Jim Crow was a grim reality in Lowndes County, Alabama, at the beginning of 1965. African Americans attended separate and unequal schools, lived in dilapidated and deteriorating housing, and toiled as underpaid and overworked domestics and farm laborers. They were also completely shut out of the political process. There were five thousand African Americans of voting age in the overwhelmingly black rural county, but not a single one was registered.¹ Most were too scared even to try. Francis Moss, born nearly seventy years earlier, was among those immobilized by an overwhelming fear of white violence. “I used to run in...

A stranger wearing a blue coat reminiscent of Union Army attire passed through southeastern Lowndes County in April 1882 heralding news that African Americans wanted to hear since the day of jubilee. According to the visitor, the federal government planned to implement a bold plan for redistributing plantation land. In two weeks, someone from Washington would arrive by rail and divide among them the land they had worked as slaves and sharecroppers. Word of the announcement spread rapidly throughout that corner of the county. Some people, though, doubted the veracity of the rumor because they lacked faith in the mysterious...

They met in the rear parking lot of the county courthouse. Some speculated that one hundred would gather, but only thirty-nine showed up. They all drove, picking up a neighbor here and a friend there. No one knew everyone but everyone knew someone. At eight o’clock, with the sun still inching heavenward, four of them circled the old building and entered through its twin front doors. The rest waited in their cars, some talking quietly, others lost in thought, but all anxious. These ordinary rural folk had come to register to vote—or at least to try, since no African...

They walked to the Cash Store to purchase snacks and cold beverages for their fellow demonstrators who waited anxiously in the blistering August sun. The mere thought of a refreshing cola and a bite to eat raised everyone’s spirits. After spending a week in the county jail, they were desperate for something other than prison gruel. The store was only about fifty yards from the jail and served African Americans freely, so no one anticipated trouble, but when the four activists reached the establishment, a fifty-two-year-old police volunteer armed with a pistol and a 12-guage shotgun appeared in the doorway...

Everyone was upset. Four weeks simply was not enough time to organize black farmers to win control of the local Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) committees, which administered federal farm programs. Unfortunately, that was all the time the activists had. In June 1966, the U.S. Department of Agriculture voided the previous year’s ASCS election in the Alabama Black Belt because wealthy white farmers used fraudulent means to stay in power. The department, however, let Alabama officials set the deadline for mailing in the ballots for the new election, and, not surprisingly, the state bureaucrats waited until mid-July 1966 before...

It was a beautiful day to vote. The cloudless sky was crystal blue and the temperature had not quite reached Alabama hot. As the workday neared an end, hundreds of people made their way to First Baptist Church, the site of the LCFO candidate nomination convention. Sharply dressed in their favorite hats and finest suits and dresses, they gathered on the church lawn where third-party volunteers checked their voter registration status to confirm their eligibility. State law forbade unregistered voters from participating in the May 3, 1966, event, and LCFO officials, fearing disqualification for even the slightest transgression, adhered to...

It was nearly impossible to hear over the clamor they created as they finalized plans for the election scheduled for the next day. But a Sunday morning quiet seized them the moment that the Black Panther candidates began assembling near the pulpit. Alice Moore, the forty-two-year-old nominee for tax assessor, stood proudly among the group as each addressed the crowded sanctuary of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. The Lowndes County native was a dedicated servant of the people. She was active in several clubs at Mt. Elam Baptist Church and a member of numerous community organizations, including Union Burial Society No....

They started arriving in Hayneville early that morning and they never stopped coming. As many as two thousand people from every corner of Lowndes County and from as far away as Detroit converged on the county seat. By noon, they had taken over the town square, which proudly displayed a stone memorial to the fallen heroes of the Confederacy. As they waited for the swearing-in ceremony to begin, they reminisced with friends and family about the struggles of the past and discussed the future, which looked considerably brighter in the wake of the election of the county’s first black sheriff...

Catherine Coleman Flowers came of age in Lowndes County, having moved there from Birmingham in 1968 when she was ten years old. Although the Lowndes movement had already peaked, there was still a great deal of organizing taking place, and she watched the revolution unfold up close. Her father, J. C. Coleman, had been active in the movement almost from the start, driving from Birmingham to his hometown of White Hall every chance he got. After relocating his family to Blackbelt, a tiny village near White Hall that rarely appears on maps, he became more intimately involved in the local...