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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Montgomery County, Mississippi.
Official Website
The county was founded in 1871. It is said to be named in honor either of Richard Montgomery, an American Revolutionary War general killed in 1775 while attempting to capture Quebec City, Canada, or for Montgomery County, Tennessee, from which an early settler came. In the latter case, it would have been indirectly named after John Montgomery, a settler in Montgomery County, Tennessee, who founded the city of Clarksville, Tennessee, in the same county.
This area was occupied in historic times by the Choctaw people.
On April 13, 1937, two black men, Roosevelt Townes and "Bootjack" McDaniels, were arraigned at the county courthouse in Winona, after being charged in the December 1936 murder of a white merchant in Duck Hill, after Townes purportedly confessed to police. They were abducted from the courthouse and lynched. A white crowd estimated at 100 had gathered on April 13. A group of 12 white men took the two blacks by school bus to a site in Duck Hill, where they were tortured to confess before being shot and burned to death. A crowd estimated at 300 to 500 whites gathered to watch. By 1 pm, the wire services and other national media had learned of the event and were trying to gain more information.
The lynchings were reported nationally in the United States and widely condemned. Representative Hatton W. Sumners (D-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a telegram to Governor Hugh L. White decrying the lynching. He said, "It is the sort of thing which makes it hard for those of us who are here trying to protect the governmental sovereignty of the state..." At the time a federal anti-lynching bill was under consideration by Congress. It passed the House, but it was defeated in the Senate by the Solid South, conservative white Democrats. As was typical of lynchings, no one was ever prosecuted for the murders.
Adjacent Counties
Cities, Towns & Communities
- Alva
- Duck Hill
- Huntsville
- Kilmichael
- Lodi
- Middleton
- Poplar Creek
- Silbeyton
- Stewart
- Sweatman
- Winona (County Seat)
Cemeteries
Links
MS Genealogy & History Network
National Register of Historic Places
