded in the unincorporated community of Money, Mississippi. Till, a teenage African-American, was visiting from Chicago and staying with relatives in Money, where Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market was located. Here Till encountered Carolyn Bryant, who later said that he had behaved flirtatiously toward her. Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant, and another white man, J.W. Milam, abducted Till later that evening. They beat and tortured him at several locations in Leflore and neighboring counties before shooting him and dumping his body in the river in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury of Till's murder at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, in Sumner, Mississippi.
During a 2007 interview, not made public until 2017, Carolyn Bryant had disclosed that she had fabricated her testimony about Till's actions.
In 1963, the county had more than 13,000 blacks of legal voting age, but fewer than 270 were registered because of discrimination and suppression by whites. Blacks had been essentially disfranchised since implementation of Mississippi's new constitution in 1890, establishing poll taxes, literacy tests and other voter registration barriers. Meanwhile, 95% of eligible white voters were registered.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had moved its headquarters to Greenwood in early 1963, and by late March of that year, eight SNCC members were arrested while trying to register voters. The United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division filed suit against the city of Greenwood and Leflore County to obtain their release. The petition was denied by a local court, but the city of Greenwood entered into a voluntary agreement to release the students. In June 1963, 45 residents of Itta Bena were arrested in Leflore County while protesting an attack on churches where voter registration drives were being held. The Civil Rights Division of DOJ filed suit against the county to obtain their release as well, but to no avail.[9] Passage of national civil rights legislation by Congress in 1964 and 1965 began to change the ground rules, especially as it authorized federal oversight and enforcement in counties with a history of an under-representation of minority voters.
Organizers and marchers returned to the county in 1966 as part of the March Against Fear, initiated by James Meredith. He was shot and wounded by a white man two days into the march. Major civil rights leaders and marchers from a variety of organizations vowed to continue his march of more than 220 miles from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. By the time they reached Greenwood, several hundred persons were in the group. They worked to organize and register voters, as most blacks in the county still lived in fear and had not registered. After previous registration drives, the white county board had cut off federal commodity subsidies to the black community, threatening the survival of numerous poor families. SNCC helped organize a national gathering of food for county residents to overcome the boycott.
In 1966, Stokley Carmichael, a new leader of SNCC, spoke in Greenwood for "Black Power", saying that blacks had to build their own bases of political and economic power, as had communities of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants to the United States.
L.C. Green was one of several notable blues guitarists who came from Leflore County, Mississippi. Other notable natives and one-time residents of the county were (in alphabetical order) David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Guitar Slim, Luther Johnson (Guitar Junior), Richard "Hacksaw" Harney, Robert Johnson, Rubin Lacey, Furry Lewis, Tommy McClennan, Dion Payton, Robert Petway, Brewer Phillips, Fenton Robinson, Hubert Sumlin, and Hound Dog Taylor.[10]
Adjacent Counties
Cities, Towns & Communities
- Berclair
- Browning
- Colony Town
- Greenwood (County Seat)
- Itta Bena
- McNutt
- Minter City (part)
- Mississippi Valley State University
- Money
- Morgan City
- Quito
- Rising Sun
- Ruby
- Schlater
- Shellmound
- Sidon
- Sunnyside
- Swiftown
- Wildwood
Links
National Register of Historic Places
Mathews Brake National Wildlife Refuge
Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge (part)
Leflore County Digital Archives
