Lowndes County History Revealed

Civil rights worker Stokley Carmichael called Lowndes “the most backward and violent county in Alabama” when he came to organize voters here in 1964: the county was 80% Black but, after decades of violent white supremacist intimidation, not one Black person was on the voter rolls in the county. 


In Lowndes County…

  • At least 16 of Alabama’s more than 350 racial terror lynchings occurred, including the killing of Elmore Bolling.

  • The Black Panther symbol was first used in 1965 to guide Black voters at the polls.

  • Viola Liuzzo, a white mother from Michigan, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan after transporting fellow Selma-to-Montgomery March activists.

  • Jonathan Daniels, a white New England seminary student, was killed following his efforts to organize a Black boycott of local merchants in 1965.

Just as the killing of Elmore Bolling was papered over and not investigated by local, state or federal officials, artifacts and records of Black history have been systematically erased in Lowndes County, as throughout America.

In 2007, lynching victim Elmore’s daughter, Josephine, petitioned the Alabama Historical Association for a historic marker to be erected to establish the truth about her father’s life and why he was killed. The Association repeatedly rejected her application and appeals, claiming the circumstances of her father’s death were “speculative.”

So the Bolling family provided the funds and Black landowner Kelvin Lawrence donated a plot for the marker near the site where Elmore was lynched. They erected it on December 7, 2007, 60 years after Elmore Bolling was killed.

The Elmore Bolling Initiative is committed to reversing the erasure of Black history in Lowndes County. 

Lowndes County is the site of one of the most protracted civil rights battles in America, yet government officials at all levels have ignored or minimized the bravery and endurance of those activists.

After Selma to Montgomery marchers walked 22 miles through Lowndes County on March 25, 1965, the Voting Rights Act passed on May 26 and was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6. Protected by federal monitors, Black people registered to vote in large numbers, becoming a majority of Lowndes County’s registered voters. In retaliation, white people fired and evicted Black citizens, many of whom refused to leave the county and forfeit their right to vote where they were registered.  Instead, they lived in “Tent City,'' a heroic mass action for civil rights that lasted almost twice as long as the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

On the site of Tent City, a National Park Service Interpretive Center was erected in 2006 that gives only nodding acknowledgment to Lowndes County activists’ determination and sacrifice. The Lowndes County Friends of the Civil Rights Movement is dedicated to giving proper recognition to the Tent City activists as heroes in the fight for voting rights in America.

Recommended Reading

Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt
by Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of the foreword to The Penalty for Success by Josephine Bolling McCall

  1. Lowndes County faithful believe its role is overlooked

  2. The Black Panther Party's deep Alabama roots: From 'Tent City' to Black power

  3. A Story Too Often Untold: Lowndes County, the Voting Rights Act, and the Birth of the Original Black Panther Party

  4. Formerly 'Bloody Lowndes,' county to celebrate role in civil rights

  5. C-SPAN - Jo Bolling McCall speaks on African American voting rights

An estimated 90 percent of Lowndes households have failing or inadequate wastewater systems. The wastewater crisis in Lowndes County allows hookworm--a disease of extreme poverty that was thought to have been eradicated in the U.S., to run rampant.  Hookworm is known to slow mental and physical development in children.  

Recommended Reading

  1. Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret

  2. The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt's Wastewater Crisis

  3. Hookworm, a disease of extreme poverty, is thriving in the US south. Why?

Today, the United Nations ranks the poverty in Lowndes County on the same level as the poorest areas of the world. The county has the highest rate of unemployment in Alabama—26%.

Only 18% of Lowndes households have high speed internet, a utility as essential as electricity for access to vital services like online education and telemedicine.

Recommended Reading

  1. The U.N. Looks At Extreme Poverty In The U.S., From Alabama To California

  2. The Story of American Poverty, As Told by One Alabama County